Investigating the Intelligibility of a Computer Vision System for Blind Users

Computer vision systems to help blind usersare becoming increasingly common yet often these systems are not intelligible. Our work investigates the intelligibility of a wearable computer vision system to help blind users locate and identify people in their vicinity. Providing a continuous stream of information, this system allows us to explore intelligibility through interaction and instructions, going beyond studies of intelligibility that focus on explaining a decision a computer vision system might make. In a study with 13 blind users, we explored whether varying instructions (either basic or enhanced) about how the system worked would change blind users’ experience of the system. We found offering a more detailed set of instructions did not affect how successful users were using the system nor their perceived workload. We did, however, find evidence of significant differences in what they knew about the system, and they employed different, and potentially more effective, use strategies. Our findings have important implications for researchers and designers of computer vision systemsfor blind users, as well more general implications for understanding what it means to make interactive computer vision systems intelligible

Blind people can do anything but not in my company : employer attitudes towards employing blind and vision-impaired people : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies at Massey University

Previous international research has shown blind and vision-impaired people to be in the less favoured groups of employees employers are willing to hire. None of the research has addressed why this is the case. The present study was undertaken firstly to see if in New Zealand also, blind and vision-impaired people were less favoured in comparison with other disability groups as potential employees; and secondly, to determine employer attitudes and perceptions towards employing blind people, and how or why these attitudes and perceptions influence employers to overlook the blind and vision-impaired when employing staff. One hundred and two employers (sample 200) participated in a telephone survey and, of those, six were interviewed again in an in-depth face-to-face interview. A combination of attitudinal and perception survey instruments were used. The research found participants had mainly favourable attitudes towards blind and vision-impaired people. However, in total contrast, blind and vision-impaired people (alongside those with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities) were regarded the least suitable or least employable for positions most and second most often available in firms across all industries. The results were congruent with earlier findings (Gilbride, Stensrud, Ehlers, Evans & Peterson, 2000) in that of all of the disability groups, blindness and persons with moderate or severe (mental retardation) intellectual handicap were perceived as the hardest to employ in comparison with other disability groups. Lastly, this report comments on how potential hiring practices (employers' potential behaviour) can be changed to better match their apparent positive attitudes towards blind and vision-impaired people. A range of recommendations are made such as the need for education programmes in schools, media campaigns and cultivating positive media relationships, workplace training and education, employer mentoring programmes, the development of government policies and strategies and the need for work experience programmes

The Ambivalent Vision: The "Crip" Invention of "Blind Vision" in Blind Massage

Blind Massage, a film directed by Lou Ye (2014), depicts disability and sexuality through stories of blind masseurs. It employs “blind vision”, a novel form of cinematography that depicts blindness, assisting the film in unfolding the subjective experience of the blind masseurs in both sexual and non-sexual scenes. With the invention of blind vision, Blind Massage introduced a non-normative cinematic experience that decentres vision, while cinema had previously been perceived as an intrinsically visual-centred art form. This paper, therefore, asks: How does the am­bivalent representation of vision contribute to the cinematic representation of disabled sexuality? Does it reinvent or reinforce the normative understanding of disabled sexuality? As a response, the paper argues that the invention of blind vision destabilises the ableist foundation of cinema that centres on visual experience as the source of pleasure. It mainly grounds the argumentation on criticism of Mulvey’s (1975) gaze theory, which discusses visual pleasure and narrative cinema with the psychoanalytic gaze notion. The notion of blind vision will be elab­orated on, not only in cinematography but also as a cultural implication that touches on disability studies and sexuality studies. Methodologically, this paper will, use crip theory, feminist film theories, and psychoanalysis to understand the representation of disabled sexuality in Blind Massage. The paper will be structured as follows. It will first review previous academic discussions on disabled sexuality in cinema. Then, it will elaborate on the invention of blind vision through scene and cinematography analyses and consider how Blind Massage echoes with a Mulveyian gaze theory in terms of marking the gaze as a normative power. Finally, I argue that blind vision could be regarded as an approach to reverse such power and release the potential resistance towards normativity in cinema, with a Lacanian revisit and reworking of the Mulveyian gaze theory

Efficient Privacy Preserving Viola-Jones Type Object Detection via Random Base Image Representation

