Providing Access to Appliance Displays for Visually Impaired Users

为视障人士提供电器显示器 用户 总结 该项目的目标是开发一种在智能手机上运行的计算机视觉系统， 平板电脑，使盲人和视障人士能够阅读电器显示屏。这种能力是 越来越有必要使用各种家用和商用电器， 显示器，如微波炉和恒温器，是必不可少的独立生活， 教育和就业。目前，传统的网络无法提供这些信息。 文本阅读系统，如光学字符识别（OCR），用于阅读 打印文件。我们提出的系统作为软件运行在一个标准的，现成的 智能手机或平板电脑，并使用计算机视觉算法来分析由智能手机或平板电脑拍摄的视频图像。 并检测和读取每个图像中的文本。对于盲人用户，这段文字要么阅读 大声使用合成语音，或为低视力用户，在放大，对比度， 增强型（最适合片剂使用）。 我们建议建立在我们过去的工作上的原型显示阅读器使用强大的新的 技术，使最终的系统能够读取更多种类的LED/LCD显示器 文本字体，并且为了更好地适应经常使阅读显示困难的条件， 包括眩光、反射和差的对比度。这些技术包括新的字符 特别适用于数字显示领域的识别技术;手指检测， 允许用户指向显示器中感兴趣的特定位置;显示器的使用 作为参考图像的模板，以匹配显示器的噪声图像，从而帮助解释显示器的噪声图像; 以及将显示器的多个视图集成到单个清晰视图中。特殊用户 界面功能，如使用手指检测，以帮助盲人用户瞄准相机 针对低视力用户的显示和对比度增强解决了特殊需求 不同的用户。盲人和视力受损的受试者将定期测试该系统， 反馈和绩效数据，推动 这将通过客观的业绩衡量标准进行评估。得到的显示 阅读器系统将作为智能手机和平板电脑的应用程序发布， 任何人都可以免费使用，也可以作为一个开源项目， 修改后用于第三方软件。

Providing Access to Appliance Displays for Visually Impaired Users Summary The goal of this project is to develop a computer vision system that runs on smartphones and tablets to enable blind and visually impaired persons to read appliance displays. This ability is increasingly necessary to use a variety of household and commercial appliances equipped with displays, such as microwave ovens and thermostats, and is essential for independent living, education and employment. No access to this information is currently afforded by conventional text reading systems such as optical character recognition (OCR), which is intended for reading printed documents. Our proposed system runs as software on a standard, off-the-shelf smartphone or tablet and uses computer vision algorithms to analyze video images taken by the user and to detect and read the text within each image. For blind users, this text is either read aloud using synthesized speech, or for low vision users, presented in magnified, contrast- enhanced form (which is most suited to the use of a tablet). We propose to build on our past work on a prototype display reader using powerful new techniques that will enable the resulting system to read a greater variety of LED/LCD display text fonts, and to better accommodate the conditions that often make reading displays difficult, including glare, reflections and poor contrast. These techniques include novel character recognition techniques adapted specifically to the domain of digital displays; finger detection to allow the user to point to a specific location of interest in the display; the use of display templates as reference images to match to, and thereby help interpret, noisy images of displays; and the integration of multiple views of the display into a single clear view. Special user interface features such as the use of finger detection to help blind users aim the camera towards the display and contrast-enhancement for low vision users address the particular needs of different users. Blind and visually impaired subjects will test the system periodically to provide feedback and performance data, driving the development and continual improvement of the system, which will be assessed with objective performance measures. The resulting display reader system will be released as an app for smartphones and tablets that can be downloaded and used by anybody for free, and also as an open source project that can be freely built on or modified for use in 3rd-party software.