Completed

Crowd-Sourced Description for Web-Based Video (CSD)

The Descriptive Video Exchange Project (funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health, (grant # R01 EY020925-01) focuses on crowd-sourced techniques for describing DVD media. CSD will expand DVX to include Internet-based media such as YouTube, iTunes U, and other streamed video found on a wide variety of web sites. Many streamed Internet-based video sources provide well-defined, public APIs for accessing all the information DVX requires. Using these APIs will allow the VDRDC to expand DVX to include streamed content so that seamless, simple, crowd-sourced descriptions can be added to Internet-based video by volunteers or professionals anywhere.

Talking Signs

Talking Signs

Created by William Loughborough in 1979, Talking Lights was a system of infrared transmitters and receivers allowing blind and visually impaired travelers to quickly and easily “read signs” at a distance.

pencil drawing of the robot design

Robotic Oculomotor Simulator

Current eye tracking and calibration algorithms do not accommodate eccentric viewing and the capacity for accurate eye tracking is difficult to assess in individuals with central visual field loss, and few studies of naturalistic oculomotor behavior exist. To address this problem, we are developing a binocular robotic model of the human eyes that can simulate fixation and eye movements with an eccentric preferred retinal locus in one or both eyes and allow for precise assessment of eye tracking performance of head mounted computer vision-based eye tracking systems.

Learning in the Sighted and the Blind through Different Sensory Modalities: Structure and Dynamics of Cortical Reorganization

This project focuses on the emerging area of the neuroscience of art learning. It addresses the important issue of how the brain learns complex skills, specifically the process of drawing, through two different sensory modalities. Visual art, and drawing in particular, engages an orchestrated system of cognitive elements extending beyond mere visual perception. This brain system involves an array of cross-cognitive interactions for advanced learning in diverse sensory environments. However, there is a lack of systematic studies of the neural mechanisms of learning in visual art, or of the…

Advanced Spatiomotor Rehabilitation in Blindness and Visual Impairment

We propose a multidisciplinary approach to effective spatiomotor rehabilitation in blindness and visual impairment. For those who have lost vision, the eye-hand coordination normally available for the manipulation of objects for everyday activities is unavailable and has to be replaced by information from other senses

t-scratch schematic

t-Scratch: Tangible Programming Environment

tScratch: Tangible Programming Environment Targeted for Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired Introductory programming languages are overwhelmingly designed with sighted students in mind. Our goal is to expand and enhance scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/ ), a block-based visual programming language and online community targeted primarily at children with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) concepts. The addition of tactile programming tiles, a specialized haptic coding grid, and an auditory interface will provide beginning programming instruction for students either as individual…