In this section, we first summarize participants’ VAT use. We then present other interview findings, including: (1) participants’ definitions of privacy, (2) the factors that impact their sense of privacy when using human-powered and AI-powered VATs, and (3) the types of image content participants identified as PVC.
3.2.1 Use of VATs.
All participants had experience with both human-powered VATs (Aira and/or Be My Eyes) and AI-powered VATs (Seeing AI and/or Envision AI) on iPhones. However, when asked which VAT they use the most and for what purposes, 10 participants reported their primary VAT to be Aira, four reported Be My Eyes, and four reported Seeing AI. Table
1 shows what tasks participants accomplish with each VAT, and the frequency and duration of use.
While participants reported using VATs for reading text in mail, documents, and food packaging, we also observed that some tasks were unique to specific VATs. For example, participants used Aira to interact with live human visual assistants and to complete tasks such as signing documents, selling on eBay, resolving issues on productivity applications, and reading credit cards and documents with social security numbers. Moreover, one participant explained how an Aira agent provided them with assistance to search for and complete a job application (a task that took 90 minutes on a paid account).
The participants who prefer to use Be My Eyes, a VAT that utilizes volunteers to provide visual assistance, highlighted the value they experience when being able to interact with a human assistant that could be located anywhere in the world. The participants use Be My Eyes to fix broken objects, obtain support using productivity applications, find lost items, and read text on objects with curved surfaces—a task that one participant stated was “too hard for AI”. The four participants who preferred Be My Eyes reported using it for five to ten minutes per session.
Those who preferred using Seeing AI indicated that they use it because it is the
“most efficient” VAT and that they could accomplish their tasks between two to five minutes, two to five times a week. They use Seeing AI for its variety of features—from the short text reader, object identifier, and barcode reader. These features are useful for reading text in images, learning about the objects in an image, scanning barcodes, and completing tasks like restringing a guitar. Though our data may not comprehensively represent possible uses for VATs, these responses are consistent with prior work (e.g., [
19,
46]).
3.2.2 Defining Privacy in the Context of VATs.
We asked participants to describe what ‘privacy’ meant to them in the context of VATs. Participants described privacy in several different ways—as an experience or as related to one’s behavior. For example, several participants focused on privacy being a safeguard. Regarding experience, P16 noted, “So much stuff going on in the world, there needs to be something so people can have a sense a peace, and not isolate or hideout just to protect themselves.” Others spoke about privacy in terms of maintaining a sense of control or ownership of information. P07 said, “Privacy means personal control over information that was not necessarily intended for a wide distributed audience.” Regarding their own behavior of personal management, P08 said, “I need to know who has access to my information and where it’s being stored. I make sure I’m dressed, pay attention to surroundings. Try to use my headphones…I can regulate upfront.”
Others discussed privacy in terms of negative impacts from the loss of privacy: loss of control or the ability to manage what information they share, loss of ownership, loss of peace of mind. In the words of P18, “I am concerned about privacy when my personal life is being intruded on…what I read, what I say online, what meal I ate, who I talk to, where I go. These are all mine.” P05 shared, “Privacy concern [means] that someone takes sensitive information and the use has consequences for me.” Others focused on malicious acts, including P17 who identified “A breach of my personal information…[use by] someone who will go to the effort to delete their tracks” and P03 who said, “Pertinent information that you don’t want anyone else to use involuntarily [without your consent] or use to harm you in some type of way”.
Finally, throughout the interviews participants directly identified their blindness as a factor that increases their need for privacy protections. For example, P04 shared, “I recognize blind people have less [privacy] because we stand out in a crowd. I don’t like it, but I just have to accept that”, and P08 explained, “After interacting with other blind people [in my daily life], I sometimes forget that when interacting with sighted people that I might need to take precautions. I can regulate up front, but it’s hard to know what is out there. My identity is on the line and I need protection too.”
3.2.3 Factors Impacting Users’ Visual Privacy Perceptions.
During the interviews the participants shared their perspectives about what causes visual privacy risks and what provides a sense of visual privacy, i.e. what benefits their sense of privacy in the context of human-powered and AI-powered VAT use (RQ2). Below we share the factors the participants attributed as privacy risks and benefits for both VAT types, which fall under three overarching categories: (1) their understanding of how VATs provide the services, (2) their perceptions of the impact of sharing PVC to their personal well-being or social relationships, and (3) their assessments of how VAT services adhere to their values or raise values-based questions.
Human-powered VAT- Benefits:
Understanding of the Service Offering: Several factors related to participants’ understanding of how VATs provide their services. First, we heard a belief or assumption that human-powered VATs enact practices to maintain professional standing within industry or with their users (professionalism). For instance, P06 stated, “I just assume they are a company that wants clients. Why would they sell your info?” P05 echoed a similar sentiment, “The company reputation would be on the line if word got out they were stealing data.” Several participants indicated that their understanding and trust in the professionalism of the service was due to the human-powered VATs’ corporate messaging. For instance, P06 shared that she had received emails from Aira, which provided her with a sense of trust in the services.
