Designing Gaze Simulation for People with Visual Disability

In face-to-face communication, eye gaze is integral to a conversation to supplement verbal language. The sighted often uses eye gaze to convey nonverbal information in social interactions, which a blind conversation partner cannot access and react. My doctoral research is to design gaze simulation for the blind person, to improve the conversation quality between sighted and blind people in face-to-face communication. Designing gaze simulation will consist of two primary parts: to help the blind person feel the gaze from the sighted and to simulate the natural gaze for the blind person as a visual reaction. This paper outlines the motivation, context, research methods, and completed and future steps of my research.