Abstract
Purpose :
Handheld video magnifiers, such as magnifier apps, are used by visually impaired to assist with daily visual tasks. The same magnification functionality can be implemented in head-mounted devices, to provide hands-free vision assistance. We compared the usage patterns of a handheld mobile app with the head-mounted version, to understand how the two modes may address different visual needs of visually impaired.
Methods :
Handheld Supervision Magnifier and head-mounted Supervision Goggles are freely available vision assistance mobile apps intended for people with low vision. Aggregated app use data over 8 months, from Aug. 2020 to Mar. 2021, was collected from the active users, without individually identifiable data. Additionally, the targets in a scene image snapshot viewed during each app launch were tagged in 11 different common object categories via a cloud-based object recognition service. Average launches per user and the distributions of viewing targets over the object categories were compared between the two apps.
Results :
There were 40,866(mean)±3372(SD) monthly users of the handheld app and 134±11 for the head-mounted app. The average monthly launches per user were significantly lower (p<0.001) for the head-mounted app (4.6±0.91) compared to the handheld app (6.9±0.38). The top 3 target categories with the handheld app were ‘text’ (41%), ‘indoor’ (30%) and ‘art’ (7%), whereas for the head-mounted app the top categories were ‘indoor’ (49%), ‘human’ (14%), and ‘text’ (11%). The chi-square test of independence between the histograms for handheld and head-mounted viewing targets failed to reject the hypothesis that the two distributions were independent (df=10, χ2=0.99, p = 0.99), which suggesting they were different.
Conclusions :
The relatively low app launch frequency and different viewing targets with the Supervision Goggles app indicate that head-mounted visual aids are probably used for a set of niche visual tasks different for that with handheld visual aids. Head mounted vision assistance may need to be considered as one of options in low vision rehabilitation.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.