Echolocation is a remarkable skill used by some blind people to navigate their surroundings by interpreting echoes from self-made sounds such as mouth clicks. Despite its potential to significantly improve blind travelers' navigational independence and quality of life (Thaler; Norman, Dodsworth, et al.), echolocation remains largely underutilized. This is partly due to limited understanding of its benefits and mechanisms, as well as its steep learning curve and the lack of optimal sensory cues for training. This study describes a carefully designed set of sounds that manipulate specific temporal cues for improved spatial perception, making echolocation more accessible to beginners and potentially speeding up the learning process. These stimuli and findings could be used to develop targeted training programs to accelerate beginners' learning, raise awareness, and promote their teaching more broadly. Furthermore, incorporating these stimuli into echolocation-based assistive devices, virtual platforms, and environments could broaden the reach and impact of echolocation on the lives of blind and visually impaired people.
This study examines the accessibility of digital map tools in relation to the Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, highlighting critical issues for disabled users. Despite the widespread use of digital maps across various professions and daily activities, their accessibility remains insufficient. The research involved a partial Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) comparison of the top 14 digital map tools, focusing on 15 WCAG criteria particularly relevant to geographic maps. The study expanded definitions for three criteria - 1.1.1 Non-Text Content, 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast, and 2.1.1 Keyboard Accessibility - to better apply them to map contexts. Findings revealed significant accessibility shortcomings, with only one tool (Audiom) achieving full compliance and others lacking adequate text alternatives, proper contrast, and keyboard operability. The discussion emphasizes the urgency for map developers to enhance accessibility, especially in light of upcoming legal requirements like the ADA Title II regulations. Making maps accessible not only aids users with disabilities but also offers business benefits by expanding the user base and fostering innovation. The study provides a systematic evaluation framework and clear guidelines to encourage greater digital map accessibility within an academic context.
Interest in the benefits of braille for people who are blind is high among professionals in the blindness field, but we know little about how braille is used in the workplace. The broad purpose of this study was to learn how employed people who are blind use braille on the job. Specific topics investigated included: work tasks refreshable braille technology (RBT) is used for, personal and job characteristics of RBT users compared to non-users, and factors associated with RBT use among workers with at least moderate braille skills. This study utilized data from 304 participants in a longitudinal research project investigating assistive technology use in the workplace by people who are blind. Two-thirds of our participants used braille on the job, and more than half utilized RBT. Workers who used RBT did not necessarily use it for all computer-related tasks they performed. RBT use was generally not significantly related to job characteristics, except for working for a blindness organization. RBT use was not significantly related to general personal characteristics but it was significantly different based on disability-related characteristics. Only older age and higher braille skills were significantly associated with RBT use on the job in a multivariate logistic regression model.
The You Described, We Archived dataset (YuWA) is a collaboration between San Francisco State University and The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. It includes audio description (AD) data collected worldwide 2013-2022 through YouDescribe, an accessibility tool for adding audio descriptions to YouTube videos. YouDescribe, a web-based audio description tool along with an iOS viewing app, has a community of 12,000+ average annual visitors, with approximately 3,000 volunteer describers, and has created over 5,500 audio described YouTube videos. Blind and visually impaired (BVI) viewers request videos, which then are saved to a wish list and volunteer audio describers select a video, write a script, record audio clips, and edit clip placement to create an audio description. The AD tracks are stored separately, posted for public view at https://youdescribe.org/ and played together with the YouTube video. The YuWA audio description data paired with the describer and viewer metadata, and collection timeline has a large number of research applications including artificial intelligence, machine learning, sociolinguistics, audio description, video understanding, video retrieval and video-language grounding tasks.
There is an estimated 500,000 people in the U.S. who are deaf and who use ASL and live in the U.S. Compared to the general population, deaf people are at greater risk of having chronic health problems and experience significant health disparities and inequities (Sanfacon, Leffers, Miller, Stabbe, DeWindt, Wagner, & Kushalnagar, 2020; Kushalnagar, Reesman, Holcomb, & Ryan, 2019; Kushalnagar & Miller, 2019). Much of the disparities are explained by the barriers in the environment, such as the unavailability of materials in ASL and lack of healthcare professionals who know how to provide deaf patient-centered care. Intersecting social determinants of health (e.g., intrinsic - low education; and extrinsic - barrier to healthcare services) create a mutually constituted vulnerability for health disparities when a person is deaf (Kushalnagar & Miller, 2019; Lesch, Brucher, Chapple, R., & Chapple, K., 2019; Smith & Chin, 2012). Moreover, the longstanding history of inequitable access to language and education, and a lack of printed information and materials, leave people who are deaf and use ASL unaware of opportunities to participate in cutting-edge research/clinical trials. An unintended consequence, therefore, is that PIs neglect to include people who are deaf and use ASL in their subject sample pools, and this marginalized population continues to be at disparity for health outcomes and also clinical research participation. One barrier is the unavailability of informed consent materials that are accessible in ASL. The current research study conducted by our team at the Center for Deaf Health Equity at Gallaudet University attempts to address the language barrier to the consent process through a careful reconsideration of its traditional English format and the development of an American Sign Language (ASL) informed consent app. This team successfully leveraged existing machine learning methods to develop a way to navigate and signature an informed consent process using ASL. We call this new method of navigation and signature "ASL consent." In our findings, we found that deaf people who are primarily college educated were more likely to agree that the process for obtaining ASL consent through an accessible app is comparable to traditional English consent.
