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arXiv · 2407.08219

Generating Contextually-Relevant Navigation Instructions for Blind and Low Vision People

Zain Merchant·Abrar Anwar·Emily Wang·Souti Chattopadhyay·Jesse Thomason
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Abstract

Navigating unfamiliar environments presents significant challenges for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals. In this work, we construct a dataset of images and goals across different scenarios such as searching through kitchens or navigating outdoors. We then investigate how grounded instruction generation methods can provide contextually-relevant navigational guidance to users in these instances. Through a sighted user study, we demonstrate that large pretrained language models can produce correct and useful instructions perceived as beneficial for BLV users. We also conduct a survey and interview with 4 BLV users and observe useful insights on preferences for different instructions based on the scenario.

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Zain Merchant, Abrar Anwar, Emily Wang, Souti Chattopadhyay, Jesse Thomason. 2024-07-11. Generating Contextually-Relevant Navigation Instructions for Blind and Low Vision People. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.08219

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