Mobile applications aiding the visually impaired in travelling with public transport

The paper presents a set of mobile applications aiding the visually impaired in using the public transport. A user equipped with a modern smartphone with mobile data transmission and positioning capabilities can access location related context information. Keeping up the connection with dedicated system servers gives the user access to additional services, e.g. enables the use of passenger information system and provides access to services facilitating the navigation in urban areas. The paper describes an overall architecture of the system for guidance and public transport assistance of the visually impaired. Then, the details of the applications developed for Android based smartphones are presented. The applications are mainly focused on aiding in urban navigation and provide various ways of accessing data from public transport passenger information system.