Augmented Reality for People with Low Vision: Symbolic and Alphanumeric Representation of Information

Many individuals with visual impairments have residual vision that often remains underused by assistive technologies. Head-mounted augmented reality (AR) devices can provide assistance, by recoding difficult-to-perceive information into a visual format that is more accessible. Here, we evaluate symbolic and alphanumeric information representations for their efficiency and usability in two prototypical AR applications: namely, recognizing facial expressions of conversational partners and reading the time. We find that while AR provides a general benefit, the complexity of the visual representations has to be matched to the user’s visual acuity.