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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…
Navigating unfamiliar environments remains one of the most persistent and critical challenges for people who are blind or have limited vision (BLV). Existing assistive tools often rely on online services or APIs, making them costly,…
Interactive digital maps have revolutionized how people travel and learn about the world; however, they rely on pre-existing structured data in GIS databases (e.g., road networks, POI indices), limiting their ability to address geo-visual…
Geovisualizations are powerful tools for communicating spatial information, but are inaccessible to screen-reader users. To address this limitation, we present GeoVisA11y, an LLM-based question-answering system that makes geovisualizations…
Over 43 million people worldwide live with severe visual impairment, facing significant challenges in navigating unfamiliar environments. We present MR.NAVI, a mixed reality system that enhances spatial awareness for visually impaired users…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing assistive technologies. It offers innovative solutions to enhance the quality of life for individuals with visual impairments. This review examines the development, applications, and impact of…
Indoor built environments like homes and offices often present complex and cluttered layouts that pose significant challenges for individuals who are blind or visually impaired, especially when performing tasks that involve locating and…
Millions of blind and visually-impaired (BVI) people navigate urban environments every day, using smartphones for high-level path-planning and white canes or guide dogs for local information. However, many BVI people still struggle to…
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…
Navigation is a rich and well-grounded problem domain that drives progress in many different areas of research: perception, planning, memory, exploration, and optimisation in particular. Historically these challenges have been separately…
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…
Streetscapes are an essential component of urban space. Their assessment is presently either limited to morphometric properties of their mass skeleton or requires labor-intensive qualitative evaluations of visually perceived qualities. This…
Spatial reasoning and collaboration are essential for childhood development, yet blind and visually impaired (BVI) children often lack access to tools that foster these skills. Tactile maps and assistive technologies primarily focus on…
Visually impaired people face numerous challenges when it comes to transportation. Not only must they circumvent obstacles while navigating, but they also need access to essential information related to available public transport,…
Urban centers undergo social, demographic, and cultural changes that shape public street use and require systematic evaluation of public spaces. This study presents Street Review, a mixed-methods approach that combines participatory…
Multi-modal generative AI models integrated into wearable devices have shown significant promise in enhancing the accessibility of visual information for blind or visually impaired (BVI) individuals, as evidenced by the rapid uptake of Meta…
We present a novel multi-view implicit surface reconstruction technique, termed StreetSurf, that is readily applicable to street view images in widely-used autonomous driving datasets, such as Waymo-perception sequences, without necessarily…
People with visual impairments often face significant challenges in locating and retrieving objects in their surroundings. Existing assistive technologies present a trade-off: systems that offer precise guidance typically require…
Blind people are often called to contribute image data to datasets for AI innovation with the hope for future accessibility and inclusion. Yet, the visual inspection of the contributed images is inaccessible. To this day, we lack mechanisms…
While there is no replacement for the learned expertise, devotion, and social benefits of a guide dog, there are cases in which a robot navigation assistant could be helpful for individuals with blindness or low vision (BLV). This study…