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Examining facial recognition technology to augment the indoor navigation experience of individuals who are blind

Published: 09 February 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Independent navigation is an important aspect in the lives of individuals who are blind. While orientation and mobility training often equip these individuals with skills for independent living, recent advances in navigation technologies could be used to augment the subjective quality of their navigation experience. In addition to outdoor navigation, blind individuals need to effectively navigate indoor spaces in different social contexts and environments. Moreover, they may need to identify the presence of known and unknown individuals in their vicinity in order to support social interactions (i.e. cueing the user to greet known individuals by name). Combining wearable solutions with computer vision and facial recognition (FR) technologies has the potential to help in this regard. However, only limited research has examined these technologies to inform the future design of assistive aids such that they meet the real world needs of this population. Research in this proposal aims to use a human-centric approach to understand both the technical and social aspects of FR technology and its integration with navigation aids. An optimal design framework will be sought in order to improve computer-vision-based navigation solutions for the blind community.

References

[1]
Kramer, K., Hedin, D. and Rolkosky, D. 2010. Smartphone based face recognition tool for the blind. 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology (2010), 4538--4541.
[2]
Krishna, S., Little, G., Black, J. and Panchanathan, S. 2005. A Wearable Face Recognition System for Individuals with Visual Impairments. Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (New York, NY, USA, 2005), 106--113.
[3]
Krishna, S., Little, G., Black, J. and Panchanathan, S. 2005. iCARE Interaction Assistant: A Wearable Face Recognition System for Individuals with Visual Impairments. Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (New York, NY, USA, 2005), 216--217.
[4]
Passini, R. and Proulx, G. 1988. Wayfinding without vision an experiment with congenitally totally blind people. Environment and Behavior. 20, 2 (1988), 227--252.
[5]
Panchanathan, S., Chakraborty, S. and McDaniel, T. 2016. Social Interaction Assistant: A Person-Centered Approach to Enrich Social Interactions for Individuals with Visual Impairments. (2016).

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cover image ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing
ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing Just Accepted
January 2017
36 pages
ISSN:1558-2337
EISSN:1558-1187
DOI:10.1145/3051519
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all 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 third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 February 2017
Published in SIGACCESS , Issue 117

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