Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired

The filling of printed forms has always been an issue for the visually impaired. Though optical character recognition technology has helped many blind people to ‘read’ the world, there is not a single device that allows them to fill out a paper-based form without a human assistant. The task of filli...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peng, En, Peursum, Patrick, Li, Ling, Venkatesh, Svetha
Other Authors: Lachlan MacKinnon
Format: Conference Paper
Published: British Computer Society 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/29275
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author Peng, En
Peursum, Patrick
Li, Ling
Venkatesh, Svetha
author2 Lachlan MacKinnon
author_facet Lachlan MacKinnon
Peng, En
Peursum, Patrick
Li, Ling
Venkatesh, Svetha
author_sort Peng, En
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The filling of printed forms has always been an issue for the visually impaired. Though optical character recognition technology has helped many blind people to ‘read’ the world, there is not a single device that allows them to fill out a paper-based form without a human assistant. The task of filling forms is however an essential part of their daily lives, for example, for access to social security or benefits. This paper describes a solution that allows a blind person to complete paper-based forms, pervasively and independently, using only off-the-shelf equipment including a Smartphone, a clipboard with sliding ruler, and a ballpoint pen. A dynamic color fiduciary (point of reference) marker is designed so that it can be moved by the user to any part of the form such that all regions can be “visited”. This dynamic color fiduciary marker is robust to camera focus and partial occlusion, allowing flexibility in handling the Smartphone with embedded camera. Feedback is given to the blind user via both voice and tone to facilitate efficient guidance in filling out the form. Experimental results have shown that this prototype can help visually impaired people to fill out a form independently.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-292752017-01-30T13:11:43Z Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired Peng, En Peursum, Patrick Li, Ling Venkatesh, Svetha Lachlan MacKinnon fiducial recognition mobile HCI mobile devices user studies visual marker recognition Visual marker design The filling of printed forms has always been an issue for the visually impaired. Though optical character recognition technology has helped many blind people to ‘read’ the world, there is not a single device that allows them to fill out a paper-based form without a human assistant. The task of filling forms is however an essential part of their daily lives, for example, for access to social security or benefits. This paper describes a solution that allows a blind person to complete paper-based forms, pervasively and independently, using only off-the-shelf equipment including a Smartphone, a clipboard with sliding ruler, and a ballpoint pen. A dynamic color fiduciary (point of reference) marker is designed so that it can be moved by the user to any part of the form such that all regions can be “visited”. This dynamic color fiduciary marker is robust to camera focus and partial occlusion, allowing flexibility in handling the Smartphone with embedded camera. Feedback is given to the blind user via both voice and tone to facilitate efficient guidance in filling out the form. Experimental results have shown that this prototype can help visually impaired people to fill out a form independently. 2010 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/29275 British Computer Society restricted
spellingShingle fiducial recognition
mobile HCI
mobile devices
user studies
visual marker recognition
Visual marker design
Peng, En
Peursum, Patrick
Li, Ling
Venkatesh, Svetha
Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
title Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
title_full Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
title_fullStr Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
title_full_unstemmed Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
title_short Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
title_sort portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired
topic fiducial recognition
mobile HCI
mobile devices
user studies
visual marker recognition
Visual marker design
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/29275