New Google Glass app helps visually impaired use smartphones

A team at Massachusetts Eye and Ear’s Schepens Eye Research Institute have created a new app that enables more intuitive smartphone zooming for low-vision users.

The tool works by projecting close-up screen images to Google Glass, allowing the wearer to navigate across the phone’s display with a simple head movement; moving their head up takes them to the top of the screen, while moving to the right takes them screen right, and so on.  

The developers created the app because the built-in zoom features on phones (scrolling with fingers) can be difficult to use because it is easy to lose context of where on the screen one is looking. The new motion-controlled app demonstrated a 28% faster average trial time compared to built-in magnifiers in a study published the March 2016 issue of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering

"Given the current heightened interest in smart glasses, such as Microsoft's Hololens and Epson's Moverio, it is conceivable to think of a smart glass working independently without requiring a paired mobile device in near future." said Shrinivas Pundlik, PhD, lead study author "The concept of head-controlled screen navigation can be useful in such glasses even for people who are not visually impaired."