Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People

Latest papers

33 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, down 73% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

VISTA: A Multimodal Egocentric Benchmark for Goal-Oriented Perception and Assistance to Blind and Low-Vision Users
Oct 16, 2026Noé Mosca, Mohamed Rayan Barhdadi, Muhammad Hamza +11Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance
Harvard AI and Robotics Lab, Harvard University · Télécom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris · Texas A&M University +2
NavAble: A Large-Scale Dataset and Synthetic Data Generation Pipeline for Blind Navigation
Oct 14, 2026Hochul Hwang, Jahir Sadik Monon, Soowan Yang +9Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People
University of Massachusetts Amherst · Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology · Boston University
Small yet Assistive: Spatially-Aware Post-Training for Low Vision
Sep 23, 2026Rishabh Choudhary, Shreyansh Raj, Umesh Goyal +6Vision-Language Models VLM Adaptation
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi · Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
Touvigation: Embodied Adaptive Object Acquisition for Blind and Low-Vision Users in Unfamiliar Indoor Environments
Sep 18, 2026George Xi Wang, Xiangyu Li, Shaoyue Wen +8Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance
Stony Brook University, United States · New York University, United States · Brown University, United States +6
RoboFind: Multi-Agent Personalized Object Search for People Who Are Blind or Have Low Vision
Sep 17, 2026Ruiping Liu, Shaofang Quan, Qian Yin +10Assistive Robotics Multi-Agent Systems
The authors are with the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe 76131, Germany. · The author is with the School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and the National Engineering Research Center of Robot Visual Perception and Control Technology, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China. · The author is with Mercedes-Benz.
More Than Just Access: Generative AI as Communication Intermediary for Blind and Low-Vision Users
Sep 14, 2026Protik Dey, Mohd Saifuzzaman, Taslima AkterAssistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Human-AI Interaction
University of Texas at San Antonio
Beyond Scene Description: Multi-Agent Orchestration for Non-visual Access to Virtual Worlds
Sep 13, 2026Toqeer Ali Syed, Ali Akarma, Adeel Ahmad +1Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Multi-Agent Orchestration
AI Center, Faculty of Computer and Information Systems, Islamic University of Madinah, Madinah, Saudi Arabia
Assisted Spatial Cognition Through Vision-Language Models
Sep 11, 2026H. Riaz, J. B. Fernandez, I. Mills +3Visual Spatial Reasoning Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People
School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland · Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin, Ireland · South East Technological University, Waterford, Ireland
Time-Aware Assistive Navigation
Sep 4, 2026Masaki Kuribayashi, Zhongkai Shangguan, Eshed Ohn-BarVisually Impaired Navigation Assistance Vision-Language Navigation
Waseda University · Boston University
From Visual Cues to Spoken Narration: Rethinking Audio Description
Sep 1, 2026Akshita Gupta, Aditya Arora, Federico Tombari +2Audio-Visual Understanding Audio Description Generation
TU Darmstadt & hessian.AI, Darmstadt, Germany · Google Research · TU Munich
Are We There Yet? Assessing Computer-Use Agents for Blind Users' Accessible Interaction with Desktop Applications
Sep 1, 2026Satwik Ram Kodandaram, Monalika Padma Reddy, Xiaojun Bi +3Computer-Use Agents Human-AI Interaction
Stony Brook University · Old Dominion University
Focus Where It Counts: A Salience-Driven Vision-Language Model for Low Vision Assistance
Aug 28, 2026Jiazhao Liang, Hao Huang, Shuaihang Yuan +8Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Image Captioning
New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA · NYUAD Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) and Embodied AI and Robotics (AIR) Lab, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi 129188, UAE · NYU Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA +1
BrailleBench: Investigating Multi-Criteria Braille Comprehension in Large Language Models
Aug 27, 2026Jinghan Zhang, Fengran Mo, Zhiyu Chen +3Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People LLM Evaluation
School of Computing Clemson University Clemson, USA · Department of Computer Science Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, USA · Amazon.com, Inc. Seattle, USA +1
Q&A or Document-Based? The Effects of Interface Type on How Screen Reader Users Access Interconnected Documents
Aug 26, 2026Colleen F. Cipriano, Yichun Zhao, Miguel A. Nacenta +2Human-Computer Interaction Human-AI Interaction
Department of Computer Science University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada · School of Computing and Information Systems Singapore Management University Singapore, Singapore · Lee Kong Chian School of Business Singapore Management University Singapore, Singapore
Kutti AI: A Voice-First, Offline-Capable Learning Companion with Real-Time Struggle Detection for Visually-Impaired Children
Jul 24, 2026Kadharmoideen FadurudeenIntelligent Tutoring Systems Educational Technology
Independent Researcher
Milo, a Fully Autonomous Indoor/Outdoor Robotic Guide Dog
Jul 21, 2026Florian Golemo, Joanna Wolski, Joel Ruben Antony Moniz +1Robot Navigation Social Robot Navigation
Mila - Quebec AI Institute Montreal, Canada · Mila - Quebec AI Institute, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada
VisionAssist: An Open-Source Smartphone Assistant for AI-Based Visual Accessibility
Jul 18, 2026Ayşe Özlem Çalışkan, Jordi Sanchez-RieraAssistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People
Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC)
VIABench: A Comprehensive Video Benchmark Collected from Blind Individuals for Visual Impairment Assistance
Jul 16, 2026Yunfeng Liu, Yuandong Yang, Jiarui Han +5VLM Evaluation Video Understanding
1Nanjing University · 2Shanghai AI Laboratory
OpenGlass: A Sensing-Computing Split Architecture for Local MLLM-Driven Real-Time Visual Assistance
Jul 3, 2026Mengzhang Li, Yuan YaoEfficient Multimodal Inference On-Device Inference
Shanghai Qizhi Institute · College of AI, Tsinghua University
VisionAId: An Offline-First Multimodal Android Assistant for People with Visual Impairment, Featuring Personalized Object Retrieval
Jul 2, 2026Cristian-Gabriel Florea, Stelian SpînuAssistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance
The Military Technical Academy “Ferdinand I”, Bucharest, Romania
A Visually Impaired Assistance Benchmark for VLM-as-a-Judge Evaluation
May 29, 2026Yi Zhao, Siqi Wang, Zhe Hu +2VLM Evaluation LLM-as-a-Judge
Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
CANINE: Coaching Visually Impaired Users for Interactive Navigation with a Robot Guide Dog
May 19, 2026Cunjun Yu, Zishuo Wang, Anxing Xiao +2Assistive Robotics Human-Robot Interaction
School of Computing, 2Smart Systems Institute National University of Singapore
Position: Assistive Agents Need Accessibility Alignment
May 13, 2026Jie Hu, Changyuan Yan, Yu Zheng +2AI Alignment Human-Centered AI
School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Urban Risk-Aware Navigation via VQA-Based Event Maps for People with Low Vision
May 12, 2026Antoni Valls, Jordi Sanchez-RieraVisual Question Answering Vision-Language Models
Institut de Rob`otica i Inform`atica Industrial, CSIC-UPC, Llorens i Artigas 4-6, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Insight: Enhancing Mobile Accessibility for Blind and Visually Impaired Users with LLMs
May 10, 2026Joshua Owusu Ansah, Anuj Kapoor, Ayush Khanna +3Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People
Arizona State University · Tempe, Arizona, USA
I'm Sorry, but I Can't Help with Braille: Revealing Accessibility Failures in State-of-the-Art LLMs
May 7, 2026Abdullah AbdullahLLM Evaluation LLM Fine-Tuning
orinu Inc. Hwaseong, Republic of Korea
How Do Novice Describers Edit AI Drafts? The Role of Draft Quality in Audio Description Authoring
May 6, 2026Lana Do, Shasta Ihorn, Charity M. Pitcher-Cooper +7Audio Description Generation Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People
Northeastern University United States · San Francisco State University United States · The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute United States +1
LLM-Guided Agentic Floor Plan Parsing for Accessible Indoor Navigation of Blind and Low-Vision People
Apr 27, 2026Aydin Ayanzadeh, Tim OatesLLM Agent Planning Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
AMAVA: Adaptive Motion-Aware Video-to-Audio Framework for Visually-Impaired Assistance
Apr 26, 2026Benjamin Klein, Kazi Ruslan Rahman, Sanchita GhoseText-to-Audio Generation Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance
Department of Computer Science, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA · Department of Mathematics, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA · Department of Computer Engineering, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA
Beyond Descriptions: A Generative Scene2Audio Framework for Blind and Low-Vision Users to Experience Vista Landscapes
Mar 28, 2026Chitralekha Gupta, Jing Peng, Ashwin Ram +3Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Audio Generation
Augmented Human Lab, Dept. of Computer Science, National University of Singapore · Augmented Human Lab, National University of Singapore · Saarland University, Saarland Informatics Campus Saarbrücken, Germany +2

