HCC-Small: TextSL: A Virtual World Interface for the Visually Impaired

HCC-Small：TextSL：视障人士的虚拟世界界面

• 批准号: 0917362
• 负责人: Eelke Folmer
• 金额: $ 49.93万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-01 至 2014-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0917362&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: HCC; Small; TextSL; Virtual; World

The immersive graphics, the large amount of user-generated content, and the social interaction opportunities offered by the greater sophistication of virtual worlds are leading to an explosive growth in their popularity, with millions of participating users. Unfortunately, however, virtual worlds are not accessible to users who are visually impaired. In this project the PI's goal is to alleviate this deficiency by developing a virtual world interface for visually impaired users called TextSL, which is able to extract a textual representation from a virtual world that can be read with a screen reader. Users interact with TextSL by means of a command-based mechanism inspired by multi-user dungeon games. A prototype of the system that allows for a basic form of access to the popular virtual world of Second Life has shown that such an approach is feasible. But the prototype lacks two of the most important features offered by virtual worlds: the ability to create content, and the ability to interact with interactive objects. Additional problems identified by the PI's preliminary work are that less than half of the objects in Second Life have a meaningful descriptive name, which makes the majority of objects invisible to visually impaired users, and that virtual worlds contain such vast amounts of content that merely converting it somehow into a textual description may easily overwhelm the user. To address such challenges, the PI will develop a game based on the "games-with-a-purpose" paradigm that allows sighted users to make virtual worlds accessible to visually impaired users by labeling objects without a name, while also establishing a taxonomy of objects that can be used to provide a more usable form of feedback. He will create a new 3D object recognition algorithm based on the "bag-of-features" approach that takes advantage of the unique way objects are represented in Second Life, and which can efficiently and automatically recognize large numbers of objects without a name. And he will also develop techniques that are able to provide feedback on a user's environment without overwhelming the user with large amounts of information, that are able to convey textually a user's interaction with an interactive object, and that support creation of 3D objects using command or haptic based methods.Broader Impacts: This research will increase the quality of life for the millions of people who are visually impaired, by allowing them to participate more fully in the information society. In particular, the social interaction offered by virtual worlds will benefit people who are visually impaired as well as other individuals whose disabilities often lead to both physical and social isolation. Furthermore, as virtual worlds are increasingly used as educational platforms, access for all to this technology is doubly critical. The interaction models of virtual worlds resemble those of games, so project outcomes may also provide new insights into how to make games accessible to the visually impaired.

身临其境的图形，大量的用户生成的内容以及虚拟世界更加复杂提供的社会互动机会，导致其知名度的爆炸性增长，并有数百万参与的用户。 但是，不幸的是，视力受损的用户无法访问虚拟世界。 在这个项目中，PI的目标是通过为名为TextSL的视觉障碍用户开发虚拟世界界面来减轻这种缺陷，该界面能够从虚拟世界中提取可以使用屏幕读取器读取的虚拟世界中的文本表示。 用户通过受多用户地牢游戏启发的基于命令的机制与TextSL进行交互。 该系统的原型允许对流行的第二人生虚拟世界的基本形式进行基本形式，这表明这种方法是可行的。 但是原型缺少虚拟世界提供的两个最重要的功能：创建内容的能力以及与交互式对象互动的能力。 PI的初步工作确定的其他问题是，第二人生中只有不到一半的物体具有有意义的描述性名称，这使得大多数对象对视觉上的用户看不见，并且虚拟世界包含的大量内容仅将其转换为以某种方式将其转换为文本描述的其他内容可能会轻易地将用户转换为用户。 为了应对此类挑战，PI将基于“与A-Purpose”范式开发游戏，该范式使视力用户能够通过在没有名称的情况下标记对象，同时还可以使用可用于提供更可用的反馈形式的对象的对象，从而使视觉上的虚拟世界可访问到视觉上受损的用户。 他将基于“优势”方法创建一种新的3D对象识别算法，该方法利用了第二人生中对象的唯一方式，并且可以有效，自动识别大量没有名称的对象。 他还将开发能够在用户环境上提供反馈的技术，而不会使用户大量信息压倒用户，这些信息能够在文本上传达用户与交互式对象的互动，并支持基于命令或基于触觉的方法创建3D对象的创建：这项研究将增加参与者的生活质量，从而使人们能够全面地允许他们在视野中，这些研究可以使他们能够在视野中获得更多的信息。 特别是，虚拟世界提供的社会互动将使视力障碍的人以及其他残疾人经常导致身体和社会隔离的人。 此外，由于虚拟世界越来越多地用作教育平台，因此所有人访问这项技术至关重要。 虚拟世界的交互模型类似于游戏的交互模型，因此项目成果也可能提供有关如何使视力障碍可访问游戏的新见解。