Presentation

This is the web versions of the demo for the IEEE VR contest 2020 at (virtual) Atlanta. We (Lauren Thevin & Tonja Machulla) present 3 misconceptions about blindness, defined by talking with professionals of IRSA Bordeaux specialized school, thanks to UNADEV funding.

Thévin, L., & Machulla, T. (2020, March). Tonja Machulla. Three Common Misconceptions about Visual Impairments. 2020. IEEE VR 2020 3DUI Contest.

Restriction of use: These demos cannot be use for sensitization if you are not a professional of visual impairments and if you do not run sensitization in your professional occupation. Please remember that sensitization may have bad effects (e.g. participants may think visual impairments is a probem, whereas plenty of solutions exists).

If you want to see the pre-recording of the presentation, the slides in pdf, and in pptx:

Find more about our demo in IEEE VR 2020 proceedings and on the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHyrpv2HyZQ

Here the preprint of the short paper (link to the proceedings coming soon!): https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02514547/

Demos

/!\ Loading the demo requires some time. As well, wour brower should support WebGL 2.0 or the games will not work.

We have three demos, that are web adaptations of VR applications. Unfortunatly, we cannot grab object in this web version. Moreover, the visual impairments does not follow the eyes, as there is no eye tracking.

Controls:

• Use the mouse to move the camera left/right and up and down.

• It you want to go back to the starting angle for the view, press Space key (if it does not work, clic on the game frame and it should work).

• You can move forward with the left clic, and backward with the right clic of the mouse.

Remember, these are just simulation. People with visual impairments may experience a different vision. We only provide these simulations to illustrate phenomenons around three misconceptions about visual impairments.

Demo 1: Did you know the majority of blind people can see something?

The first misconception about visual impairments is that blind people cannot see anything but:

• Depending on the estimation, 90% of blind people have light perception (i.e. they can see something)

• 10% or people with visual impairments are blind, 90% are low vision

• Somebody can be blind with acuity under 20/200 (for instance USA) or 10/200 (for instance France), but still be able to walk most of the time without white cane*

• Somebody can be blind with a field of view under 20 degrees (for instance USA) or 10 degrees (for instance France), but still be able to read

* Some precisions here: 1) a person with visual impairments can be able to move and walk, with low vision and with total blindness. 2) People with an very blurred vision may be able too walk without white cane, with additional challenges as it is harder to see and identify reliefs, as well as obstacles with low contrast.

The first demo here simulates a blindness regarding acuity. That means: with this vision, you are blind. You can explore the impact on reading for instance. You can also notice that it may be hard to identify objects, and make the difference between shadows and objects.

Demo 2: Did you know that people with blind spot may not notice it?

The second misconception about visual impairments is that people with a blind spot (scotoma) experience a black spot in the middle of the vision:

• The brain can fill logically the blind spot, with a phenomenon call auto-completion or auto-fill

• You can experience your own auto-completion (we all have a blind spot where the optical nerve is connected to the retina), through these illusions: http://www.illusions.org/dp/1-70.htm and http://www.colorcube.com/illusions/blndspot.htm

• As with the common blindspot, for people with scotoma from birth, this is normal vision, and they may not notice distorsions and completion.

• Central scotoma decreases your acuity, as you acuity is the best at the center of your eye (called fovea).

The second demo here simulates a central scotoma (central blindspot) with auto-completion, to simulate a non noticable scotoma. You can explore the impact on reading for instance, where the details disappear in the center if your vision, and try to count the object on the table in front of you. There is a keyboad on the right as well. Some objects disapear. You can notice that by getting closer to object (e.g. the keyboard), the scotoma is less noticable. There is no distorsion (classically associated to scotoma) to keep it less noticable.