white_stick

A chrome plugin for the visually impaired which reduces the friction of using websites.

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Inspiration:

We were interested in finding a non-profit in Baltimore that could benefit from the recent advancements in AI. As we reviewed the non-profit community in Baltimore the national federation of the blind appeared to represent a community that may be under served by emerging technologies such as AI. We reached out and were connected to a diverse and supportive community that shared some of the challenges that exist. We immediately saw the opportunity to ensure the visually impaired have a more complete and equitable web experience. Users shared how they have first have

What it does:

After multiple interviews with developers, blind, and visually impaired users we decided to focus on a specific minimum viable product as well as build a road map to create incremental value between now and the next round of review in July. The minimum viable product, ingests a site, reviews the existing alt tags, then leverages Google’s vision API to create rich content where there was previously lacking or limited information. We will be addressing the following use cases through our MVP • Form buttons not labeled in any meaningful way, creating confusion on reset versus submit • Images of text embed on pages with no alt tag • Lacking or limited alt tags, providing a less rich experience while browsing • Providing clear guidance on navigation, where images are used and there is no clear indication on where the link goes…

Challenges

• Indexing alt tags

• Module exporting

• Chrome Extension only working in JavaScript

• Speed of Interface

• Cost of queries

How we Built it

Our team while many, is limited in development skills, so we took advantage of who we have and what our skills are. Sam has experience with python, so we connected to the google vision API via python and he created most of our code. Ethan and Harry, worked on ancillary components as well as mentored Conner on the skills involved with development. Kate, Peter and Chris conducted multiple user interviews, research and validation throughout the two days. All of this came together to create a compelling prototype and vision for white stick. We look forward to finding strong development support between now and July!

What's Next?

•Notifying developers of accessibility issues

    • Potential to opt out

    • Aggregating data for major sites

• Partnering with Webvisum

• Becoming Chrome extension

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