Tactile graphics are widely used to present maps and statistical diagrams to blind and low vision (BLV) people, with accessibility guidelines recommending their use for graphics where spatial relationships are important. Their use is expected to grow with the advent of commodity refreshable tactile displays. However, in stark contrast to visual information graphics, we lack a clear understanding of the benefts that well-designed tactile information graphics offer over text descriptions for BLV people. To address this gap, we introduce a framework considering the three components of encoding, perception and cognition to examine the known benefts for visual information graphics and explore their applicability to tactile information graphics. This work establishes a preliminary theoretical foundation for the tactile-frst design of information graphics and identifes future research avenues.

LLM-powered assistant with electrotactile feedback to assist blind and low vision people with maps and routes preview

Screen readers are audio-based software that Blind and Low Vision (BLV) people use to interact with computing devices, such as tablets and smartphones. Although this technology has significantly improved the accessibility of touchscreen devices, the sequential nature of audio limits the bandwidth of information users can receive and process. We introduce TapNav, an adaptive spatiotactile screen reader prototype developed to interact with touchscreen interfaces spatially. TapNav's screen reader provides adaptive auditory feedback that, in combination with a tactile overlay, conveys spatial information and location of interface elements on-screen. We evaluated TapNav with 12 BLV users who interacted with TapNav to explore a data visualization and interact with a bank transactions application. Our qualitative findings show that touch points and spatially constrained navigation helped users anticipate outcomes for faster exploration, and offload cognitive load to touch. We provide design guidelines for creating tactile overlays for adaptive spatiotactile screen readers and discuss their generalizability beyond our exploratory data analysis and everyday application navigation scenarios.

Avoiding obstacles while navigating is a challenge for people with low vision, who have impaired yet functional vision, which impacts their mobility, safety, and independence. This study investigates the impact of using Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance the visibility of obstacles for people with low vision. Twenty-five participants (14 with low vision and 11 typically sighted) wore smart glasses and completed a real-world obstacle course under two conditions: with obstacles enhanced using 3D AR markings and without any enhancement (i.e., passthrough only - control condition). Our results reveal that AR enhancements significantly decreased walking time, with the low vision group demonstrating a notable reduction in time. Additionally, the path length was significantly shorter with AR enhancements. The decrease in time and path length did not lead to more collisions, suggesting improved obstacle avoidance. Participants also reported a positive user experience with the AR system, highlighting its potential to enhance mobility for low vision users. These results suggest that AR technology can play a critical role in supporting the independence and confidence of low vision individuals in mobility tasks within complex environments. We discuss design guidelines for future AR systems to assist low vision people.

The accessibility to everyone, including visually impaired people, is one of the key aspects of art in public spaces. Nowadays, the issue of providing blind and low vision people with the opportunity to enjoy artworks is only beginning to be addressed; thus, this practice has not yet become widespread. The physiological and cognitive characteristics of people with visual impairments as well as existing examples of solutions to this issue are analysed in the article. Based on the conducted analysis, a theoretical framework is developed, enabling people with visual impairments to fully perceive art in public spaces.

Two-factor Authentication (also known as 2FA or two-step verification) is an authentication method that provides an extra layer of protection to ensure online account security. 2FA methods are used along with other primary authentication methods like PINs and Passwords to verify that the person trying to access any digital account is the person they are claiming to be. However, 2FA methods can be inaccessible for blind and low vision (BLV) users due to the requirement of multiple steps, apps, and/or devices for authentication. In addition, it can be a security risk as screen readers may read out the verification codes to bystanders. To address this, we present Haptic2FA, a haptic-based authentication method to improve 2FA accessibility for BLV users. Here, as a part of the 2FA process, the users are sent a 'haptic pattern' (similar to a one-time passcode in traditional 2FA methods) that they are required to enter or select for verification. Through a usability study with 10 BLV participants, we evaluated haptic patterns and input methods for the haptic patterns in the Haptic2FA method. Through the findings, we discuss the accessibility and usability of the Haptic2FA method.

