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Technology-Mediated Sight: A Case Study of Early Adopters of a Low Vision Assistive Technology

Published: 19 October 2017 Publication History

Abstract

A case study of early adopters of a head-mounted assistive device for low vision provides the basis for a sociotechnical analysis of technology-mediated sight. Our research complements recent work in HCI focused on designing, building, and evaluating the performance of assistive devices for low vision by highlighting psychosocial and adaptive aspects of digitally enhanced vision. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with users of the eSight 2.0 device and customer-facing employees of the eSight company, we sought to better understand the social and emotional impacts associated with adoption of this type of low-vision assistive technology. Four analytic themes emerged from our interviews: 1) assessing the value of assistive technology in real life, 2) negotiating social engagement, 3) boundaries of sight, and 4) attitudes toward and expectations of technology. We introduce the concept of multiplicities of vision to describe technology-mediated sight as being a form of skilled vision and neither fully-human nor fully-digital, but rather, assembled through a combination of social and technical affordances. We propose that instead of seeing low-vision users through a deficit model of sight, HCI designers have more to gain by viewing people with low vision as individuals with a distinct type of skilled vision that is both socially and technologically mediated.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ASSETS '17: Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
October 2017
450 pages
ISBN:9781450349260
DOI:10.1145/3132525
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 the author(s) 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: 19 October 2017

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  1. assistive technology
  2. head-mounted systems
  3. low vision
  4. qualitative research

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ASSETS '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 126 submissions, 22%;
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  • (2024)EasyGO: A Field Study of Grocery Store Navigation Application Design for the Visually ImpairedCompanion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3656156.3663719(214-218)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Everyday Life Challenges and Augmented Realities: Exploring Use Cases For, and User Perspectives on, an Augmented Everyday LifeProceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 202410.1145/3652920.3652921(52-62)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
  • (2023)Are wearable electronic vision enhancement systems (wEVES) beneficial for people with age‐related macular degeneration? A scoping reviewOphthalmic and Physiological Optics10.1111/opo.1311743:4(680-701)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2023
  • (2023)“I’m like something out of star wars”: a qualitative investigation of the views of people with age-related macular degeneration regarding wearable electronic vision enhancement systemsDisability and Rehabilitation10.1080/09638288.2023.227817946:19(4476-4485)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Inclusive Immersion: a review of efforts to improve accessibility in virtual reality, augmented reality and the metaverseVirtual Reality10.1007/s10055-023-00850-827:4(2989-3020)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
  • (2022)Design of Smart Head–Mounted Display Technology: A Convergent Mixed-Methods StudyJournal of Visual Impairment & Blindness10.1177/0145482X221130068116:5(629-643)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2022
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  • (2022)Development of a metric to evaluate the ergonomic principles of assistive systems, based on the DIN 92419Ergonomics10.1080/00140139.2022.212792066:6(821-848)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2022
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