Several participants noted that they perceived human-powered VATs to be professional and trustworthy due to internal and public-facing policies designed to protect users. One policy identified as beneficial was the
choice to opt out or not to share personal visual data with the human-powered VAT. For example, P11 said,
“With Aira, you can opt out of having your info retained! It’s a nice notion, but I forget about it when I’m actually using the service.” Another policy that participants brought up in the context of Aira related to the companies mandates for its employed agents (sometimes referred to as remote sighted assistants [
64]) to
self-identify at the beginning of a call. P05 noted,
“With Aira, agents identify themselves. I don’t get a full [name], but at least I have a name and a time with my call log if I have to report.” P05 went on to relate the VATs service offerings to other assistive company policies,
“Aira is track-able, similar to knowing who your Uber driver is.”Participants explicitly noted that interacting with trained agents is of great benefit to their sense of privacy because of the specialized training employees receive to handle PVC. For instance, P05 shared, “When I have to get my CC info read, I’d rather do Aira because the service has trained agents and I know where to go back to if I have a problem. I check my statements and they match. They’ve signed whatever they have to contractually, for accountability, whereas with some of the volunteers you wouldn’t have that.” Similarly, P09 expressed, “Part of the reason [I] use Aira is because I feel like it’s a company and they [Aira agents] have training. Someone could be fired, blackballed. There’s a little more implicit trust.”
Values-Based Assessment: Some participants mentioned factors related to values when describing what they consider to be important when using human-powered VAT and/or how the VATs they use uphold or represent their values. Most prominently, we heard statements like
“If a human being is doing something, the assumption is they are doing their best. They are trying to do a good job, which is the vast majority of the time” (P02). Participants’
trust in human decency or belief in the inherent good or benevolence of remote sighted assistants reflects why blind people
knowingly share their PVC. When discussing the benefit of Be My Eyes [
34], a volunteer-based human-powered VAT, P16 expressed,
“Volunteers haven’t given me a reason to not trust them.” In fact, for some participants, the opportunity to interact with volunteers from all over the world increased their trust in human decency and in some cases was
“a source of joy”. Participants’ also extended a sense of trust from the remote sighted assistants to the companies. For example, P15 said,
“From what I’ve heard, Aira is the best way to go. They’re really trustworthy and they won’t pick on you for a high balance.” During the interviews we also learned that some participants use volunteer-based human-powered VATs such as Be My Eyes because these services preserve their
anonymity when sharing private visual data. As P07 explained,
“The benefit is [that] the anonymous [Be My Eyes volunteers] people…don’t have connections to the blind community.” This participant explained that Be My Eyes alleviates the social stigma he encounters when family or friends access his images containing PVC.
Human-powered VAT- Risks:
Understanding of the Service Offering: Many participants reported a lack of understanding on VAT companies’ data retention practices, which we coded as unknown data handling. For instance, P05 explained, “Well, anytime you have to get something read, are they going to remember it, store it?” They went on to discuss her specific concern with storage of information, “I know Aira stores info, but don’t know what triggers [data] retrieval or if they do. I think I saw someone say on social media that it’s 18 months storage, but I haven’t verified that.” P08 shared specifically about data retention, “I don’t think any [of] them [VATs] try to do that?”
Personal/Social Impact: A risk that participants associated with human-powered VATs is identity theft. Participants expressed concerns that human-powered VATs created opportunities for nefarious actors to access their PVC and illegally use the information for personal gain. Put simply, P10 specifically mentioned identity theft as a privacy concern because they are “Not comfortable with another person reading my information.” Similarly, P18 talked about having trouble setting up an online account and the sensitive information they were concerned about disclosing, “I recently tried to set up an account on the Social Security administration website and I couldn’t, I couldn’t figure it out. It kept kicking me out …when trying to set up the login. I’m sorry, I just do not feel comfortable calling up Aira or Be My Eyes, and saying can you help me create my login for Social Security.”
Some participants expressed a fear of social judgement related to their use of human-powered VATs, including that disclosure of PVC could solicit a negative critique from others, causing personal embarrassment or other negative psychological impact. P17 explained, “There’s certain things I may not want a human actually reading to me, that might be embarrassing, might be too personal, might be beyond the jar of mayonnaise, you know.” Others shared the concern that when using human-powered VATs they were at higher risk for not acting in a socially acceptable manner (not socially acceptable). P06 shared this fear in terms of violating another person’s comfort, “I wouldn’t ask Aira to describe a [picture of a private body part]. It’s inappropriate because you’re disturbing someone.”
Values-based Assessment: Some participants indicated that they were at greater risk when using VATs that involve volunteers as remote sighted assistants because they lack accountability. For example, in the context of Be My Eyes, P09 explained, “If someone isn’t being paid, who knows what mysterious ways they are looking to gain from the system. When someone is being paid there’s a lot less to think about things in that way because to them it’s a job and they have some amount of job security provided they don’t screw up too badly. They are too busy making sure they keep their job.” P05 shared a similar statement on the nature of volunteer-based human-powered VATs: “I haven’t used the volunteer one because you never know what you’re going to get in terms of quality of the volunteer.”
