C. Stephanidis (Ed.): Posters, Part I, HCII 2011, CCIS 173, pp. 383–388, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 Helping Hands versus ERSP Vision: Comparing Object Recognition Technologies for the Visually Impaired Marc A. Lawson 1 , Ellen Yi-Luen Do 1 , James R. Marston 2 , and David A. Ross 2 1 College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 USA 2 Atlanta Vision Loss Center, 1670 Clairmont Road, Decatur, GA 30033 USA {marc.lawson,ellendo}@gatech.edu jim.marston@gmail.com, ross0128@bellsouth.net Abstract. A major challenge for people with vision impairments ranging from severely low visual acuity to no light perception (NLP) is identifying or distinguishing the difference between objects of similar size and shape. For many of these individuals, locating and identifying specific objects can be an arduous task. This paper explores the design and evaluation of the “Helping Hand”: A radio frequency identification (RFID) glove that audibly identifies tagged objects. In this paper we describe the design of a wearable RFID apparatus used for object identification. We evaluated the effectiveness of the glove by conducting a three-arm randomized controlled study. In our experiment, we compare a baseline (no assistive device), RFID (Helping Hand) and computer vision (ERSP Vision Software) in identifying common household objects. We also administered a questionnaire to obtain subjective data about the usability experience of the participants. Our experimental results show a reduction in the amount of time required to identify objects when using the Helping Hand glove versus the other two methods. Keywords: object recognition, RFID, visual impairment, assistive technology, and computer vision. 1 Introduction Over 314 million people worldwide are visually impaired, of whom 45 million are totally blind [1]. Presently, in the United States there are approximately 20 million people with visual impairments [2]. There are several different gradients of visual acuity – ranging from severely low visual acuity to no light perception (NLP). Many tests are developed to measure a person’s level of vision. For example, Tumbling eye charts and the Snellen test measure an individual’s visual acuity against the normal population curve. Performance scores are ranging from 20/10 to 20/200, where a score of 20/20 represents “normal vision” or what the average person can see at a distance of 20 feet. People with extremely low visual acuity have what is called a low vision evaluation. These evaluations are more comprehensive and measure a patient’s ability to count fingers, observe motion or perceive light from varied distances [3].