Handsight: Mobile Services for Low Vision

Principal researcher

Project details

Start date: 01/10/2007
End date: 01/03/2008

Description: This project conducts a feasibility study to determine the user interface requirements - response time, accuracy, and function set - needed for the Handsight cell phone service to significantly improve independence. Handsight offers an affordable, extensive set of automated sight-assistant functions using the new, high-speed mobile networks and high-resolution camera-phones. The initial services enable a blind or visually impaired user to find and read text, recognize faces, detect and interpret barcodes, and distinguish colors in real-world situations. By aiming a mobile telephone’s camera in roughly the right direction and pressing just one button, a Handsight user can snap a picture, send it to the Handsight computer center, and have a verbal response within seconds. Researchers measure response times and accuracy ranges that are technologically feasible with currently existing software and conduct experiments to determine how these measures can be expected to change given a number of proposed improvements.

Other organisations involved in this project

Last updated: 02/04/2008