Utilisation of Location Based Services for the benefit of Visually Handicapped People  C. Jeganathan Scientist/Engr. ‘SD’ Geoinformatics Division Indian Institute of Remote Sensing(IIRS), NRSA Dehradun, Uttaranchal Tel: +91-135-2744518 (extn.2315) Fax: +91-135-2741987 Email: jegan@iirs.gov.in Tanushree Sengupta Ph.D. Scholar Vishwabharti University Santiniketan, West Bengal Tel: +91-135-3110728 Email: jtanshree@yahoo.com Introduction: Great visionary of Indian space programme, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, once said that India will be second to none in the advanced technology, not for pride but for the benefit of the masses. In this regard, advancements in the geospatial technology must help country’s grass root for not only economical development but also for the social development. Geospatial applications have drawn major attention from different corners for the last 2 decades, which has been fully understood and exploited through various national projects like Wasteland mapping, Rajiv Gandhi drinking water mission, Integrated mission for sustainable development and Biodiversity assessment, to say a few. Though there are technological gap between scientific community and administrative community it will be soon eliminated within coming 10 years. There are ways by which this big knowledge gap can be eliminated by a ‘capsule’ approach, means ‘give what they need’ through a customized kiosks. Timely example for this approach is a mobile phone, which applies a complex background signal processing but to the user it is just hidden and this small kiosk is becoming an economical boom in this country and it will be a boon to some of the socially less privileged people like Visually Handicapped Person (ViHP) soon. Wedding of these two powerful technologies (Geospatial & Mobile) can bring out enormous springs down i.e., applications. One of the emerging application of this geospatial & mobile integrated gamut is Location Based Services (LBS). “Position” is the key word in this LBS, which is acquired through a Global Position System (GPS) based technology, which in itself is another gamut of satellite based technological innovation. Position can be accumulated through a handheld GPS for making a complete spatial information and can be analysed through Geographical Information System (GIS). But in LBS we will be using an existing spatial database in the background and location of the user will be passed on that database and will be analysed as per the user query like where is the nearest bank/hotel etc., information to a mobile user. Though the LBS will take a lead role for common man, what will it provide to a blind person, if it remains of text-based or graphic based information?. Let us forget about LBS, can a blind person make a call to a particular person from the inbuilt phone book of mobile, if there are more than 1 phone entry?. A blind person need in addition a voice based service and it should be automatic, instantaneous, whenever and wherever he/she wants. It is very sad to note here that only 200 blind people have daily access to computers, despite the availability of “Bharati Braille” software developed at Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai (Hindu, 2000). Amidst this fast changing technology, blind people have been kept stand still, without much change in their lives. Out of 180 Million World’s Visually Handicapped People, 25% of them live in India and 30,000 new blind are added every year (Brundtland, 2000). Hence a serious search for their normal livelihood is inevitable. Basically a blind person is not aware of his position, which can easily be identified through a hand held Global Positioning System (GPS) within the accuracy level of 20m. This positional information has to be told through a text-to-voice converter. But having 20m error on one hand is “something” rather than “nothing” for a blind person, but it is a problem for technology man, as how to minimise this error so that we can pinpoint the position on the map. Once the position is confirmed accurately we can play around within the software like finding nearest road or junction or hotel or bank and many more. LBS Technology is a ray of hope for visually handicapped people, as it gives a big hold for them – yes ‘their position’. This paper explores different possibilities of utilizing this technology with little innovative effort, for the social benefit. The key points to be analysed in order to provide a feasible system for the blind people are a) money b) accuracy and c) customized software. Keeping these points in view the paper tries to anlayse and provide a possible approaches using Geo-Information and Communication technologies (GI&CT).
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