(Computer) Vision without Sight

Computer vision holds great promise for helping persons with blindness or visual impairments (VI) to interpret and explore the visual world. To this end, it is worthwhile to assess the situation critically by understanding the actual needs of the VI population and which of these needs might be addressed by computer vision. This article reviews the types of assistive technology application areas that have already been developed for VI, and the possible roles that computer vision can play in facilitating these applications. We discuss how appropriate user interfaces are designed to translate the output of computer vision algorithms into information that the user can quickly and safely act upon, and how system-level characteristics affect the overall usability of an assistive technology. Finally, we conclude by highlighting a few novel and intriguing areas of application of computer vision to assistive technology.