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1. Guidance for Best Practices in Participatory Design Involving People with Visual Impairment

   https://doi.org/10.1177/10648046211058248  

   Kim, Hyung Nam (January 2021, Ergonomics in Design: The Quarterly of Human Factors Applications)

   Today, a great number of people with visual impairment take advantage of mainstream technology via assistive technology. User involvement in the systems development life cycle contributes to addressing user needs accurately. This article presents practical strategies to facilitate participatory design approaches involving users with visual impairment. Both researchers and professional designers will benefit these practical strategies by using them as action checklists for preparing, conducting, and concluding a participatory design session ethically and responsibly. 

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2. Emotional valence and arousal induced by auditory stimuli among individuals with visual impairment

   https://doi.org/10.1177/02646196211042257  

   Kim, Hyung_Nam; Sutharson, Sam_Jotham (September 2021, British Journal of Visual Impairment)

   Despite significant vision loss, humans can still recognize various emotional stimuli via a sense of hearing and express diverse emotional responses, which can be sorted into two dimensions, arousal and valence. Yet, many research studies have been focusing on sighted people, leading to lack of knowledge about emotion perception mechanisms of people with visual impairment. This study aims at advancing knowledge of the degree to which people with visual impairment perceive various emotions – high/low arousal and positive/negative emotions. A total of 30 individuals with visual impairment participated in interviews where they listened to stories of people who became visually impaired, encountered and overcame various challenges, and they were instructed to share their emotions. Participants perceived different kinds and intensities of emotions, depending on their demographic variables such as living alone, loneliness, onset of visual impairment, visual acuity, race/ethnicity, and employment status. The advanced knowledge of emotion perceptions in people with visual impairment is anticipated to contribute toward better designing social supports that can adequately accommodate those with visual impairment. 

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3. Facial expressions of emotions by people with visual impairment and blindness via video conferencing

   https://doi.org/10.1177/02646196231163491  

   Nam_Kim, Hyung (April 2023, British Journal of Visual Impairment)

   Many people including those with visual impairment and blindness take advantage of video conferencing tools to meet people. Video conferencing tools enable them to share facial expressions that are considered as one of the most important aspects of human communication. This study aims to advance knowledge of how those with visual impairment and blindness share their facial expressions of emotions virtually. This study invited a convenience sample of 28 adults with visual impairment and blindness to Zoom video conferencing. The participants were instructed to pose facial expressions of basic human emotions (anger, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise, neutrality, calmness, and sadness), which were video recorded. The facial expressions were analyzed using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) that encodes the movement of specific facial muscles called Action Units (AUs). This study found that there was a particular set of AUs significantly engaged in expressing each emotion, except for sadness. Individual differences were also found in AUs influenced by the participants’ visual acuity levels and emotional characteristics such as valence and arousal levels. The research findings are anticipated to serve as the foundation of knowledge, contributing to developing emotion-sensing technologies for those with visual impairment and blindness. 

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4. Individual differences in emotional intelligence skills of people with visual impairment and loneliness amid the COVID-19 pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1177/02646196211013860  

   Kim, Hyung Nam; Sutharson, Sam Jotham (January 2021, British Journal of Visual Impairment)

   null (Ed.)

   In response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, public health interventions such as social distancing and stay-at-home orders have widely been implemented, which is anticipated to contribute to reducing the spread of COVID-19. On the contrary, there is a concern that the public health interventions may increase the level of loneliness. Loneliness and social isolation are public health risks, closely associated with serious medical conditions. As COVID-19 is new to us today, little is known about emotional well-being among people with visual impairment during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address the knowledge gap, this study conducted phone interviews with a convenience sample of 31 people with visual impairment. The interview incorporated the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (version 3) and the trait meta-mood scale (TMMS) to measure loneliness and emotional intelligence skills, respectively. This study found that people with visual impairment were vulnerable to the feeling of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic and showed individual differences in emotional intelligence skills by different degrees of loneliness. Researchers and health professionals should consider offering adequate coping strategies to those with visual impairment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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5. Digital Privacy of Assistive Technology Users with Visual Disabilities

   https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181322661363  

   Nam Kim, Hyung (September 2022, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting)

   As technology is advancing, accessibility is also taken care of seriously. Many users with visual disabilities take advantage of, for example, Microsoft's Seeing AI application (app) that is equipped with artificial intelligence. The app helps people with visual disabilities to recognize objects, people, texts, and many more via a smartphone's built-in camera. As users may use the app in recognizing personally identifiable information, user privacy should carefully be treated and considered as a top priority. Yet, little is known about the user privacy issues among users with visual disabilities, such that this study aims to address the knowledge gap by conducting a questionnaire with the Seeing AI users with visual disabilities. This study found that those with visual disabilities had a lack of knowledge about user privacy policies. It is recommended to offer an adequate educational training; thus, those with visual disabilities can be well informed of user privacy policies, ultimately leading to promoting safe online behavior to protect themselves from digital privacy and security problems. 

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