Event Planner Sensitivity to the Needs of Individuals with Visual Disability at Meetings and Events

Special events, such as fairs, conventions, ballgames, and concerts are typically activities people attend to participate in the festivities and enjoy with friends and family members. For individuals with disabilities, however, these types of events can create more challenges than enjoyment. Despite a thorough review of the literature, no studies were found which evaluated the experiences of individuals who are blind and have visual impairments at events and meetings. The aim of this study was to determine the current level of accessibility at meetings perceived by consumers who are blind and visually impaired. Respondents to the survey indicated many obstacles to accessing meetings including: discrimination, a paucity of accessible features, and accessibility features that are not truly accessible for consumers who are blind and visually impaired. Recommendations are provided for increasing meeting and event accessibility for consumers who are blind and visually impaired

Simulating Macular Degeneration to Investigate Activities of Daily Living: A Systematic Review

Purpose: Investigating difficulties during activities of daily living is a fundamental first step for the development of vision-related intervention and rehabilitation strategies. One way to do this is through visual impairment simulations. The aim of this review is to synthesize and assess the types of simulation methods that have been used to simulate age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in normally sighted participants, during activities of daily living (e.g., reading, cleaning, and cooking).Methods: We conducted a systematic literature search in five databases and a critical analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of various AMD simulation methods (following PRISMA guidelines). The review focuses on the suitability of each method for investigating activities of daily living, an assessment of clinical validation procedures, and an evaluation of the adaptation periods for participants.Results: Nineteen studies met the criteria for inclusion. Contact lenses, computer manipulations, gaze contingent displays, and simulation glasses were the main forms of AMD simulation identified. The use of validation and adaptation procedures were reported in approximately two-thirds and half of studies, respectively.Conclusions: Synthesis of the methodology demonstrated that the choice of simulation has been, and should continue to be, guided by the nature of the study. While simulations may never completely replicate vision loss experienced during AMD, consistency in simulation methodology is critical for generating realistic behavioral responses under vision impairment simulation and limiting the influence of confounding factors. Researchers could also come to a consensus regarding the length and form of adaptation by exploring what is an adequate amount of time and type of training required to acclimatize participants to vision impairment simulations

Ability of head-mounted display technology to improve mobility in people with low vision: a systematic review

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to undertake a systematic literature review on how vision enhancements, implemented using head-mounted displays (HMDs), can improve mobility, orientation, and associated aspects of visual function in people with low vision. Methods: The databases Medline, Chinl, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched for potentially relevant studies. Publications from all years until November 2018 were identified based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data were tabulated and synthesized to produce a systematic review. Results: The search identified 28 relevant papers describing the performance of vision enhancement techniques on mobility and associated visual tasks. Simplifying visual scenes improved obstacle detection and object recognition but decreased walking speed. Minification techniques increased the size of the visual field by 3 to 5 times and improved visual search performance. However, the impact of minification on mobility has not been studied extensively. Clinical trials with commercially available devices recorded poor results relative to conventional aids. Conclusions: The effects of current vision enhancements using HMDs are mixed. They appear to reduce mobility efficiency but improved obstacle detection and object recognition. The review highlights the lack of controlled studies with robust study designs. To support the evidence base, well-designed trials with larger sample sizes that represent different types of impairments and real-life scenarios are required. Future work should focus on identifying the needs of people with different types of vision impairment and providing targeted enhancements. Translational Relevance: This literature review examines the evidence regarding the ability of HMD technology to improve mobility in people with sight loss

Keeping track of emotions:audiovisual integration for emotion recognition and compensation for sensory degradations captured by perceptual strategies

The majority of emotional expressions are multimodal and dynamic in nature. Emotion recognition, therefore, requires integration of these multimodal signals. Sensory impairments likely affect emotion recognition, but although sensory impairments are common in older adults, it is unknown how they affect emotion recognition. As more people reach old age, accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of sensory impairments, it is urgent to comprehensively understand audiovisual integration, especially in older individuals. My thesis sought to create a basic understanding of audiovisual integration for emotion recognition and study how audiovisual interactions change with simulated sensory impairments. A secondary aim was to understand how age affects these outcomes. To systematically address these aims, I examined how well observers recognize emotions, presented via videos, and how emotion recognition accuracy and perceptual strategies, assessed via eye-tracking, vary under changing availability and reliability of the visual and auditory information. The research presented in my thesis shows that audiovisual integration and compensation abilities remain intact with age, despite a general decline in recognition accuracy. Compensation for degraded audio is possible by relying more on visual signals, but not vice versa. Older observers adapt their perceptual strategies in a different, perhaps less efficient, manner than younger observers. Importantly, I demonstrate that it is crucial to use additional measurements besides recognition accuracy in order to understand audiovisual integration mechanisms. Measurements such as eye-tracking allow examining whether the reliance on visual and auditory signals alters with age and (simulated) sensory impairments, even when lacking a change in accuracy

Disability Design and Innovation in Low Resource Settings: Addressing Inequality through HCI

