GuideCall: affordable and trustworthy video call-based remote assistance for people with visual impairments
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Abstract
Blind or Visually Impaired (BVI) individuals often face many challenges while performing daily tasks or exploring new places. Assistive technologies can help independently address some of these challenges, but there remain many tasks that still require some sort of human assistance. Some current approaches to provide remote assistance through video calls are either too expensive or do not use helpers whom a BVI individual can fully trust. This work develops an Android application called GuideCall that enables BVI individuals to draw assistance through a video call with a single volunteer helper selected from one of many pre-constructed situation-appropriate groups of trusted individuals. Guide-Call provides is specifically built to meet the needs of BVI individuals and has some features not present in commodity video-calling applications.