Supporting Everyday Activities for Persons with Visual Impairments Through Computer Vision-Augmented Touch

The HandSight project investigates how wearable micro-cameras can be used to augment a blind or visually impaired user’s sense of touch with computer vision. Our goal is to support an array of activities of daily living by sensing and feeding back non-tactile information (e.g., color, printed text, patterns) about an object as it is touched. In this poster paper, we provide an overview of the project, our current proof-of-concept prototype, and a summary of findings from finger-based text reading studies. As this is an early-stage project, we also enumerate current open questions. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.4.2 [Computer and Society]: Social Issues – Assistive technologies for persons with disabilities Keywords Blind; visually impaired; wearable computing; computer vision; vision-augmented touch

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: ASSETS
• Authors: Leah Findlater, Lee Stearns, Ruofei Du, Uran Oh, David Ross, Rama Chellappa, Jon Froehlich
• Keywords: ASSETS 2015, Emerging Technology