Projects

Date: Friday, December 4, 2015

Location: The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco CA 94115

The goal of this invitation-only conference was to identify needs for future research in rehabilitation technology, methods for the blind and visually impaired population, and those with dual sensory loss.

Program:

8:45 - 9:15 Check-in and coffee/pastries

9:15 - 9:25 Welcome

9:25 - 9:45 Keynote: Paul Schroeder (link to YouTube video)
 

9:45 - 10:45 Panel 1: Changing Populations. How should we change our approach to assessing and addressing visual impairments? (link to…

Tactile graphics use raised lines, textures, and elevations to provide individuals with visual impairments to visualize graphical materials through touch. Tactile graphics are particularly important for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, where educational content is often conveyed using diagrams and charts. However, providing a student who has a visual impairment with a tactile graphic does not automatically provide the student understanding of the graphic's educational content. Instead, the student may struggle to decipher subtle differences between…

Recent workshop:

Workshop on Environmental Sensing Technologies for Visual Impairment (ESTVI '13 in San Francisco)

ESTVI '13 focused on emerging technologies capable of sensing environmental features for applications in assistive technologies for persons with visual impairment, including low vision and blindness. The development of environmental sensing technologies (ESTs) and the study of their potential to support the activities of daily living for visually impaired persons is progressing at a rapid pace and engages many disparate research fields, including computer vision, wearable sensors…

The Computer Vision Journal Club meets periodically to discuss papers on topics in computer vision, machine learning and other topics of interest such as assistive technologies for persons who are blind or visually impaired, dual sensory loss (hearing and vision loss), neuroscience and psychophysics. All are welcome to attend.

This project has developed a system to assist blind people with door entry. 

The purpose of this research study is to test subjects who have various hearing and vision problems on their lipreading, visual and auditory skills in order to understand the relationships between lipreading and visual impairment. We then can explore training strategies to improve auditory and visual communication.

This vision test shows random word sequences that prevent the prediction of upcoming words by linguistic criteria and is simple to score in a clinical setting.

It combines the standardized format of the MNread test with sequences of random words and letters, like in the Pepper test. We have used this test on hundreds of patients with maculopathies and on healthy subjects to measure their reading speed and register errors.

Reading speed was always higher for continuous text than for random word sequences, even in normally sighted subjects. The number of errors made was always higher than for…

The Macular Mapping Test (MMT) is a tool for the assessment of the topography of vision. It is a quick and low-cost alternative to conventional perimetry in practical low vision care.

While standard perimetry uses a detection task, the MMT measures the recognition of single letters in the center and near periphery (+/- 10 deg) of the visual field. Their sizes increase according to eccentricity and can be shown at different contrast levels. Each letter is displayed only for a brief moment (250 ms). One test run of 36 trials takes only about 3 minutes.

We have tested patients with early age…

Patients with spots of diminished or no vision (scotomas) often do not realize the nature of their deficit. This technique can help patients to heighten their awareness of scotomas.

In the process of learning eccentric viewing, several stages have to be passed:

1. Patients use their own hand movements to find the location of best vision in the visual field of one eye, while the other eye is closed and gaze is fixed.

2. Patients use eye movements to adjust gaze so that a target in a stable location looks best.

3. Coordinate eye and hand movements, so that a magnifier can be moved where it is…