Oct 16, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

VISTA: A Multimodal Egocentric Benchmark for Goal-Oriented Perception and Assistance to Blind and Low-Vision Users

Noé Mosca, Mohamed Rayan Barhdadi, Muhammad Hamza, Joshua Yeh+10

Harvard AI and Robotics Lab, Harvard University · Télécom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris · Texas A&M University+2

Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision People Visually Impaired Navigation Assistance Multimodal Model Evaluation Multimodal Understanding

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Blindness and low vision limit many people's ability to complete daily tasks, motivating AI assistants that provide useful guidance. Yet, existing benchmarks do not adequately test whether vision models can provide effective everyday assistance. In particular, i) existing benchmarks primarily rely on visual and textual inputs, with limited support for other modalities that are increasingly available in egocentric wearable devices such as gaze, inertial measurements, spatial trajectories, and others; and ii) existing evaluations emphasize scene understanding and question answering, with limited coverage of goal-conditioned guidance for blind and low-vision users across everyday tasks. To bridge this gap, we introduce VISTA (Visually Impaired Scene and Task Annotations), a multimodal egocentric benchmark for goal-oriented assistance for blind and low-vision users. VISTA contains

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1,000 egocentric recordings captured with Project Aria glasses; each recording provides synchronized sensor streams, six of which serve as model inputs, and three different types of annotation, covering ten task categories (TC), from object localization to hazard detection. We evaluate 14 representative vision-language models zero-shot on VISTA and design a lightweight multimodal model baseline that integrates all six modalities. Experimental results show that, although existing models can often describe egocentric scenes, they remain limited in generating goal-directed assistive guidance. VISTA thus provides a benchmark for evaluating multimodal models that could improve everyday accessibility.