What do Blind and Low-Vision People Really Want from Assistive Smart Devices? Comparison of the Literature with a Focus Study

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gamage, Bhanuka, Do, Thanh-Toan, Price, Nicholas Seow Chiang, Lowery, Arthur, Marriott, Kim
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gamage, Bhanuka
Do, Thanh-Toan
Price, Nicholas Seow Chiang
Lowery, Arthur
Marriott, Kim
author_facet Gamage, Bhanuka
Do, Thanh-Toan
Price, Nicholas Seow Chiang
Lowery, Arthur
Marriott, Kim
contents Over the last decade there has been considerable research into how artificial intelligence (AI), specifically computer vision, can assist people who are blind or have low-vision (BLV) to understand their environment. However, there has been almost no research into whether the tasks (object detection, image captioning, text recognition etc.) and devices (smartphones, smart-glasses etc.) investigated by researchers align with the needs and preferences of BLV people. We identified 646 studies published in the last two and a half years that have investigated such assistive AI techniques. We analysed these papers to determine the task, device and participation by BLV individuals. We then interviewed 24 BLV people and asked for their top five AI-based applications and to rank the applications found in the literature. We found only a weak positive correlation between BLV participants' perceived importance of tasks and researchers' focus and that participants prefer conversational agent interface and head-mounted devices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19325
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle What do Blind and Low-Vision People Really Want from Assistive Smart Devices? Comparison of the Literature with a Focus Study
Gamage, Bhanuka
Do, Thanh-Toan
Price, Nicholas Seow Chiang
Lowery, Arthur
Marriott, Kim
Human-Computer Interaction
Over the last decade there has been considerable research into how artificial intelligence (AI), specifically computer vision, can assist people who are blind or have low-vision (BLV) to understand their environment. However, there has been almost no research into whether the tasks (object detection, image captioning, text recognition etc.) and devices (smartphones, smart-glasses etc.) investigated by researchers align with the needs and preferences of BLV people. We identified 646 studies published in the last two and a half years that have investigated such assistive AI techniques. We analysed these papers to determine the task, device and participation by BLV individuals. We then interviewed 24 BLV people and asked for their top five AI-based applications and to rank the applications found in the literature. We found only a weak positive correlation between BLV participants' perceived importance of tasks and researchers' focus and that participants prefer conversational agent interface and head-mounted devices.
title What do Blind and Low-Vision People Really Want from Assistive Smart Devices? Comparison of the Literature with a Focus Study
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19325