Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) is the set to be the leading cause of vision impairment, yet remains underrepresented in assistive technology research. Unlike ocular conditions, CVI affects higher-order visual processing-impacting object recognition, facial perception, and attention in complex environments. This paper presents a co-design study with two adults with CVI investigating how smart glasses, i.e. head-mounted extended reality displays, can support understanding and interaction with the immediate environment. Guided by the Double Diamond design framework, we conducted a two-week diary study, two ideation workshops, and ten iterative development sessions using the Apple Vision Pro. Our findings demonstrate that smart glasses can meaningfully address key challenges in locating objects, reading text, recognising people, engaging in conversations, and managing sensory stress. With the rapid advancement of smart glasses and increasing recognition of CVI as a distinct form of vision impairment, this research addresses a timely and under-explored intersection of technology and need.

Over the past decade, considerable research has investigated Vision-Based Assistive Technologies (VBAT) to support people with vision impairments to understand and interact with their immediate environment using machine learning, computer vision, image enhancement, and/or augmented/virtual reality. However, this has almost totally overlooked a growing demographic: people with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). Unlike ocular vision impairments, CVI arises from damage to the brain’s visual processing centres. Through a scoping review, this paper reveals a significant research gap in addressing the needs of this demographic. Three focus studies involving 7 participants with CVI explored the challenges, current strategies, and opportunities for VBAT. We also discussed the assistive technology needs of people with CVI compared with ocular low vision. Our findings highlight the opportunity for the Human-Computer Interaction and Assistive Technologies research community to explore and address this underrepresented domain, thereby enhancing the quality of life for people with CVI.

Over the last decade there has been considerable research into how artificial intelligence (AI), specifically computer vision, can assist people who are blind or have low-vision (BLV) to understand their environment. However, there has been almost no research into whether the tasks (object detection, image captioning, text recognition etc.) and devices (smartphones, smart-glasses etc.) investigated by researchers align with the needs and preferences of BLV people. We identified 646 studies published in the last two and a half years that have investigated such assistive AI techniques. We analysed these papers to determine the task, device and participation by BLV individuals. We then interviewed 24 BLV people and asked for their top five AI-based applications and to rank the applications found in the literature. We found only a weak positive correlation between BLV participants’ perceived importance of tasks and researchers’ focus and that participants prefer conversational agent interface and head-mounted devices.

Monash Vision Group is developing a bionic eye based on implanting 7–11 small tiles into the visual cortex. Each tile has 43 active electrodes on its base, and a wirelessly powered electronic system to decode control signals and drive the electrodes with biphasic pulses. The tiles are fed with power and data using a common transmitting coil at the back of the patient's head. Sophisticated image processing, described in a companion paper, ensures that the user experiences maximum benefit from the small number of electrodes. This paper describes the progress in the first three years (2010–2012) of this four-year project.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is used in many wired and wireless broadband communication systems because of its resilience in the presence of signal dispersion or multipath distortion. OFDM has not been used in practical optical communication systems because the bipolar waveform cannot be used in intensity-modulated direct detection (IM/DD) systems. A new unipolar form of OFDM, asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM), has recently been developed. For the case of an AWGN channel, we compare ACO- OFDM and other modulation schemes. It is shown that ACO- OFDM with 4-QAVI subcarrier modulation has the same bandwidth efficiency but requires 2 dB less energy per bit than on-off keying. ACO-OFDM with larger constellation sizes gives higher bandwidth efficiencies and lower optical power than other modulation schemes. Unlike existing methods, the performance of ACO-OFDM is limited by the bandwidth of the transmitter and receiver not the dispersion of the channel.