High-Level Project Summary
According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), 39,000,000 of the world's population are blind. These people cannot observe the sky, therefore to transmit knowledge and provide learning about how the stars change, we made an app that locates the twelve zodiac constellations in the sky and teaches about stellar variability for blind people through sound resources for distance analysis, age and light intensity in the stars that make up the localized constellation. So we reach out and include people who don't have the opportunity to observe the sky and show them how dynamic the sky really is.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Our project is a mobile application that will be interactive and guided, with voice command and audio description. Using the data provided by the Space Stations about the distance, age and intensity of the light of the stars, we can transmit this information in an easy and dynamic way.
Let's use the constellation of Aries as an example. Sound commands “beeps” indicate the direction the user should aim. Then the application will pass information about the stars that are in that group. When finished, the application itself guides you to the next constellation. So we show the perspective of stars that are far away and have different brightness, but look the same for the distance we are from them.
There are 39 million people who, with the resource we present in this application, can shine, such as scientists, astronomers, researchers and many areas dealing with the universe. With sound stimulation ("Beeps") on the right and left sides, the user can locate the zodiac constellations in the sky. After the location is performed, the application transmits information with audio description about the distance, age and intensity of the light of the stars that make up the set.
After listening to all the audio description the application will guide you to the next constellation
With this app, visually impaired people can learn about the dynamics of stars, and thrive in the scientific field.
Programming info: The visual part of the app was done on Canva to have a simple and streamlined aesthetic. The audio description voices will be imported from Google narration as the program’s input. The language used to perform all backend application functions will be python. In addition, real-time information about satellite location will be adjusted.
Space Agency Data
- General Catalog of Variable Star (GCVS)- We used this article to get data about constellations, such as minimum magnitude, maximum magnitude, period, distance and so on. This information will be useful to explain each constellation when the person uses the application.
https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/gcvs.html
- Cepheids as Cosmology Tools- From this NASA article we obtained information on Cepheids and their luminosity, this data will be useful to make Stellar Sounds richer in content and complete.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia15819-cepheids-as-cosmology-tools
Hackathon Journey
At the beginning of the hackathon, we chose challenge 19 twinkle, twinkle, little star since we liked the idea of studying stellar variability, with the challenge defined we had the goal of creating a learning tool to teach people in a simple way. One of the team members has a family member who is visually impaired and this person could not look at the sky like we do. With that in mind, we decided to work with the visually impaired in order to help them with that. That being said, we interviewed the target audience in order to understand their side. With feedback and suggestions, we started to develop the idea leading to our solution, Stellar Sounds, which is an educational application about astronomy in which the user can learn about the universe just by moving his camera towards the sky, and through of sound stimulation, the application becomes accessible to the visually impaired, giving them an opportunity to learn about the universe and constellations in an entertaining and interactive way. With our idea formed, we went to talk to people again and received very positive feedback. We got in touch with a visually impaired person and in her words ´´(it would be very good for me, because only then could I study the universe.´´), which made us excited to continue. We are currently working on it and we are happy with what we have so far. We are very grateful to all the people who helped us along our journey, those that helped in improving the idea, translating documents, finding subjects for interviews and providing feedback. And we are specially thankful to Marcelo Brito from Salvador/BA, a visually imparied that help us to understand how important our project is to the blind community.
References
Icons: https://www.flaticon.com/br/icones-gratis/smartphone
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/headphones
TURBIANI, Renata. Cegueira afeta 39 milhões de pessoas no mundo; conheça suas principais causas. BBC news Brasil,2019. Available in<https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/geral-48634186> access in October 1, 2022
Images: https://pixabay.com/
Tags
#Star, #Blind, #Sound, #Science