| Abstract: |
In any society there are persons with disabilities, to whom communities are responsible to provide facilities to help them having a decent and productive life. Nowadays, visually impaired people enjoy the privileges of having both supportive communities and the availability of advanced technologies. Though, some services are still missing at many levels. This position paper deals with designing and optimizing a walking aid system for visually impaired students in a big university campus. The study aims at designing adequate new paths inside the campus for impaired students. The path is made to connect different buildings, which the visually impaired students need to often visit around the campus, such as the colleges, deanships and service locations. The path is optimized to cover the shortest distance and visually impaired students are supposed to follow the tactile tiles attached on the ground to be guided to the destinations of their preference. This study is based on applying typical operations research network optimization techniques and algorithms in order to fulfil the study’s objectives. The author will discuss with the audience if they think simple and typical methods are enough to solve this kind of problems or it is necessary to adopt more specialized and sophisticated approaches. |