VeasyGuide: Personalized Visual Guidance for Low-vision Learners on Instructor Actions in Presentation Videos

Yotam Sechayk1, Ariel Shamir2, Amy Pavel3, Takeo Igarashi1
1 The University of Tokyo, 2 Reichman University, 3 The University of California, Berkeley Conference name and year
Paper Code arXiv Try it (coming soon)
Illustration of the VeasyGuide player and its settings. From left to right. First, the player interface showing a video of a "Machine Learning" slide, where the phrase "incomplete information" is highlighted with a red rectangle, and standard video controls are visible below; with two additional buttons "Highlight personalization panel," and "Zoom personalization panel." Then, illustration of the z-key with the text "Toggle", atop a magnified view of the highlighted portion of the slide with the phrase "incomplete information" at the center. Finally, multiple personalization option panels.

VeasyGuide's interface includes: (a) a video player with highlighted areas (red rectangle and hand pointer), (a.1) zoom settings toggle, (a.2) highlight settings toggle, (b) a zoomed window (toggled with the Z key), and (c) zoom and highlight settings panels. While watching a video, VeasyGuide auto-highlights pointing, marking, and sketching activities. Users can zoom into highlighted portions with the Z key, adjust zoom with arrow keys, and customize highlight and zoom appearance in real time.

Video figure for VeasyGuide. VeasyGuide is an assistive tool that aids low vision learners to gain visual access to pointing, marking, and sketching actions in educational presentation videos. Our study reveals it is also beneficial for sighted learners, enhancing their focus and engagement with the content.

Abstract

Instructors often rely on visual actions such as pointing, marking, and sketching to convey information in educational presentation videos. These subtle visual cues often lack verbal descriptions, forcing low-vision (LV) learners to search for visual indicators or rely solely on audio, which can lead to missed information and increased cognitive load. To address this challenge, we conducted a co-design study with three LV participants and developed VeasyGuide, a tool that uses motion detection to identify instructor actions and dynamically highlight and magnify them. VeasyGuide produces familiar visual highlights that convey spatial context and adapt to diverse learners and content through extensive personalization and real-time visual feedback. VeasyGuide reduces visual search effort by clarifying what to look for and where to look. In an evaluation with 8 LV participants, learners demonstrated a significant improvement in detecting instructor actions, with faster response times and significantly reduced cognitive load. A separate evaluation with 8 sighted participants showed that VeasyGuide also enhanced engagement and attentiveness, suggesting its potential as a universally beneficial tool.

Results

Using VeasyGuide

BibTeX


@inproceedings{key,
  title = {VeasyGuide: Personalized Visual Guidance for Low-vision Learners on Instructor Actions in Presentation Videos},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '25)},
  address = {Denver, CO, USA},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1145/3663547.3746372}
}