A cloud server spent a lot of time, energy and money to train a Viola-Jones type object detector with high accuracy. Clients can upload their photos to the cloud server to find objects. However, the client does not want the leakage of the content of his/her photos. In the meanwhile, the cloud server is also reluctant to leak any parameters of the trained object detectors. 10 years ago, Avidan & Butman introduced Blind Vision, which is a method for securely evaluating a Viola-Jones type object detector. Blind Vision uses standard cryptographic tools and is painfully slow to compute, taking a couple of hours to scan a single image. The purpose of this work is to explore an efficient method that can speed up the process. We propose the Random Base Image (RBI) Representation. The original image is divided into random base images. Only the base images are submitted randomly to the cloud server. Thus, the content of the image can not be leaked. In the meanwhile, a random vector and the secure Millionaire protocol are leveraged to protect the parameters of the trained object detector. The RBI makes the integral-image enable again for the great acceleration. The experimental results reveal that our method can retain the detection accuracy of that of the plain vision algorithm and is significantly faster than the traditional blind vision, with only a very low probability of the information leakage theoretically.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, To appear in the proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), Jul 10, 2017 - Jul 14, 2017, Hong Kong, Hong Kon

Productivity of key informants for identifying blind children: evidence from a pilot study in Malawi.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the productivity of village-based 'key informants' (KIs) in identifying blind children. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ngabu subdistrict (population 101,000) of Chikwawa district was divided into KI catchment areas. KIs, selected by local village leaders, were trained to register children reported to be blind or with severe visual impairment. These children were clinically assessed at designated centres. RESULTS: In total, 44 KIs were selected and trained to cover 196 villages in Ngabu. They identified and referred 151 children, 37 of whom were blind (presenting vision <3/60 best eye). Overall, village leaders tended to choose female KIs (80%) compared to male KIs (20%); however, male KIs tended to be more productive, identifying 4.22 children each (compared to 3.23 for female KIs). Male KIs were 2.7 times more likely to identify blind children compared to female KIs. Only 25% of all identified blind children of school going age were in school. CONCLUSIONS: KIs may be effective in identifying blind children in the community; however, additional work is needed to determine who will be the most effective KI in a community and whether gender roles will limit interpretation of findings from KIs activities

Identifying Motivation of Parental Involvement and Problems in Homework Encountered By Blind and Low Vision Students

This study aims to understand the motivation of parents to assist their children who are blind or with low vision with their homework and its impact on their academic achievement. Three families have been selected, all of whom have a blind or low vision child who studies at secondary level in a public school. This study employs the in-depth interview to get the views from three pairs of parents. The result leads us to look beyond the relationship between homework management strategies and grades. Therefore, the key outcome of this study leads us to identify the problems in the process of doing homework for blind and low vision students who are taught in public schools. Solutions such as the learning skill in braille, strong parents support group and close engagement among parents and teachers are needed to create the stimulating learning environment to enable blind and low vision students to read, to learn and to write their homework independently. Therefore, the implications of this study are the need to amend the policy to facilitate parental engagement and establish the systematic assessment and planning to ameliorate the barriers faced by blind and low vision students

Pedestrian Detection with Wearable Cameras for the Blind: A Two-way Perspective

Blind people have limited access to information about their surroundings, which is important for ensuring one's safety, managing social interactions, and identifying approaching pedestrians. With advances in computer vision, wearable cameras can provide equitable access to such information. However, the always-on nature of these assistive technologies poses privacy concerns for parties that may get recorded. We explore this tension from both perspectives, those of sighted passersby and blind users, taking into account camera visibility, in-person versus remote experience, and extracted visual information. We conduct two studies: an online survey with MTurkers (N=206) and an in-person experience study between pairs of blind (N=10) and sighted (N=40) participants, where blind participants wear a working prototype for pedestrian detection and pass by sighted participants. Our results suggest that both of the perspectives of users and bystanders and the several factors mentioned above need to be carefully considered to mitigate potential social tensions.Comment: The 2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020

Blind children's understanding of vision

This thesis explores the effects of congenital blindness upon the development of understanding of vision, and draws on the theoretical frameworks of understanding of aspectuality and visual perspective-taking. Six studies investigated how blind children demonstrated their understanding of vision. Where appropriate, their performance was compared to a control group of sighted children. The views of parents and educators of congenitally blind children were sought in order to gain insight into social influences upon the development of blind children’s understanding of vision. Sixteen congenitally blind children aged from 3;6 to 14;8, 168 typically developing sighted children aged from 3;6 to 14;8 and 58 sighted adults took part in the studies. There were three main findings. First, the associative stage in understanding of the aspectuality of knowledge for blind children may be manifest in the relationship between touching and knowing. Second, when utilising a more naturalistic setting than has commonly been used, blind children aged between three and 11 years were able to hide successfully, raising questions about the position that Level 1 perspective-taking is not present in blind children until the age of at least six or seven years, and possibly not until ten years. Third, blind participants demonstrated an understanding of mind earlier than has been found in other studies, suggesting that the development of theory of mind in congenitally blind children may not be as delayed as was previously thought. Several educational issues were raised, including the manner in which blind children are taught about vision, and their placement in ability-groups in mainstream classrooms