Design and Real-World Evaluation of Eyes-Free Yoga: An Exergame for Blind and Low-Vision Exercise

Spatial-Temporal Self-Attention Enhanced Graph Convolutional Networks for Fitness Yoga Action Recognition

Fitness yoga is now a popular form of national fitness and sportive physical therapy. At present, Microsoft Kinect, a depth sensor, and other applications are widely used to monitor and guide yoga performance, but they are inconvenient to use and still a little expensive. To solve these problems, we propose spatial-temporal self-attention enhanced graph convolutional networks (STSAE-GCNs) that can analyze RGB yoga video data captured by cameras or smartphones. In the STSAE-GCN, we build a spatial-temporal self-attention module (STSAM), which can effectively enhance the spatial-temporal expression ability of the model and improve the performance of the proposed model. The STSAM has the characteristics of plug-and-play so that it can be applied in other skeleton-based action recognition methods and improve their performance. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed model in recognizing fitness yoga actions, we collected 960 fitness yoga action video clips in 10 action classes and built the dataset Yoga10. The recognition accuracy of the model on Yoga10 achieves 93.83%, outperforming the state-of-the-art methods, which proves that this model can better recognize fitness yoga actions and help students learn fitness yoga independently.

Effects of vibrotactile feedback on yoga practice

Participating in physical exercise using remote platforms is challenging for people with vision impairment due to their lack of vision. Thus, there is a need to provide nonvisual feedback to this population to improve the performance and safety of remote exercise. In this study, the effects of different nonvisual types of feedback (verbal, vibrotactile, and combined verbal and vibrotactile) for movement correction were tested with 22 participants with normal vision to investigate the feasibility of the feedback system and pilot tested with four participants with impaired vision. The study with normal-vision participants found that nonvisual feedback successfully corrected an additional 11.2% of movements compared to the no-feedback condition. Vibrotactile feedback was the most time-efficient among other types of feedback in correcting poses. Participants with normal vision rated multimodal feedback as the most strongly preferred modality. In a pilot test, participants with impaired vision also showed a similar trend. Overall, the study found providing vibrotactile (or multimodal) feedback during physical exercise to be an effective way of improving exercise performance. Implications for future training platform development with vibrotactile or multimodal feedback for people with impaired vision are discussed.

TECNOLOGIAS PARA EDUCAÇÃO EM SAÚDE DE PESSOAS COM DEFICIÊNCIA VISUAL: REVISÃO INTEGRATIVA

RESUMO Objetivo: investigar as evidências científicas acerca das tecnologias existentes e/ou que são utilizadas para educação em saúde de pessoas com deficiência visual. Método: revisão integrativa realizada nas bases de dados MEDLINE/PubMed, CINAHL, LILACS, via Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, Web of Science, Scopus e Cochrane Library, em novembro de 2021. Resultados: identificaram-se 18 artigos, dos quais oito estudos foram publicados em periódicos de enfermagem. Acerca dos países que foram locais de pesquisa, dez estudos foram publicados no Brasil e os demais em países como Estados Unidos, Irã, Índia, Turquia e Portugal. Os temas mais abordados pelas tecnologias foram saúde sexual e reprodutiva e saúde bucal. Os demais versaram sobre amamentação, saúde ocupacional, hipertensão arterial, diabetes e drogas. Quanto aos tipos de recursos de acessibilidade empregados nas tecnologias, prevaleceu o uso do áudio, através de texto ou CD, em dez estudos, e de recursos que exploraram o sentido tátil do cego, por meio de protótipos didáticos anatômicos, manuais educativos com figuras em alto relevo e texturas diferentes, em nove artigos. Outros recursos de acessibilidade foram audiodescrição, tecnologias mediadas pelo uso da internet e/ou do computador e materiais impressos em Braille. Predominaram estudos metodológicos e, em quatorze estudos, ocorreu a aplicação da tecnologia com as pessoas com deficiência visual. Conclusão: os estudos mostraram adequabilidade e viabilidade das tecnologias desenvolvidas para educação em saúde de pessoas com deficiência visual, por oferecerem conhecimento sobre os temas propostos e igualdade de acesso a materiais educativos para este grupo.

HEALTH EDUCATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR PEOPLE WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT: INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

ABSTRACT Objective: to investigate scientific evidence about existing health education technologies for people with visual impairment. Method: integrative review performed in MEDLINE/pubmed, CINAHL, LILACS databases, via Virtual Health Library, Web of Science, Scopus and Cochrane Library, in November 2021. Results: 18 articles were identified, of which eight were published in nursing journals. Regarding the countries that were research sites, ten studies were published in Brazil and the others in countries such as the United States, Iran, India, Turkey and Portugal. The most addressed themes of the technologies were sexual and reproductive health and oral health. The others were about breastfeeding, occupational health, hypertension, diabetes and drugs. Regarding the types of accessibility resources used in the technologies, the use of audio, through text or CD, prevailed in ten studies, and resources that explored the tactile sense through anatomical didactic prototypes, educational manuals with embossed figures and different textures, in nine articles. Other accessibility features were audio description, technologies mediated by the use of the Internet and/or computer, and braille printed materials. Methodological studies predominated and, in fourteen studies, the application of technology with visual impaired people occurred. Conclusion: the studies showed adequacy and feasibility regarding the health education technologies developed for people with visual impairment, because they offer knowledge about the proposed themes and equal access to educational materials for this group.

CLARIFY 2021: explanation and elaboration of the Delphi-based guidelines for the reporting of yoga research

BACKGROUND

Reporting of yoga research often lacks the detail required for clinical application, study replication, summary research and comparative effectiveness studies.

METHODS

To improve the transparency of reporting yoga interventions, and building on the development of previous reporting guidelines, a group of international yoga research stakeholders developed the consensus-based CheckList stAndardising the Reporting of Interventions For Yoga (CLARIFY) guidelines.

RESULTS

The 21-item CLARIFY checklist outlines the minimum details considered necessary for high-quality reporting of yoga research. This paper provides a detailed explanation of each of the 21 items of the CLARIFY checklist, together with model examples of how to integrate each item into publications of yoga research. The CLARIFY guideline serves as an extension for existing research reporting guidelines, and is flexible for use across all study designs.

CONCLUSION

We strongly encourage the uptake of these reporting guidelines by researchers and journals, to facilitate improvements in the transparency and utility of yoga research.

Using Participatory Design Methods to Explore Changes in the Self-Efficacy of Students with Visual Impairments After Playing Exergames

Objective: To explore changes in task/scheduling self-efficacy in children with visual impairments after playing exergames, using the participatory design (PD) method to guide students with visual impairments to engage in the design and test of exergames. Materials and Methods: A pre-/post-test was used with two experimental groups (nine high school students with visual impairments aged 18-21, nine junior high school students with visual impairments aged 14-17). Data were analyzed by an independent-/paired-sample t-test to assess changes in task/scheduling self-efficacy of different groups after gameplay. Data of three dimensions (psychological emotion, physical activity, and social interaction) were collected through texts, participative observations, live notetaking, and video recordings. These dimensions provide opportunities for children with visual impairments to improve their self-efficacy. Results: Exergames helped children with visual impairments to improve their task and scheduling self-efficacy. It confirmed that exergames can be useful to promote their psychological emotion, enhance levels of positive physical activity, and increase social opportunities to improve self-efficacy. Conclusion: Participants of various ages who engaged in exergames reported an improvement in both task and scheduling self-efficacy in terms of psychological emotion, physical activity, and social interaction. The PD approach may be useful in the design of products for people with visual impairments and may ultimately be helpful in supporting the social and physical needs of people with disabilities.