Two weeks ago, I saw a demo of Smart glasses for VI, and came away with more questions than thoughts.
1. Object identification is still inadequate for practical use. When a VI person uses object identification, we need 3 more data points that sighted people don't need - A. Size, B. Distance from user, C. Orientation (direction) from user.
2. Most assistive tech devices use audio input to help the user. BUT, hearing is also the most used sense for this user group. While they are listening to the audio input from a device, they are unable to use that sense to interpret their physical environment, as they normally would. BCI springs to mind as the obvious answer, but at this time, i dont know of an application that is even in beta stage for this use case. Also, looking at this demo of AlterEgo by MIT made me realise that BCI works one way - it understands human thoughts without speech but still gives feedback to the human user through speech only!
All thoughts welcome.
