Analyzing visual questions from visually impaired users

Abstract

Many new technologies have been developed to assist people who are visually impaired in learning about their environment, but there is little understanding of their motivations for using these tools. Our tool VizWiz allows users to take a picture using their mobile phone, ask a question about the picture's contents, and receive an answer in nearly realtime. This study investigates patterns in the questions that visually impaired users ask about their surroundings, and presents the benefits and limitations of responses from both human and computerized sources.