The design and preliminary evaluation of a finger-mounted camera and feedback system to enable reading of printed text for the blind

Abstract

We introduce the preliminary design of a novel vision-augmented touch system called HandSight intended to support activities of daily living (ADLs) by sensing and feeding back non-tactile information about the physical world as it is touched. Though we are interested in supporting a range of ADL applications, here we focus specifically on reading printed text. We discuss our vision for HandSight, describe its current implementation and results from an initial performance analysis of finger-based text scanning. We then present a user study with four visually impaired participants (three blind) exploring how to continuously guide a user’s finger across text using three feedback conditions (haptic, audio, and both). Though preliminary, our results show that participants valued the ability to access printed material, and that, in contrast to previous findings, audio finger guidance may result in the best reading performance.