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Computer Science @ Rochester
Thursday, April 11, 2013
3:00 PM
Computer Science Bldg. Room 703
Ph.D. Thesis Proposal
Erin Brady
University of Rochester
Investigating Motivations for Answering Help-Seeking Questions from Blind Users
Much of the important information in our everyday lives is communicated visually. For over 21 million Americans with some form of vision loss, this information can be inaccessible. The use of new technologies such as object recognition software, barcode scanners, and optical character recognition tools have allowed blind people to access some visual information, but there remain many questions that require human assistance to parse and answer. Blind people previously relied on the physical presence of sighted companions for answers to visual questions, but new mobile technologies like smartphones allow users to request sighted help from known companions or strangers who aren't physically present, increasing the asker's feelings of independence and security.

We propose to examine the relationship between blind question askers and sighted answerers by analyzing digital traces of help-seeking behaviors. We have already begun to analyze help-seeking in the context of VizWiz Social, our smartphone application that allows blind users to send visual questions to sighted answerers. Our future work will extend this analysis to other help-seeking behaviors, and will investigate the motivations of answers from the crowd, volunteers, or friends and family. By investigating the types of help-seeking questions asked, why users choose specific answerers, and how to motivate good answers, we will learn how to build question-answering tools to solve existing accessibility problems and improve the question asking experience for blind users.