Course:LIBR559A/Shen, H., & Coughlan, J. (2012)

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Citation

Shen, H., & Coughlan, J. (2012). Towards a real-time system for finding and reading signs for visually impaired users. Computers Helping People with Special Needs, 41-47.

Annotation

Design: Because OCR systems are usually made for reading documents, a new design was needed for reading signs in the real world. This article describes a prototype smartphone system that meets this need. It is a real-time sign reading system designed for the blind and visually impaired. It finds printed text in cluttered scenes, segments out the text for processing by OCR, and reads it aloud using text-to-speech. It also comes with an audio-tactile user interface that helps the user hold the smartphone level.

Usability testing: The authors tested the prototype on blind users, observed the problems users faced, and found solutions to be applied in future designs. Form these tests they recognized that some errors are inevitable with any OCR system, but the simplest way to overcome it is to obtain multiple readings and to arrive at a consensus among the readings. Also, in terms of features to be included in next prototypes they mentioned that some functions should be introduced to improve the user interface.

Critique: This article gives a good idea of the steps of usability testing, and it introduces features to consider when designing an OCR system.

The article is 5 years old so they should have updated the design by now. Disappointingly, no new information has been published about the app, so it is impossible to know whether these features would have met users’ needs. The authors put the project on hold and went to work for big companies like LG, therefore putting their design for social justice aside.

Page Author: Idil Tahirgil