This paper describes techniques for developing a visual-based system that autonomously operators for both building a map and localization tasks. The proposed system tends to assist navigation services in small or mid-scale environments such as inside a building where conventional positioning data such as GPS, WIFI signals are often not available. the authors firstly design an image acquisition system to collect visual data. On one hand, a robust visual odometry method is adjusted to precisely create a map of the indoor environment. On the other hand, the authors utilize the FAB-MAP (Fast Appearance-Based Mapping) algorithms. the authors propose a scene discrimination procedure using GIST feature to dealing with issues of the FAB-MAP. In the experiments, these enhancements give better results comparing with original techniques for both map-building and localization tasks. Such results confirmed that the proposed system is feasible to support visually impaired people navigating in the indoor environments.