Doi: 10.1145/1435417.1435434
They promise mobile information access and assistive Web services for tens of millions worldwide.
wisePad
our vISIoN For
the wisepad system, named for the
iconic three wise monkeys that see no evil, hear no
evil, speak no evil, is a full-service computing platform
designed to deliver personalized image-, audio-, and text-
transformation services to people with impaired vision,
speech captioning for people with hearing problems,
and language-translation, text-summarization, and
pictographic-illustration services for people needing
help with both spoken and text-based language.
wisepad services employ a generic head-mounted display content-transformation device of the type
described by Kanevsky and Sorenson.
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The device captures image(s) on an
output device (such as iPod screen, PC
monitor, and projection screen) and
receives multimedia signals input from
other channels. Related wisePad servic-
es then use the service’s content-trans-
former functions to translate captured
or received images and display them on
the screen of the device.
wisePad transforms an image in sev-
eral ways: For the vision-impaired user,
it magnifies parts of the original im-
age to facilitate visual perception and
thus comprehension. For the hearing-
impaired, it displays closed-captioned
video, pictures, and text in the lenses
of the user’s eyeglasses. And for speech
aid, it might transform text into simpli-
fied text in the same language, speech
into another language, speech into
summary form, and/or speech by add-
ing pictographic icons intended to help
in language understanding in the same
way pictures and icons help young chil-
dren learn to read.
We expect within the next 10 years,
wisePad will deliver an unprecedented
level of personalization for its users, in-
cluding for artifact selection, page order-
ing, language, color, magnification, and
image-feature transformation. wisePad
will be able to store these user choices
as preferences in a customized software
“skin” in its user interface.
wisePad will be available in several implementation versions, including ordinary-looking glasses with a frame large enough to hold a tiny USB port, miniature transformer, display chips, and goggle-style eyewear with wireless microphones supporting audio output and input. Users select the version that best suits their needs.
Figure 1 shows the kind of eyewear adapted for wisePad services as an output device. Lumus Ltd., Rehovot, Israel ( www.lumusvision.com), designs, manufactures, and markets a lightweight designer frame with twin microdisplays at full VGA-type resolution. Tiny projectors embedded in the eyewear’s stems project images with a 27.5-degree field of view, as if the wearer were “watching a 70-inch
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