Towards enabling blind people to independently write on printed forms

Shirin Feiz, Syed Masum Billah, Vikas Ashok, Roy Shilkrot, I. V. Ramakrishnan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

Filling out printed forms (e.g., checks) independently is currently impossible for blind people, since they cannot pinpoint the locations of the form fields, and quite often, they cannot even figure out what fields (e.g., name) are present in the form. Hence, they always depend on sighted people to write on their behalf, and help them affix their signatures. Extant assistive technologies have exclusively focused on reading, with no support for writing. In this paper, we introduce WiYG, a Write-it-Yourself guide that directs a blind user to the different form fields, so that she can independently fill out these fields without seeking assistance from a sighted person. Specifically, WiYG uses a pocket-sized custom 3D printed smartphone attachment, and well-established computer vision algorithms to dynamically generate audio instructions that guide the user to the different form fields. A user study with 13 blind participants showed that with WiYG, users could correctly fill out the form fields at the right locations with an accuracy as high as 89.5%.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450359702
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2 2019
Event2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019 - Glasgow, United Kingdom
Duration: May 4 2019May 9 2019

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityGlasgow
Period5/4/195/9/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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