Approximately 15% of the world's population has a disability and 80% live in low resource-settings, often in situations of severe social isolation. Technology is often inaccessible or inappropriately designed, hence unable to fully respond to the needs of people with disabilities living in low resource settings. Also lack of awareness of technology contributes to limited access. This workshop will be a call to arms for researchers in HCI to engage with people with disabilities in low resourced settings to understand their needs and design technology that is both accessible and culturally appropriate. We will achieve this through sharing of research experiences, and exploration of challenges encountered when planning HCI4D studies featuring participants with disabilities. Thanks to the contributions of all attendees, we will build a roadmap to support researchers aiming to leverage post-colonial and participatory approaches for the development of accessible and empowering technology with truly global ambitions

The Efficacy of Visuomotor Compensatory Training for Individuals with Visual Field Defects

Several approaches have been developed to help patients with partial visual field defects to cope with their visual loss, and the most effective are those that encourage the person to move their eyes more efficiently. This thesis sought to examine the efficacy of a multiplatform compensatory training called Durham Reading and Exploration (DREX) in the rehabilitation of these individuals. Overall, the thesis focuses on two primary aims which include establishing whether the DREX training app completed on either a computer or a touchscreen tablet can be an effective treatment for homonymous visual field defects (HVFDs) caused by brain injury, as well as validating the assessment tasks that have been incorporated into the app. The results from Studies 1 to 3 show that DREX training is clinically effective for HVFD rehabilitation, and the training effect in patients trained using a touchscreen tablet is equivalent to patients trained with a computer, with a meaningful improvement in the quality of life which remains stable over a period of three months. In Studies 4 to 6, the built-in assessments tasks are found to be reliable and valid and can be used confidently to monitor the training progression and outcomes. Study 7 explores the novel observation that DREX training is also beneficial for patients with other types of partial visual field defects like tunnel vision and central visual field loss, demonstrating that this training could potentially be offered to a wider low vision population. Finally, studies 8 and 9 explore whether the blurring of vision, a common comorbid visual impairment in patients with visual field defect, could affect the visual exploration performance and the outcomes of visual exploration training. From these results it is clear that blurring of vision did reduce the search efficacy, but searching behaviour can still be improved with the training. Taken together, the findings from this suite of studies indicate that DREX is an effective and inexpensive treatment for visual field defects in a variety of etiologies, however the comorbid impairments that could affect the rehabilitation should be identified to maximise efficacy of this treatment

Augmenting User Interfaces with Haptic Feedback

Computer assistive technologies have developed considerably over the past decades. Advances in computer software and hardware have provided motion-impaired operators with much greater access to computer interfaces. For people with motion impairments, the main di�culty in the communication process is the input of data into the system. For example, the use of a mouse or a keyboard demands a high level of dexterity and accuracy. Traditional input devices are designed for able-bodied users and often do not meet the needs of someone with disabilities. As the key feature of most graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is to point-and-click with a cursor this can make a computer inaccessible for many people. Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an important area of research that aims to improve communication between humans and machines. Previous studies have identi�ed haptics as a useful method for improving computer access. However, traditional haptic techniques su�er from a number of shortcomings that have hindered their inclusion with real world software. The focus of this thesis is to develop haptic rendering algorithms that will permit motion-impaired operators to use haptic assistance with existing graphical user interfaces. The main goal is to improve interaction by reducing error rates and improving targeting times. A number of novel haptic assistive techniques are presented that utilise the three degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) capabilities of modern haptic devices to produce assistance that is designed speci�- cally for motion-impaired computer users. To evaluate the e�ectiveness of the new techniques a series of point-and-click experiments were undertaken in parallel with cursor analysis to compare the levels of performance. The task required the operator to produce a prede�ned sentence on the densely populated Windows on-screen keyboard (OSK). The results of the study prove that higher performance levels can be i ii achieved using techniques that are less constricting than traditional assistance

An investigation into gaze-based interaction techniques for people with motor impairments

The use of eye movements to interact with computers offers opportunities for people with impaired motor ability to overcome the difficulties they often face using hand-held input devices. Computer games have become a major form of entertainment, and also provide opportunities for social interaction in multi-player environments. Games are also being used increasingly in education to motivate and engage young people. It is important that young people with motor impairments are able to benefit from, and enjoy, them. This thesis describes a program of research conducted over a 20-year period starting in the early 1990's that has investigated interaction techniques based on gaze position intended for use by people with motor impairments. The work investigates how to make standard software applications accessible by gaze, so that no particular modification to the application is needed. The work divides into 3 phases. In the first phase, ways of using gaze to interact with the graphical user interfaces of office applications were investigated, designed around the limitations of gaze interaction. Of these, overcoming the inherent inaccuracies of pointing by gaze at on-screen targets was particularly important. In the second phase, the focus shifted from office applications towards immersive games and on-line virtual worlds. Different means of using gaze position and patterns of eye movements, or gaze gestures, to issue commands were studied. Most of the testing and evaluation studies in this, like the first, used participants without motor-impairments. The third phase of the work then studied the applicability of the research findings thus far to groups of people with motor impairments, and in particular,the means of adapting the interaction techniques to individual abilities. In summary, the research has shown that collections of specialised gaze-based interaction techniques can be built as an effective means of completing the tasks in specific types of games and how these can be adapted to the differing abilities of individuals with motor impairments