Insights on Assistive Orientation and Mobility of People with Visual Impairment Based on Large-Scale Longitudinal Data

Assistive applications for orientation and mobility promote independence for people with visual impairment (PVI). While typical design and evaluation of such applications involves small-sample iterative studies, we analyze large-scale longitudinal data from a geographically diverse population. Our publicly released dataset from iMove, a mobile app supporting orientation of PVI, contains millions of interactions by thousands of users over a year. Our analysis (i) examines common functionalities, settings, assistive features, and movement modalities in iMove dataset and (ii) discovers user communities based on interaction patterns. We find that the most popular interaction mode is passive, where users receive more notifications, often verbose, while in motion and perform fewer actions. The use of built-in assistive features such as enlarged text indicate a high presence of users with residual sight. Users fall into three distinct groups: (C1) users interested in surrounding points of interest, (C2) users interacting in short bursts to inquire about current location, and (C3) users with long active sessions while in motion. iMove was designed with C3 in mind, and one strength of our contribution is providing meaningful semantics for unanticipated groups, C1 and C2. Our analysis reveals insights that can be generalized to other assistive orientation and mobility applications

Hacking Blind Navigation

Independent navigation in unfamiliar and complex environments is a major challenge for blind people. This challenge motivates a multi-disciplinary effort in the CHI community aimed at developing assistive technologies to support the orientation and mobility of blind people, including related disciplines such as accessible computing, cognitive sciences, computer vision, and ubiquitous computing. This workshop intends to bring these communities together to increase awareness on recent advances in blind navigation assistive technologies, benefit from diverse perspectives and expertises, discuss open research challenges, and explore avenues for multi-disciplinary collaborations. Interactions are fostered through a panel on Open Challenges and Avenues for Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Minute-Madness presentations, and a Hands-On Session where workshop participants can hack (design or prototype) new solutions to tackle open research challenges. An expected outcome is the emergence of new collaborations and research directions that can result in novel assistive technologies to support independent blind navigation

Six Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenges

Widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is substantially affecting the human condition in ways that are not yet well understood. Negative unintended consequences abound including the perpetuation and exacerbation of societal inequalities and divisions via algorithmic decision making. We present six grand challenges for the scientific community to create AI technologies that are human-centered, that is, ethical, fair, and enhance the human condition. These grand challenges are the result of an international collaboration across academia, industry and government and represent the consensus views of a group of 26 experts in the field of human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI). In essence, these challenges advocate for a human-centered approach to AI that (1) is centered in human well-being, (2) is designed responsibly, (3) respects privacy, (4) follows human-centered design principles, (5) is subject to appropriate governance and oversight, and (6) interacts with individuals while respecting human’s cognitive capacities. We hope that these challenges and their associated research directions serve as a call for action to conduct research and development in AI that serves as a force multiplier towards more fair, equitable and sustainable societies

Design and developing methodology for 8-dot braille code systems

Braille code, employing six embossed dots evenly arranged in rectangular letter spaces or cells, constitutes the dominant touch reading or typing system for the blind. Limited to 63 possible dot combinations per cell, there are a number of application examples, such as mathematics and sciences, and assistive technologies, such as braille displays, in which the 6-dot cell braille is extended to 8-dot. This work proposes a language-independent methodology for the systematic development of an 8-dot braille code. Moreover, a set of design principles is introduced that focuses on: achieving an abbreviated representation of the supported symbols, retaining connectivity with the 6-dot representation, preserving similarity on the transition rules applied in other languages, removing ambiguities, and considering future extensions. The proposed methodology was successfully applied in the development of an 8-dot literary Greek braille code that covers both the modern and the ancient Greek orthography, including diphthongs, digits, and punctuation marks. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

EAR-Math: Evaluation of Audio Rendered Mathematics

Audio rendering of mathematical expressions has accessibility benefits for people with visual impairment. Seeking a systematic way to measure participants' perception of the rendered formulae with audio cues, we investigate the design of performance metrics to capture the distance between reference and perceived math expressions. We propose EAR-Math, a methodological approach for user-based evaluation of math rendering against a baseline. EAR-Math measures systems' performance using three fine-grained error rates based on the structural elements, arithmetic operators, numbers and identifiers in a formula. The proposed methodology and metrics were successfully applied in a pilot study, where 5 sighted and 2 blind participants evaluated 39 stimuli rendered by MathPlayer in Greek. In the obtained results, we observed that structural elements had the highest mean and variance of errors, which improved from 18% in the first attempt to 10% and 7% in two following attempts. © 2014 Springer International Publishing

Performance metrics and their extraction methods for audio rendered mathematics

We introduce and compare three approaches to calculate structure- and content-based performance metrics for user-based evaluation of math audio rendering systems: Syntax Tree alignment, Baseline Structure Tree alignment, and MathML Tree Edit Distance. While the first two require "manual" tree transformation and alignment of the mathematical expressions, the third obtains the metrics without human intervention using the minimum edit distance algorithm on the corresponding MathML representations. Our metrics are demonstrated in a pilot user study evaluating the Greek audio rendering rules of MathPlayer with 7 participants and 39 stimuli. We observed that the obtained results for the metrics are significantly correlated between all three approaches. © 2014 Springer International Publishing

Supporting orientation of people with visual impairment: analysis of large scale usage data

In the field of assistive technology, large scale user studies are hindered by the fact that potential participants are geographically sparse and longitudinal studies are often time consuming. In this contribution, we rely on remote usage data to perform large scale and long duration behavior analysis on users of iMove, a mobile app that supports the orientation of people with visual impairments. Exploratory analysis highlights popular functions, common configuration settings, and usage patterns among iMove users. The study shows stark differences between users accessing the app through VoiceOver and other users, who tend to use the app more scarcely and sporadically.Analysis through clustering of VoiceOver iMove user interactions discovers four distinct user groups: 1) users interested in surrounding points of interest, 2) users keeping the app active for long sessions while in movement, 3) users interacting in short bursts to inquire about current location, and 4) users querying in bursts about surrounding points of interest and addresses. Our analysis provides insights into iMove's user base and can inform decisions for tailoring the app to diverse user groups, developing future improvements of the software, or guiding the design process of similar assistive tools

An open source / freeware assistive technology software inventory

Assistive Technology (AT) software market is expensive, and related products are hard to find, especially for non-English speaking users. Open Source and free AT software partially solve the cost problem, and online inventories facilitate the search for the appropriate product. Even so, users don't have all the information gathered and systematically organized in one place. Furthermore, free software often needs to be tested and reviewed by computer and AT experts in order to detect and point out reliability, installation, and compatibility issues. We propose a methodology for creating web-based free AT software inventories, which will make the search and selection of such products straightforward. The methodology is based on the systematic organization and consistency of the information available for each product, and its effective presentation; the goal for the users is to be able to quickly find, compare and understand the functionality and features of each product. We have applied this methodology to create the Open Source / Freeware AT software inventory http://access.uoa.gr/fs. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

An experimental approach in conceptualizing typographic signals of documents by eight-dot and six-dot braille code

The main research aim of the present study focuses on issues of reading comprehension, when users with blindness receive typographic meta-data by touch through a braille display. Levels of reading comprehension are investigated by the use of 6-dot and 8-dot braille code in matched texts for the cases of bold and italic meta-data. The results indicated a slight superiority of the 8-dot braille code in reading time and scorings. The discussion considered the practical implications of the findings such as issues regarding education as well as the development of suitable design of tactile rendition of typographic signals through 6-dot or 8-dot braille code in favor of better perception and comprehension. © 2014 Springer International Publishing