  People with visual impairment (PVI) must interact with a world they cannot
see. Remote sighted assistance has emerged as a conversational/social support
system. We interviewed participants who either provide or receive assistance
via a conversational/social prosthetic called Aira (https://aira.io/). We
identified four types of support provided: scene description, performance,
social interaction, and navigation. We found that conversational style is
context-dependent. Sighted assistants make intentional efforts to elicit PVI's
personal knowledge and leverage it in the guidance they provide. PVI used
non-verbal behaviors (e.g. hand gestures) as a parallel communication channel
to provide feedback or guidance to sighted assistants. We also discuss
implications for design.
