ZoomBoard: an Affordable, Portable System to Improve Access to Presentations and Lecture Notes for Low Vision Viewers

The goal of the project is to develop a “ZoomBoard” system that students with low vision can use to better access visual material on a whiteboard or blackboard. The prototype version of the system that we plan to develop in this grant will consist of a dedicated camera system placed by the teacher to capture a view of the board, which wirelessly transmits a video stream that will be displayed on a student’s iPad. The student will use the ZoomBoard app to view this video stream, zoom in on any region of interest using a pinch gesture on the iPad, and apply image enhancements such as contrast enhancement or color transformations for maximum clarity.

The project is funded by a grant from Research to Prevent Blindness/Reader's Digest (PI: Dr. Ender Tekin at Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, https://www.waisman.wisc.edu/staff/tekin-ender/).