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Finding a store, searching for a product: a study of daily challenges of low vision people

Published: 12 September 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Visual impairments encompass a range of visual abilities. People with low vision have functional vision and thus their experiences are likely to be different from people with no vision. We sought to answer two research questions: (1) what challenges do low vision people face when performing daily activities and (2) what aids (high- and low-tech) do low vision people use to alleviate these challenges? Our goal was to reveal gaps in current technologies that can be addressed by the UbiComp community. Using contextual inquiry, we observed 11 low vision people perform a wayfinding and shopping task in an unfamiliar environment. The task involved wayfinding and searching and purchasing a product. We found that, although there are low vision aids on the market, participants mostly used their smartphones, despite interface accessibility challenges. While smartphones helped them outdoors, participants were overwhelmed and frustrated when shopping in a store. We discuss the inadequacies of existing aids and highlight the need for systems that enhance visual information, rather than convert it to audio or tactile.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      UbiComp '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
      September 2016
      1288 pages
      ISBN:9781450344616
      DOI:10.1145/2971648
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 12 September 2016

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      • (2024)A Qualitative Evaluation of the Usability and Accessibility of Home COVID-19 Tests Among People with DisabilitiesProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/1071181324126201268:1(1266-1270)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2024
      • (2024)Towards Rapid Fabrication of Custom Tactile Surface Indicators for Indoor NavigationProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3688519(1-5)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
      • (2024)Vision-Based Assistive Technologies for People with Cerebral Visual Impairment: A Review and Focus StudyProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675637(1-20)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
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