Smartphone-based navigation apps allow blind and visually impaired (BVI) people to take images or videos to complete various tasks such as determining a user 's location, recognizing objects, and detecting obstacles. The quality of the images and videos significantly affects the performance of these systems, but manipulating a camera to capture clear images with proper framing is a challenging task for BVI users. This research explores the interactions between a camera and BVI users in assistive navigation systems through interviews with BVI participants. We identified the form factors, applications, and challenges in using camera-based navigation systems and designed an interactive training app to improve BVI users' skills in using a camera for navigation. In this paper, we describe a novel virtual environment of the training app and report the preliminary results of a user study with BVI participants.
This study evaluated the impact the Tactile Maps Automated Production (TMAP) system has had on its blind and visually impaired (BVI) and Orientation and Mobility (O&M) users and obtained suggestions for improvement. A semi-structured interview was performed with six BVI and seven O&M TMAP users who had printed or ordered two or more TMAPs in the last year. The number of maps downloaded from the online TMAP generation platform was also reviewed for each participant. The most significant finding is that having access to TMAPs increased map usage for BVIs from less than 1 map a year to getting at least two maps from the order system, with those who had easy access to an embosser generating on average 18.33 TMAPs from the online system and saying they embossed 42 maps on average at home or work. O&Ms appreciated the quick, high-quality, and scaled map they could create and send home with their students, and they frequently used TMAPs with their braille reading students. To improve TMAPs, users requested that the following features be added: interactivity, greater customizability of TMAPs, viewing of transit stops, lower cost of the ordered TMAP, and nonvisual viewing of the digital TMAP on the online platform.
Indoor navigation is a major challenge for people with visual impairments, who often lack access to visual cues such as informational signs, landmarks and structural features that people with normal vision rely on for wayfinding. We describe a new approach to recognizing and analyzing informational signs, such as Exit and restroom signs, in a building. This approach will be incorporated in iNavigate, a smartphone app we are developing, that provides accessible indoor navigation assistance. The app combines a digital map of the environment with computer vision and inertial sensing to estimate the user's location on the map in real time. Our new approach can recognize and analyze any sign from a small number of training images, and multiple types of signs can be processed simultaneously in each video frame. Moreover, in addition to estimating the distance to each detected sign, we can also estimate the approximate sign orientation (indicating if the sign is viewed head-on or obliquely), which improves the localization performance in challenging conditions. We evaluate the performance of our approach on four sign types distributed among multiple floors of an office building.
35th Annual Assistive Technology Conference Scientific/Research Proceedings, San Diego, 2020
Navigation is a multifaceted task, which requires using a combination of strategies and cues from the environment. Navigation can be particularly challenging for individuals with impaired vision, because many informative cues are visual. As mobile computing technology rapidly advances, the range of potential approaches to assist visually impaired people with navigation is also broadening. For computer-based navigational aids, the way in which information is gathered, processed, and presented is key to success and represents a vast space of potential approaches. In an effort to improve understanding and provide guidance on this issue, we present the results of a phone survey about navigational aids from a sample of individuals with impaired vision. The survey assessed the usefulness of existing navigational aids (both low-tech and high-tech) for different aspects of navigation. With an emphasis on indoor wayfinding (orienting oneself and following a route in a building), we also collected responses about specific targets the survey participants search for while navigating, and strategies they commonly use. Our results indicate that indoor wayfinding is a relatively under-supported task during navigation despite rapid advances in technology. These results also provide insights for creating navigational aids that are designed more specifically for the current challenges individuals with impaired vision may experience during this task.
We describe a new approach to audio labeling of 3D objects such as appliances, 3D models and maps that enables a visually impaired person to audio label objects. Our approach to audio labeling is called CamIO, a smartphone app that issues audio labels when the user points to a hotspot (a location of interest on an object) with a handheld stylus viewed by the smartphone camera. The CamIO app allows a user to create a new hotspot location by pointing at the location with a second stylus and recording a personalized audio label for the hotspot. In contrast with other audio labeling approaches that require the object of interest to be constructed of special materials, 3D printed, or equipped with special sensors, CamIO works with virtually any rigid object and requires only a smartphone, a paper barcode pattern mounted to the object of interest, and two inexpensive styluses. Moreover, our approach allows a visually impaired user to create audio labels independently. We describe a co-design performed with six blind participants exploring how they label objects in their daily lives and a study with the participants demonstrating the feasibility of CamIO for providing accessible audio labeling.
We present a multimodal science simulation, including visual and auditory (descriptions, sound effects, and sonifications) display. The design of each modality is described, as well as evaluation with learners with and without visual impairments. We conclude with challenges and opportunities at the intersection of multiple modalities.
We describe a new smartphone app called BLaDE (Barcode Localization and Decoding Engine), designed to enable a blind or visually impaired user find and read product barcodes. Developed at The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, the BLaDE Android app has been released as open source software, which can be used for free or modified for commercial or non-commercial use. Unlike popular commercial smartphone apps, BLaDE provides real-time audio feedback to help visually impaired users locate a barcode, which is a prerequisite to being able to read it. We describe experiments performed with five blind/visually impaired volunteer participants demonstrating that BLaDE is usable and that the audio feedback is key to its usability.
