ImageAssist: Tools for Enhancing Touchscreen-Based Image Exploration Systems for Blind and Low Vision Users

Abstract

Figure 1: Depictions of the state of the art in touchscreen-based image exploration alongside ImageAssist, a set of three tools we created to alleviate bottlenecks in this state-of-the-art/baseline system. The baseline system divides images into regions, and users touch the image to explore them. The tools that comprise ImageAssist are: A menu & beacon tool listing areas within the image and directing users to those areas; a hints tool providing recommendations and a volume-based prominence indicator to give users a sense of direction while exploring; and a zoom tool to quickly zoom into the four quadrants of the image to survey small areas.