Enhancing independence for people with low vision to use daily panel-interface machines

Those that suffer from macular or vision degenerative diseases report lower levels of ease and ability to participate in daily activities, even when using the most advanced corrective lens technologies. They desire to gain independence in daily tasks, including using everyday machines. Plenty of these machines, such as microwaves, vending machines, and elevators, have a control panel as a user interface. Some have Braille (i.e. bumpy dots) on the panel for people with low vision to recognize. However, many of them have been designed without considering low-vision people's convenience. Though many techniques have been proposed to improve the usability of these panels for people with low vision, they are difficult to deploy due to the high cost and low financial benefit. In this paper, we propose a panel reading assistive system which is wearable instead of being deployed on the machine's side. The conceptual system instructs the user to operate on the panel of an everyday machine. It creates a plan according to the user's need, and guides the user to implement it step by step. The user moves the finger under the system's instruction via audio channel. Finally, the experiments in real life scenarios have demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the system.