Related papers: EnVisionVR: A Scene Interpretation Tool for Visual…
Virtual Reality (VR) is inaccessible to blind people. While research has investigated many techniques to enhance VR accessibility, they require additional developer effort to integrate. As such, most mainstream VR apps remain inaccessible…
As virtual 3D environments become more prevalent, equitable access is essential for blind and low-vision (BLV) users, who face challenges with spatial awareness, navigation, and interaction. Prior work has explored supplementing visual…
As social virtual reality (VR) grows more popular, addressing accessibility for blind and low vision (BLV) users is increasingly critical. Researchers have proposed an AI "sighted guide" to help users navigate VR and answer their questions,…
This study explores the use of virtual reality (VR) as an innovative tool to enhance awareness, acceptance, and understanding of accessibility for persons with vision loss (VL). Through a VR-based workshop developed in collaboration with…
Video content remains largely inaccessible to blind and low-vision (BLV) users. To address this, we introduce a prototype that leverages a multimodal agent - powered by a novel conversational architecture using a multimodal large language…
The rapid growth of virtual reality (VR) has led to increased use of social VR platforms for interaction. However, these platforms lack adequate features to support blind and low vision (BLV) users, posing significant challenges in…
For individuals with blindness or low vision (BLV), navigating complex environments can pose serious risks. Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) show promise for generating scene descriptions, but their effectiveness for BLV users remains…
"Scene description" applications that describe visual content in a photo are useful daily tools for blind and low vision (BLV) people. Researchers have studied their use, but they have only explored those that leverage remote sighted…
This paper explores the effectiveness of Multimodal Large Language models (MLLMs) as assistive technologies for visually impaired individuals. We conduct a user survey to identify adoption patterns and key challenges users face with such…
Blind and Low Vision (BLV) people have adopted AI-powered visual interpretation applications to address their daily needs. While these applications have been helpful, prior work has found that users remain unsatisfied by their frequent…
Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at understanding and generating video descriptions but their high memory, computation, and deployment demands hinder practical use particularly for blind and low-vision (BLV) users who depend on…
Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) are changing how Blind and Low Vision (BLV) people access visual information. Unlike traditional visual interpretation tools that only provide descriptions, MLLM-enabled applications offer…
The advent of immersive Virtual Reality applications has transformed various domains, yet their integration with advanced artificial intelligence technologies like Visual Language Models remains underexplored. This study introduces a…
It is a challenging task for visually impaired people to perceive their surrounding environment due to the complexity of the natural scenes. Their personal and social activities are thus highly limited. This paper introduces a Large…
People who are blind or have low vision (BLV) may hesitate to travel independently in unfamiliar environments due to uncertainty about the physical landscape. While most tools focus on in-situ navigation, those exploring pre-travel…
Vision language models (VLMs) are AI systems paired with both language and vision encoders to process multimodal input. They are capable of performing complex semantic tasks such as automatic captioning, but it remains an open question…
Search engines enable the retrieval of unknown information with texts. However, traditional methods fall short when it comes to understanding unfamiliar visual content, such as identifying an object that the model has never seen before.…
Empowering blind and low vision (BLV) users to explore visual media improves content comprehension, strengthens user agency, and fulfills diverse information needs. However, most existing tools separate exploration from the main narration,…
Our work aims to develop new assistive technologies that enable blind or low vision (BLV) people to explore and analyze data readily. At present, barriers exist for BLV people to explore and analyze data, restricting access to government,…
In this paper, we developed a virtual reality (VR) system that can simulate color blindness and weakness. We built an immersive 3D web view interface where participants can discuss accessibility requirements for a fitness website projects…