ABSTRACT

Smartphones, with their built-in cameras, speech synthesizers, processing power, sensors, and network connectivity have established themselves as a fertile and ubiquitous platform for software developers interested in augmenting the capabilities of users with visual impairments. When fitted with readily available nonvisual apps, they comprise a mobile and enabling IT bundle (ME-IT) which can afford users new capabilities to interact with visual aspects of their environment. In this study, we investigated the potential of ME-IT as a workplace enabler for workers with visual impairments (WVI). Adopting a Delphi approach, this study contributes five categories of extended capabilities afforded by ME-IT deemed highly relevant to WVI and their employers: reading text on the fly, understanding the visual properties of people and things in the workplace, orienting to the physical features of one’s work environment, tagging objects in one’s work environment, and locating things in the work environment. Two characteristics of the ME-IT bundle emerged as the basis for these extended capabilities: portable computer vision and context awareness. Findings extend literature on the use of mobile technology in the workplace, contextually aware computing, and assistive technology, and invites additional work to calibrate ME-IT to specific jobs, job contexts, and the needs of users.

摘要

智能手机具有内置摄像头、语音合成器、处理能力、传感器和网络连接，已成为有兴趣增强视觉障碍用户功能的软件开发人员的丰富且无处不在的平台。当配备现成的非视觉应用程序时，它们包含一个移动和启用 IT 捆绑包 (ME-IT)，它可以为用户提供与其环境的视觉方面进行交互的新功能。在这项研究中，我们调查了 ME-IT 作为视觉障碍 (WVI) 工人工作场所推动力的潜力。本研究采用德尔福方法，贡献了 ME-IT 提供的五类扩展能力，这些能力被认为与 WVI 及其雇主高度相关：即时阅读文本，了解工作场所中人和事物的视觉属性，定位工作环境的物理特征，标记工作环境中的对象，定位工作环境中的事物。ME-IT 捆绑包的两个特征成为这些扩展功能的基础：便携式计算机视觉和上下文感知。调查结果扩展了有关在工作场所使用移动技术、情境感知计算和辅助技术的文献，并邀请额外的工作来校准 ME-IT 以适应特定工作、工作环境和用户的需求。