Imagining artificial intelligence applications with people with visual disabilities using tactile ideation

Cecily Morrison, Edward Cutrell, Anupama Dhareshwar, Kevin Doherty, Anja Thieme, Alex Taylor

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

Abstract

There has been a surge in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies co-opted by or designed for people with visual disabilities. Re-searchers and engineers have pushed technical boundaries in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, location in-ference, and wearable computing. But what do people with visual disabilities imagine as their own technological future? To explore this question, we developed and carried out tactile ideation work-shops with participants in the UK and India. Our participants gen-erated a large and diverse set of ideas, most focusing on ways to meet needs related to social interaction. In some cases, this was a matter of recognizing people. In other cases, they wanted to be able to participate in social situations without foregrounding their disability. It was striking that this finding was consistent across UK and India despite substantial cultural and infrastructural differ-ences. In this paper, we describe a new technique for working with people with visual disabilities to imagine new technologies that are tuned to their needs and aspirations. Based on our experience with these workshops, we provide a set of social dimensions to consid-er in the design of new AI technologies: social participation, social navigation, social maintenance, and social independence. We offer these social dimensions as a starting point to forefront users' social needs and desires as a more deliberate consideration for assistive technology design.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationASSETS 2017 - Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages81-90
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450349260
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Oct 2017
Event19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS 2017 - Baltimore, United States
Duration: 29 Oct 20171 Nov 2017

Conference

Conference19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBaltimore
Period29/10/171/11/17

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Accessibility
  • AI
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Blind
  • Design
  • Ideation
  • Multicultural
  • Visually impaired

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