Abstract
For elderly people, social isolation is one significant factor in the deterioration of their life's quality. It has a profound impact on the general health and is produced by the diminution of social interactions. Nowadays, there is technology that can retrieve contextual data from the user's environment and interact with him in some simple, yet effective manners. The intelligent personal assistants can interact with the person by means of natural voice language. Previously, it was created a model for the adoption of electronic intelligent assistants by the elderly, as well a preliminary evaluation of the features of the intelligent personal assistants, currently available in the consumer market. In this article, it is evaluated the option of using the current consumer digital assistants to implement the proposed model. Several assistants were examined (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple), and their functionalities evaluated by creating four interaction scenarios and assessing the assistants' compliance with these scenarios.

Abstract
The overall objective of this work is to review the assistive technologies that have been proposed by researchers in recent years to address the limitations in user mobility posed by visual impairment. This work presents an umbrella review. Visually impaired people often want more than just information about their location and often need to relate their current location to the features existing in the surrounding environment. Extensive research has been dedicated into building assistive systems. Assistive systems for human navigation, in general, aim to allow their users to safely and efficiently navigate in unfamiliar environments by dynamically planning the path based on the user's location, respecting the constraints posed by their special needs. Modern mobile assistive technologies are becoming more discrete and include a wide range of mobile computerized devices, including ubiquitous technologies such as mobile phones. Technology can be used to determine the user's location, his relation to the surroundings (context), generate navigation instructions and deliver all this information to the blind user.

Abstract
Assistive systems which incorporate different technologies to provide simple and quick, yet informative, content, have recently been proposed to alleviate the mobility and accessibility constrains of users with visual impairment. Currently, technology has reached a maturation point that allows the development of systems based on video capturing, image recognition and geo-location referencing, which are key for providing features of artificial vision, assisted navigation and spatial perception. The miniaturization of electronics can be used to create devices, such as electronic canes equipped with sensors, that can provide contextual information to a blind user. In this paper, we describe the current work on assistive systems for the blind and propose a new perspective on using the base information of those systems to provide new services to the general public. By bridging the gap between the two groups, we expect to further advance the development of the current systems and contribute to their economic sustainability.

Abstract

Abstract
Information can be conveyed to the user by means of a narrative, modeled according to the user’s context. A case in point is the weather, which can be perceived differently and with distinct levels of importance according to the user’s context. For example, for a blind person, the weather is an important element to plan and move between locations. In fact, weather can make it very difficult or even impossible for a blind person to successfully negotiate a path and navigate from one place to another. To provide proper information, narrated and delivered according to the person’s context, this paper proposes a project for the creation of weather narratives, targeted at specific types of users and contexts. The proposal’s main objective is to add value to the data, acquired through the observation of weather systems, by interpreting that data, in order to identify relevant information and automatically create narratives, in a conversational way or with machine metadata language. These narratives should communicate specific aspects of the evolution of the weather systems in an efficient way, providing knowledge and insight in specific contexts and for specific purposes. Currently, there are several language generator’ systems, which automatically create weather forecast reports, based on previously processed and synthesized information. This paper, proposes a wider and more comprehensive approach to the weather systems phenomena, proposing a full process, from the raw data to a contextualized narration, thus providing a methodology and a tool that might be used for various contexts and weather systems. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
This study has the objective of select the best service at image processing and recognition, running in the cloud, and best suited for usage in systems to aid and improve the daily lives of blind people. To accomplish this purpose, a set of candidate services was built, including Microsoft Cognitive Services and Google Cloud Vision. A test mobile app was developed to automatically take pictures, which are sent to the online cloud services for processing. The results and the functionalities were evaluated with the aim to measure their accuracy and relevance. The following variables were registered: relative accuracy, represented by the ratio of the number of accurate results vs. the number of results shown; confidence degree, representing the service accuracy (when provided by the service); and relevance, identifying situations that can be useful in the daily lives of the blind people. The results have shown that these two services, Microsoft Cognitive Services and Google Cloud Vision, provided good accuracy and significance, in supporting systems to help blind people in their daily tasks. It was chosen some functionalities in two APIs of services running in the cloud like face identification, image description, objects, and text recognition. © BEIESP.