This article introduces the “Mobile Bio-Eye-Tronic System” which is an artificial vision system for the impaired (blind) people and also low vision (sight loss) people. “Mobile Bio-Eye-Tronic System” is a completely original project and unique to the author of this article. There are 45 million visually impaired (blind) people in the world and 135 million low vision (sight loss) people. 60% of blindness in the world is treatable and 20% is preventable. 25 million people are blind in Europe, 12 million in America, 9 million in India, 6 million in China, and 7 million in Africa. In Turkey, this number is approximately 300 thousand. Based on these statistics, the main aim of this article is to appeal to hundreds of thousands of people, to help them fulfill their daily activities, even partially, to improve the quality of life of these visually impaired people and to restore their health. In addition, the scientific and technical studies to be carried out on this subject will contribute to the enrichment of the literature on the subject and will also be beneficial for scientific and technical progress. When the current studies on bionic eyes are examined, there is no other system in the literature that obtains results using a mobile phone camera and software. The bionic eye stated in this article will be a first in this respect.

This article introduces the “Mobile Bio-Eye-Tronic System” which is an artificial vision system for the impaired (blind) people and also low vision (sight loss) people. “Mobile Bio-Eye-Tronic System” is a completely original project and unique to the author of this article. There are 45 million visually impaired (blind) people in the world and 135 million low vision (sight loss) people. 60% of blindness in the world is treatable and 20% is preventable. 25 million people are blind in Europe, 12 million in America, 9 million in India, 6 million in China, and 7 million in Africa. In Turkey, this number is approximately 300 thousand. Based on these statistics, the main aim of this article is to appeal to hundreds of thousands of people, to help them fulfill their daily activities, even partially, to improve the quality of life of these visually impaired people and to restore their health. In addition, the scientific and technical studies to be carried out on this subject will contribute to the enrichment of the literature on the subject and will also be beneficial for scientific and technical progress. When the current studies on bionic eyes are examined, there is no other system in the literature that obtains results using a mobile phone camera and software. The bionic eye stated in this article will be a first in this respect. [1-29]

Visual art facilitates expression, communication, and connection, yet it remains inaccessible to those who are visually-impaired and those who lack the resources to understand the techniques and history of art. In this work, I propose the development of a generative AI model that generates a description and interpretation of a given artwork. Such research can make art more accessible, support art education, and improve the ability of AI to understand and translate between creative media. Development will begin with a formative study to assess the needs and preferences of blind and low vision people and art experts. Following the formative study, the basic approach is to train the model on a database of artworks and their accompanying descriptions, predict sentiments from extracted visual data, and generate a paragraph closely resembling training textual data and incorporating sentiment analysis. The model will then be evaluated quantitatively through metrics like METEOR and qualitatively through Turing tests in an iterative process.

Low vision is a visual impairment that falls short of blindness but cannot be corrected by eyeglasses or contact lenses. While current low vision aids (e.g., magnifier, CCTV) support basic vision enhancements, such as magnification and contrast enhancement, these enhancements often arbitrarily alter a user's full field of view without considering the user's context, such as their visual abilities, tasks, and environmental factors. As a result, these low vision aids are not sufficient or preferred by low vision users in many important tasks. Augmented reality (AR) technology presents a unique opportunity to enhance low vision people's visual experience by automatically recognizing the surrounding environment and presenting tailored visual augmentations. In this talk, I will talk about how we design and build intelligent AR systems to support low vision people in visual tasks, such as a head-mounted AR system that presents visual cues to orient users' attention in a visual search task, as well as a projection-based AR system that projects visual highlights on the stair edges to support safe stair navigation. I will conclude my talk by discussing our future research direction on AR for low vision accessibility.

