To inform a visually impaired person of surrounding circumstances such as signals of traffic lights, a guide marking and a step, of which a guide dog cannot inform the visually impaired person.

The visually impaired person's face is fitted with a miniature digital camera, and an image is obtained by the digital camera so as to be input into a portable terminal in the same manner that eyes of an able-bodied person look at something. The step during walking, an orange line, a white line and characters are read off of the image of the portable terminal, and guidance on signal discrimination, etc., is offered by voice.