‘Zooming Display System’ Can Help Visually Impaired, Says Vizio Patent Application 

Vizio fashioned a method for zooming into selected portions of the graphics layer of a display screen to help visually impaired viewers better navigate their TVs' onscreen menus, said a U.S. patent application (20180275856) published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. Visually impaired consumers often have trouble viewing menus on their TV screens, said the application, which was filed in March 2017 and names Marcus Apitz, Peter Schwartz and Polly Stecyk as the inventors. Apitz is Vizio’s senior vice president-technology, Schwartz is senior director-product management and Stecyk is its human factors specialist. “Many televisions allow the viewer, through setup menus, to zoom the image,” said the application. “Typically, this feature is invoked when the source content being viewed is a 4:3 aspect ratio and the television is a 16:9 aspect ratio.” Problems arise when “user interface data and viewer interfaces cannot be stretched or zoomed to be larger like video content being displayed,” it said. “The inventors recognized that televisions are not just for people to watch video content but also for people that are visually impaired, people who use a television to play music or to stream weather reports, stock prices and other information.” Their solution was to devise a “zooming display system” featuring multiple “numbered zones,” each controllable through an “arrow/navigation key” or by pressing the appropriate number on the remote, it said: “The zones are zoomed to a larger size. When zoom mode is selected, the system can automatically select a zone based on what is being done on the display at the time of the selection.” Vizio didn’t comment on the invention’s commercial implications.