Visual impairment affects the major population of the world, and impaired vision people need assistance for their day-to-day activities. With the enormous growth and usage of new technologies, various devices were developed to help them with object identification in addition to navigation in the indoor and outdoor surroundings. Gesture detection and classification for blind people aims to develop technologies to assist those people to navigate their surroundings more easily. To achieve this goal, using machine learning and computer vision techniques is a better solution to classify and detect hand gestures. Such methods are utilized for finding the shape, position, and movement of the hands in real-time. With this motivation, this article presents a robust gesture recognition and classification using growth optimizer with deep stacked autoencoder (RGRC-GODSAE) model for visually impaired persons. The goal of the RGRC-GODSAE technique lies in the accurate recognition and classification of gestures to assist visually impaired persons. The RGRC-GODSAE technique follows the Gabor filter approach at the initial stage to remove noise. In addition, the RGRC-GODSAE technique uses the ShuffleNet model as a feature extractor and the GO algorithm as a hyperparameter optimizer. Finally, the deep stacked autoencoder model is exploited for the automated recognition and classification of gestures. The experimental validation of the RGRC-GODSAE technique is carried out on the benchmark dataset. The extensive comparison study showed better gesture recognition performance of the RGRC-GODSAE technique over other deep learning models.

In a day-to-day lifestyle, partial eyesight may cause young generation people to suffer from multiple problems by the usage of mobile phones, etc. What about their condition after they become old in the future? This may lead to a situation where these persons must depend on others for their work to be done. To help these people in these conditions, the solution is proposed which is known as "Dream Eyes". The proposed Android-application helps to overcome these issues. An old man will be able to read and write with his/her spectacles, suppose the old person is unable to read, then in such condition the people can use the proposed application. To achieve the proposed solution a successful collection of frameworks like OCR (Optical Character Recognition), TTS (Text to Speech) is used, which enables us to hear the scanned text using a phone or tablet.

The latest generation of mobile phones have excellent hardware capabilities and quicker processing, which are strong enough to enable the creation of applications that enable users to connect and engage with the outside world at their own pace. This system reads OCR and utilizes the camera app on your smartphone in addition to the camera. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a tool that converts printed, handwritten, or typed text into machine-readable text from a picture. This system will assist you in taking a photo of or scanning a document that is currently in your possession using the camera on your phone. After the image has been scanned, an application will read any English-language text and turn the results into speech. The speech communication channel is regarded by the authors as one of the most crucial modalities to help the blind and low vision people in the state-of-the-art accessibility area. Key Words: OCR, camera app, speech, blind, vision

International audience

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT MOBILE SYSTEM OF COMPUTER VISION AND VOICE CONTROL FOR VISUAL IMPAIRED PEOPLE

Learning to play a musical instrument and engaging in musical activities have enabled blind and/or low vision people to develop self-identity, find community and pursue music as a career. However, blind and/or low vision music learners face complex obstacles to learn music. They are highly reliant on their learning environment and music teachers for accommodations and flexibility. Prior research has identified the challenges faced by blind and/or low vision musicians and recognized the importance of touch for music reading and physical guidance. However, limited research has addressed these challenges through the development of assistive technology. The development of music computer technologies with haptics and the affordances of wearable technologies provides encouraging opportunities to develop haptic wearable devices to support blind and/or low vision music learning. I identify three unexplored research questions: (1) what design considerations must be addressed in future assistive technologies for BLV music learning, (2) how can wearable technologies with vibrotactile feedback support BLV student-teacher interactions, and (3) what are the long-term benefits and limitations of the use of assistive technologies for BLV music learning? I outline my research to date and highlight my findings.

