WebSight: Using AR and WebGL shaders to assist the visually impaired

Dan Ruta, Louis Jordan, Tom James Fox, Rich Boakes

Abstract: With growing browser performance and technological advances such as WebVR, WebAssembly and WebGL, opportunities of novel assistive applications of technology are at an all time high. With about 4% of the world's population being visually impaired, easy real world navigation and path-finding are unsolved problems. Tasks like simple navigation across a room, or walking down a street pose real dangers, and current technology based solutions are too inaccessible, or difficult to use, hindering their effectiveness. Keeping portability and compatibility in mind, a browser based system was implemented, which makes use of high performance WebGL shaders to augment a video feed of a user's surroundings. A range of highly configurable shaders, such as edge detection and colour inversion allow a user to adjust the effect to their specific needs and preferences. The effect is rendered into a VR format, to allow users to make use of it with a minimal learning curve, and the web based platform keeps the system accessible to anyone with a smartphone, without incompatibility issues.