Blind travelers rely on subtle acoustic cues for independent mobility. When hearing becomes impaired, as in the normal aging process, a special type of hearing aid may be needed to enhance these cues.
The RERC Center Grant funds a number of projects for blind and visually impaired persons. The projects broadly fall into the categories of Functional Assessment, Access to Spatial and Graphic Information, and STEM Education.
We introduced a novel approach to topographic function assessment in visual impairment that requires neither fixation nor reading. The test measures the time it takes for patients to find and identify 32 targets on a screen. The task discourages steady fixation and the subjects can make eye movements as needed to solve the task. Target size is always double the size threshold, and no manual action is required. We have used this test on many low vision patients with varying diagnoses. Measurements yielded a wide variety of performance levels, with a factor of 14-16 between best and worst…
The Smith-Kettlewell Video Description Research and Development Center (VDRDC) investigates innovative technologies and techniques for making online video more accessible to blind and visually-impaired students and consumers.
Most prior research on reading in people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) has focused on those with advanced disease. The first goal of this project is to examine the visual, motor, and cognitive factors that contribute to reading performance in people with early to intermediate(E/I) AMD. A second goal is to compare those with E/I AMD to age-matched groups with no AMD, and with advanced disease to determine which characteristics of the E/I AMD participants more closely match those with advanced AMD. The final goal is to assess our E/I AMD participants longitudinally to determine…
This project investigates the properties of smooth pursuit eye movements in individuals with macular degeneration. Commonly believed to be a fovea-linked eye movement, smooth pursuit has not been previously investigated in individuals with central field loss, despite its importance for tracking moving objects, such as vehicles or pedestrians on a busy street.
The primary objective of this project is to develop a set of realistic outcome measures that relate to the real-world use of hearing aids. A second objective is to evaluate the extent to which these measures are predictive of hearing aid benefit and user satisfaction after the client has worn the hearing aid for two or more months and has acclimatized to the instrument. The Specific Aims are as follows Aim #1: Develop and evaluate an outcome measure that takes into account the interactive nature of human communication and which is predictive of the extent to which a person with a hearing loss is…
This innovative technology permitted wiki-style crowd-sourcing of video description in a completely new way, opening the door to amateur description provided for any video content, and distributed to anyone without modifying or redistributing the original video in any way.
YouDescribe is a free, web-based platform for adding audio description to YouTube content.
WearaBraille is a research project into wearable computing, and the use of MEMS sensors as novel input technology to mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs and smartphones. Our prototype device functions much like a Braille keyboard, but instead of buttons for each finger to press, there are accelerometers on the back of each finger, near the knuckles (keeping the palms and finger tips free). When a finger taps on a table top or other firm surface, the WearaBraille knows that the Braille dot associated with that finger is part of the current character. By tapping multiple fingers simultaneously…
