A qualitative study to support a blind photography mobile application

Both sighted and visually impaired people value having a photographic memento of a place or an event. However, due to the visually oriented nature of photography and the lack of non-visual cues to indicate the content of the photo, the common belief is that it is difficult for people with limited vision to take, organize and share pictures. However, we did not find a structured study on the photographic practice of those with limited vision. We ran a survey among 54 totally blind, light perception, and legally blind participants to investigate their photo taking, browsing, and online sharing. Based on this survey, we developed a mobile app to help blind persons take and recognize picture content using non-visual cues. The application was tested with five legally and totally blind persons with mostly positive results.