Virtual Assistants for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A Review of Technologies, Applications, and Challenges

AI/ML

Virtual assistants provide blind and visually impaired users with powerful support through their ability to enable users to interact with both digital systems and their surrounding environment. The system capabilities extend beyond traditional accessibility tools because artificial intelligence has developed speech recognition and natural language processing and computer vision and edge computing technologies. The review provides a complete assessment of virtual assistant programs which developers created for blind and visually impaired users. The study investigates through three main areas which include virtual assistant evolution and its empowering technologies and systems which support two primary types of user activities that include navigation and object/text recognition and daily life assistance and educational and work-related tasks. The research compares different existing systems which use smartphones and wearables and smart environments to determine their positive features and negative aspects. The review provides an overview of primary challenges which relate to system reliability and user experience and user data protection and ethical issues and accessibility restrictions. The research highlights multiple future research directions which focus on combining different interaction methods and creating personalized systems and building eco-friendly edge AI systems and developing inclusive design methods and responsible innovation practices. The review aims to function as a complete resource which researchers and developers and policymakers can use to create virtual assistant technologies which provide blind and visually impaired users with accessible and dependable and ethically developed solutions.

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