Assistive Video Filters for People with Parkinson's Disease to Remove Tremors and Adjust Voice

COVID ushered in the widespread use of videoconferencing and it's here to stay. In virtual communication, we can alter everything from our appearance, voice and backgrounds. Most of these changes are fun gimmicks, but what if we could leverage these filtering technologies to a life-changing assistive technology? We propose the idea of developing assistive video filters for people with Parkinson's disease (PwP) that will remove involuntary tremors and smooth the stuttering in their voice. We surveyed 177 PwP and 107 people from the general public, and we personally interviewed 52 PwP as well as 3 health care professionals. We find overwhelming statistical evidence that these filters would fulfill a demonstrated communication need for PwP and that the general public also approves of a video filter that could assist with communication for PwP. To test the feasibility of our concept, we developed a filter prototype to remove physical tremors and tested it on two PwP. Although this paper focuses on PwP as a use case, we hope this work encourages others to ethically develop filtering technologies to help individuals with other movement disorders, eye-contact impairment and stuttering in computer-mediated conversations.