Background: Approximately 250,000 visually impaired people were registered in Korea in 2021, and eye diseases are often accompanied by various systemic diseases. This study aims to investigate the epidemiology, causative disease, and rehabilitation treatment for visually impaired and low-vision patients.Current Concepts: Visual impairment ranges from blindness in one eye to total blindness. Low vision refers to the visual acuity of 0.3 to 0.05 in the better eye, and the visual field is narrowed to less than 10 degrees. The common causes of visual impairment eye disorders include macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic maculopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, and congenital diseases. Among them, macular degeneration has been increasing significantly in recent years. If the disability is not changed, it is difficult to improve vision through treatment. The aim of treatment should be to retain the remaining visual function through the low vision aids for the visually impaired person.Discussion and Conclusion: Although various visual aids are being distributed, medical insurance coverage does not align with the need for improvement. Like other disabilities, multidisciplinary approaches to the visually impaired people are necessary. In addition, awareness of low vision should be improved so that there are no visually impaired and low vision people who are placed in a blind spot and suffer inconvenience.

Blind and low vision people use visual description services (VDS) to gain visual interpretation and build access in a world that privileges sight. Despite their many benefits, VDS have many harmful privacy and security implications. As a result, researchers are suggesting, exploring, and building obfuscation systems that detect and obscure private or sensitive materials. However, as obfuscation depends largely on sight to interpret outcomes, it is unknown whether Blind and low vision people would find such approaches useful. Our work aims to center the perspectives and opinions of Blind and low vision people on the potential of obfuscation to address privacy concerns in VDS. By reporting on interviews with 20 Blind and low vision people who use VDS, our findings reveal that popular research trends in obfuscation fail to capture the needs of Blind and low vision people. While obfuscation might be helpful in gaining more control, tensions around obfuscation misrecognition and confirmation are prominent. We turn to the framework of interdependence to unpack and understand obfuscation in VDS, enabling us to complicate privacy concerns, uncover the labor of Blind and low vision people, and emphasize the importance of safeguards. We provide design directions to move the trajectory of obfuscation research forward.

Introduction: The development of coping strategies as well as the support tailored to the needs of people with low vision allow for minimizing the existing limitations. In this context, recognizing one’s developmental situation is of key importance, identifying factors helpful in developing one’s potential in particular. These factors undoubtedly include the resources at the disposal of people suffering from low vision. Research Aim: The aim of the research is to diagnose the psychosocial resources of people with low vision. Method: The study involved 110 low vision people and 110 sighted people at the age of 18–83, selected in terms of sex, age and education. The tools used in the research measured: basic hope, self-esteem and social support. Relevant calculations were made using the Student t-test for independent data. Results: The research showed that the low vision participants are characterized by a significantly lower intensity of basic hope. Moreover, they assess considerably less positively the properties that make up the family self and indicate that they receive significantly lower social support, both general and emotional as well as affirmative and practical. Conclusions: The obtained results indicate the necessity to undertake various actions aimed at improving the psychosocial functioning of people with low vision by optimizing their resources.

The Buenos Aires Planetarium is a benchmark in the dissemination of astronomy and science. For the Planetarium, the axis passes through the visitors, the most important heritage. Thinking about the different audiences helps to understand the different needs of each one of them and their particularities. We always work in outreach with diversity in mind. In recent years, we have incorporated inclusion as a transversal axis of all our activities. This forces us to be flexible as an institution, with the capacity for permanent changes and adjustments. We are aware that accessibility does not only go through the adaptations that are made in the spaces, so that all people can make use of them with the guarantee of their free mobility, but also through the actions that accompany and promote insertion in the field of astronomy. The Accessible Planetarium grew notably, as we permanently added new programs. In addition to the traditional activities such as the Planetarium for blind and low vision people, the Planetarium for deaf and hard of hearing people, we incorporate Easy Reading, tactile sensory material, haptic plans, accessibility elements in social networks and the web. What gives us great satisfaction is the relaxed function, a novel and unprecedented program in planetariums for people with Autism Spectrum Condition (CEA). For children, we especially offer the Blue Planetarium: One of Pirates, a show adapted as a relaxed function. All this work would not be possible without the advice of the different organizations with experience in the different disabilities. But it also requires the commitment of all Planetarium personnel, and that is why we permanently train ourselves to fulfill a better role in society. From our Planetarium we encourage full participation and promote an Astronomy without borders.