Conversations for Vision: Remote Sighted Assistants Helping People with Visual Impairments

People with visual impairment (PVI) must interact with a world they cannot see. Remote sighted assistance has emerged as a conversational/social support system. We interviewed participants who either provide or receive assistance via a conversational/social prosthetic called Aira (https://aira.io/)....

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Lee, Sooyeon, Reddie, Madison, Gurdasani, Krish, Wang, Xiying, Beck, Jordan, Rosson, Mary Beth, Carroll, John M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.12.2018
Subjects
Computer Science - Human-Computer Interaction
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Summary:People with visual impairment (PVI) must interact with a world they cannot see. Remote sighted assistance has emerged as a conversational/social support system. We interviewed participants who either provide or receive assistance via a conversational/social prosthetic called Aira (https://aira.io/). We identified four types of support provided: scene description, performance, social interaction, and navigation. We found that conversational style is context-dependent. Sighted assistants make intentional efforts to elicit PVI's personal knowledge and leverage it in the guidance they provide. PVI used non-verbal behaviors (e.g. hand gestures) as a parallel communication channel to provide feedback or guidance to sighted assistants. We also discuss implications for design.
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1812.00148