This travel grant supports students and domain experts to attend the workshop on "Multimodal and Alternative Perception for Visually Impaired People" in July, 2013 in conjunction with the International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME). The workshop brings researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines (computer vision, neuroscience, multimedia computing, sensor technologies and assistive technology applications) to discuss fundamental issues in visual perception, computational intelligence, neuroscience and visual prosthesis for helping blind and visually impaired people and people working in visually challenged environments. The workshop papers are included along with the IEEE ICME 2013 proceedings. The workshop homepage is used to disseminate results of the panel discussions and paper presentations as well as the report.
Based on the World Health Organization 2012 Report, there are more than 285 million visually impaired people, of which 39 million are blind. About 65% of all people who are visually impaired are aged 50 and older, while this age group comprises about 20% of the world's population. With an increasing elderly population in many countries, more people will be at risk of age-related visual impairment. Research on multimodal and alternative perception will have a long term impact on the health and wellness of society, not only for the visually challenged, but for people who often work in dangerous environments, such as firefighters, drivers and soldiers. The 2013 IEEE Workshop on Multimodal and Alternative Perception for Visually Impaired People (MAP4VIP) for the first time brought researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines (computer vision, neuroscience, multimedia computing, sensor technologies and assistive technology applications) to discuss fundamental issues in visual perception, computational intelligence, neuroscience and visual prosthesis for helping blind and visually impaired people and people working in visually challenged environments. With its oral/poster presentations and panel discussions, the following issues/questions were discussed that could provide guidelines for future research in assistive technologies for the visually impaired: 1. What is the best quality of visual assistive device that might be developed within the next 5 years. What would such a device allow currently-visually-impaired people to do? 2. What are some of the biggest challenges and obstacles that visually impaired individuals may face in their everyday lives? 3. What are some of the current limitations in developing visual assistive technologies, particularly in developing visual prosthetic devices that need breakthroughs in brain & perception research and biomechanical engineering? 4. What considerations are used to determine whether an assistive technology device will be adopted and widely used (e.g., cost, size)? 5. What types of standardized, scientific tests can we perform with visually impaired people to quantify the improvement in performance of visual tasks and in quality of life across the wide variety of available assistive devices? More information and related materials (summaries, slides and notes) can be found at the workshop homepage: http://www-cs.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/%7Ezhu/MAP4VIP/
