Blind and visually impaired people experience difficulties while navigating in busy, urban landscapes. Cities appear to be a hostile environment for the blind; e.g. crowd, noise, vehicles, smells, street names to remember, and several other constantly changing features. Technological advancements provide the possibility to improve their quality of life by giving them mobility with an independent, safe and seamless indoor-outdoor navigation experience.

By giving blind people the freedom of navigating safely in Smart Cities - or any given environment, the distinction between blind members of our society and people with vision, will hopefully fade away. There is a real need to perform assistive technologies that allow blind and visually impaired people to move around in urban environments in a safe and independent way.

Developments in Computer Vision and Sensor Fusion technologies can open the possibility for visually impaired people to travel to formerly inaccessible or new places. Solutions that help the blind explore their surroundings more safely, will also increase traffic safety. The awareness of the potential of Smart Cities has grown exponentially over the past few years. States, provinces, counties, cities, and national governments realize that they can positively alter the lives of millions of urban residents with technology. Smart City solutions leverage IoT technologies to address the urban challenges such as safety and security, traffic congestion and aging infrastructure.

EVA represents a breakthrough tech solution as a wearable navigation tool for the blind and visually impaired, enables them smart and safe urban mobility, accessibility to new places, the freedom of independence, solving the biggest challenge of the blind: 'fear to mobility.'