Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zeraati, Farnaz Zamiri, Cao, Yang Trista, Qiao, Yuehan, Daumé III, Hal, Kacorri, Hernisa
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Zeraati, Farnaz Zamiri
Cao, Yang Trista
Qiao, Yuehan
Daumé III, Hal
Kacorri, Hernisa
author_facet Zeraati, Farnaz Zamiri
Cao, Yang Trista
Qiao, Yuehan
Daumé III, Hal
Kacorri, Hernisa
contents Prompting and steering techniques are well established in general-purpose generative AI, yet assistive visual question answering (VQA) tools for blind users still follow rigid interaction patterns with limited opportunities for customization. User control can be helpful when system responses are misaligned with their goals and contexts, a gap that becomes especially consequential for blind users that may rely on these systems for access. We invite 11 blind users to customize their interactions with a real-world conversational VQA system. Drawing on 418 interactions, reflections, and post-study interviews, we analyze prompting-based techniques participants adopted, including those introduced in the study and those developed independently in real-world settings. VQA interactions were often lengthy: participants averaged 3 turns, sometimes up to 21, with input text typically tenfold shorter than the responses they heard. Built on state-of-the-art LLMs, the system lacked verbosity controls, was limited in estimating distance in space and time, relied on inaccessible image framing, and offered little to no camera guidance. We discuss how customization techniques such as prompt engineering can help participants work around these limitations. Alongside a new publicly available dataset, we offer insights for interaction design at both query and system levels.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_16930
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users
Zeraati, Farnaz Zamiri
Cao, Yang Trista
Qiao, Yuehan
Daumé III, Hal
Kacorri, Hernisa
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Prompting and steering techniques are well established in general-purpose generative AI, yet assistive visual question answering (VQA) tools for blind users still follow rigid interaction patterns with limited opportunities for customization. User control can be helpful when system responses are misaligned with their goals and contexts, a gap that becomes especially consequential for blind users that may rely on these systems for access. We invite 11 blind users to customize their interactions with a real-world conversational VQA system. Drawing on 418 interactions, reflections, and post-study interviews, we analyze prompting-based techniques participants adopted, including those introduced in the study and those developed independently in real-world settings. VQA interactions were often lengthy: participants averaged 3 turns, sometimes up to 21, with input text typically tenfold shorter than the responses they heard. Built on state-of-the-art LLMs, the system lacked verbosity controls, was limited in estimating distance in space and time, relied on inaccessible image framing, and offered little to no camera guidance. We discuss how customization techniques such as prompt engineering can help participants work around these limitations. Alongside a new publicly available dataset, we offer insights for interaction design at both query and system levels.
title Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16930