AI-powered VAT- Benefits:
Understanding of the Service Offering: Some participants specified that using AI-powered VATs ensures that there are no human eyes on data, such as a person looking at the image or having access to the image. To this point, P10 said, “I still feel like I have more privacy with Seeing AI, [because there is] not another human on the other end… I don’t have to worry about someone writing down my information and taking it.” She later said, “I have more trust with AI” and though “It [VAT] stores or can store information, it just moves on”. Similarly, P04 indicated she trusts that AI-powered VATs do not focus on or identify an individual, thus ensuring anonymity: “I don’t mind if my data is used in the aggregate.” P13 said, “I’m more likely to use Seeing AI. It’s not necessarily more efficient, but I can plug headphones in and read it and I don’t have to worry about anyone remembering my information or jotting down numbers.” In such statements, we heard participants indicate a benefit of using AI-powered VATs is that their personal visual data is not collected and/or retained by a person (e.g., P13’s case) or by the service itself. P12 explained: “I don’t think of privacy because it’s happening while I’m doing it. It’s not being saved that I can tell.”
Personal/Social Impact: Several study participants indicated that a benefit of AI-powered VATs was that they eliminate the risk or sustained fear of social judgement (which occurs when using human-powered VATs). For instance, P08 stated AI-powered VATs are “Easier and faster and I don’t have someone making a judgement.” P08 went on to explain her belief that people make judgements of others, even during assistance, therefore she values AI-powered services. Accordingly, the primary benefit we heard from participants about AI-powered VATs related to privacy is that these services eliminate the possibility of embarrassment or other psychological impact.
Values-based Assessments: Similar to human-powered VATs, participants indicated that AI-powered VATs offer a sense of anonymity and in turn a sense of assurance that their PVC will not be linked back to them. Yet, we often heard participants state that AI-powered VATs offer more anonymity than human-powered VATs. P11 stated he values anonymity provided by AI-powered VATs, “for speed efficiency and a little more anonymity.”
AI-powered VAT- Risks:
Understanding of the Service Offering: Often, participants discussed their lack of understanding of how AI-powered VATs handle personal visual data once collected or the service’s promised privacy protections (unknown data handling). P02 rhetorically asked, “What happens to the picture after it runs through the database?” Similarly, P04 faced her own lack of understanding, “I never thought to ask until now, but with the AI it makes me wonder if records are kept, who keeps the photographs. Are they kept in the cloud somewhere or are they just kept on my phone?” More optimistically, P08 stated her concern: “Privacy is similar because I don’t know either service…both have the same access of a file to keep, replicate, or share outside” and then followed up with “I don’t think any of them try to do that.” Later in the interview, P08 expressed further concerns, “I don’t like reading some of my mail because now it’s in my phone and I don’t know how it makes it to the cloud.” In response to using Seeing AI, P01 said, “I don’t understand as much as far as where the information goes, I don’t know.”
Some participants had a more nuanced understanding of the VATs’ policies and raised questions about the length of data retention. Regarding Seeing AI, P05 stated, “I just don’t know how long they store information”. It was evident that participants were concerned about how VATs handle their data, and indicated that the lack of transparency creates a lack of trust. P05 went on to discuss his concern, “I don’t know how long they store it [my data]. It’s a concern, but I hope that people are generating so much data they aren’t tracking mine.” Others raised concerns that the AI-powered VAT systems are vulnerable, or in the words of P01, “In the wrong hands someone can do anything with your information.” Some participants raised the explicit concern that their PVC could be exposed by faulty technology, without clarifying how this could arise.
3.2.4 Self-Identified Private Visual Content.
Throughout the semi-structured interview we learned about the types of information the participant’s self-identified as PVC. Here we report on these PVC types, and compare them to the PVC types Gurari et al. [
45] identified (through a visual analysis of images taken and shared by blind people with the VizWiz [
18]),which we used in the Visual Privacy Concern Rating Task presented in Section
4.
The PVC types that both the participants in our study and Gurari et al. [
45] include are:
Financial Account Information (credit card, credit report, PIN number, point of sale, financial data, “financial stuff”, debit card information, financial, purchases, and banking information);
Medical Information (health data, “health stuff”, medical records, “medical stuff”, pregnancy test, and Medicaid);
Identification and Location Information (personal information, ID information, address information, name, phone number, and ID cards);
Paperwork, (mail, personal mail, and documents);
Computer/Online Access (login information, password, browsing history, and emails); and
People (pictures of faces).
Our findings also revealed types of PVC that were not presented in Gurari et al. [
45]. Most prominently, eight participants spoke about
Social Security Information. For instance, P18 explained that blind people commonly use social security information to apply for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Two participants (P02, P13) indicated they consider
Information from an Educational Institution (such as transcripts and disciplinary reports) as PVC because disclosure of this information to the wrong parties could cause embarrassment or would betray trust. While a majority of their responses were general enough to categorize, some participants offered very specific content. These responses seemed to be representative of
Personal Interests that they considered subject to social judgment. For instance, participants indicated images that showed
“guns” or
“sexual identity”, would be PVC. P17’s concerns included
“books I’ve read.” Finally, participants commonly made statements like that from P07,
“It’s hard to know the whole list of things.”