Tailoring assistive smart glasses according to pathologies of visually impaired individuals: an exploratory investigation on social needs and difficulties experienced by visually impaired individuals
Simon Ruffieux, Chiwoong Hwang, Vincent Junod, Roberto Caldara, Denis Lalanne, Nicolas Ruffieux
Abstract
Abstract Recent advances in the field of assistive devices technology represent a great opportunity for improving the quality of life of people with moderate to severe visual impairment. However, it is still unclear what are the precise daily difficulties, needs and expectations of the smart glasses technology for visually impaired individuals. To this aim, we conducted a survey based on three questionnaires to provide qualitative and quantitative insights on those questions across five groups suffering from various visual pathologies ( $$N=50$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>50</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ). The results clearly showed the importance of developing tailored solutions to fulfill the heterogeneous daily difficulties and needs identified across pathologies. Overall, groups shared similar expectations regarding the assistive smart glasses functionalities in order to improve social interactions.