BubbleCam: Engaging Privacy in Remote Sighted Assistance

Remote sighted assistance (RSA) offers prosthetic support to people with visual impairments (PVI) through image- or video-based conversations with remote sighted assistants. While useful, RSA services introduce privacy concerns, as PVI may reveal private visual content inadvertently. Solutions have emerged to address these concerns on image-based asynchronous RSA, but exploration into solutions for video-based synchronous RSA remains limited. In this study, we developed BubbleCam, a high-fidelity prototype allowing PVI to conceal objects beyond a certain distance during RSA, granting them privacy control. Through an exploratory field study with 24 participants, we found that 22 appreciated the privacy enhancements offered by BubbleCam. The users gained autonomy, reducing embarrassment by concealing private items, messy areas, or bystanders, while assistants could avoid irrelevant content. Importantly, BubbleCam maintained RSA's primary function without compromising privacy. Our study highlighted a cooperative approach to privacy preservation, transitioning the traditionally individual task of maintaining privacy into an interactive, engaging privacy-preserving experience.