title: Using Computer Vision to Access Appliance Displays.
abstract: People who are blind or visually impaired face difficulties accessing a growing array of everyday appliances, needed to perform a variety of daily activities, because they are equipped with electronic displays. We are developing a "Display Reader" smartphone app, which uses computer vision to help a user acquire a usable image of a display, to address this problem. The current prototype analyzes video from the smartphone's camera, providing real-time feedback to guide the user until a satisfactory image is acquired, based on automatic estimates of image blur and glare. Formative studies were conducted with several blind and visually impaired participants, whose feedback is guiding the development of the user interface. The prototype software has been released as a Free and Open Source (FOSS) project.
authors.affiliation: The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA 94115 USA.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fusco
authors.affiliation: University of Washington, Computer Science & Engineering, DUB Group, Seattle, WA 98195 USA.
authors.forename: Ender
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tekin
authors.forename: Richard E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Ladner
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Coughlan
keywords: Access; blindness; low vision