The Future of Look Detection Is Here

The future of look detection is here for children with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI). At this year’s ATiA annual conference, CViConnect’s Stephanie Steffer and Travis Spire-Sweets shared their newest vision for the field.  

Currently, while a learner utilizes the activities within the CViConnect iPad application, the system makes use of the forward facing camera to detect if the learner is looking or looking away from the iPad.  Teams are currently using this information from session to session to analyze what is impacting their learners ability to initiate and maintain visual attention.  No longer are teams guessing if the child is looking at the presented target.

For example, we might run the exact same activity in different positions, once in a stander and once while lying in supine position on a mat.  While in the stander, the look detection data indicates the user is experiencing frequent ‘look, look away’ behavior. Meanwhile, when laying in the supine position, the look detection data indicates the user has some ‘look, look away’ behaviors followed by sustained visual attention. 

This tells us the activity we selected may be a good fit, if the child is in the correct position.  Being positioned in a stander is appearing to add an increased environmental complexity.  If vision is expected while the student is in a stander, education teams will likely need to provide visual targets that are considered more comfortable to balance the complexity of the child’s position.

While this data is still available and truly meaningful for teams, the CViConnect team wanted to provide educational teams with even more.  This release will allow educational teams to make data based decisions by knowing where the learner is looking on the screen.  

With this new data, educators can provide their explicit instruction on salient features and comparative thought.  Educators can then review the data to determine if the student was in fact making eye to object contact on the salient features as they were being discussed.

Does the child tend to look off the screen during the instruction and look after the educator has finished speaking? Are you expecting the child to touch or draw the salient features?  With this data, you can now analyze if the child is utilizing look and reach at the same time or if these are being completed separately.  

As an educator for individuals with cortical visual impairment, this is a big game changer.

It doesn’t end here either.  With our CViConnect Activity designer, the intent is you may begin to take advantage of our event action blocks to build in scenarios such as ‘if looked at,’ ‘then say.’  

Participants during the ATiA session have expressed enthusiasm for understanding the learners use of vision in this way for a variety of scenarios.  One idea was to utilize this data when making additional assistive technology decisions.  However you see this best fit for your learners, we are excited to be a part of your journey to support learners with CVI.

Want to learn more?  ‘The Future of Look Detection For A Learner With CVI, is Here’ is a FREE recorded session available to all and is part of an ATIA 2022 Registration Package.

Sign up for our newsletter to watch for this and other exciting updates from CViConnect!