Geometry Appcessory for Visually Impaired Children

Department of Creative Design EngineeringVisually impaired children face challenges in learning spatial contents and materials, such as geometry. While many existing tools, such as string boards, or protractors with physical angle markers, can facilitate learning, these devices are highly specific: they tackle single issues and it can be hard to generalize the knowledge gained from their use into a broad understanding of the topic. This problem contributes to low levels numeracy in visually impaired individuals. Addressing these problems, this research presents Clicks, a digital manipulative product for visually impaired children that supports a range of geometry education tasks and ties physical adjustments to the device to a dynamic digital representation and additional audio feedback. Clicks comprises a construction kit of simple geometric primitives that snap together to produce a range of more complex forms such as lines, angles, triangles and rectangles. When placed on a tablet computer, the geometry of these objects is sensed (via the capacitive touch screen and electrodes embedded in the objects) and audio feedback is provided. This report describes the physical construction of the product and its accessories and use scenario for future software development. After reviewing literature to review to understand first-hand the issues faced in the field of geometry by visually impaired children that makes it their least favorite,. gGoals were set of identify a process that can enable us to make geometric shapes easily. Different methods were prototyped and we settled on a mechanism that uses magnets to join the different pieces together. The downside of the form was that we needed to have fixed lengths for the product and also a limited angle formation. Using this first prototype an interview with a visually impaired instructor was conducted to support formative studies. One of the major feedbacks from this study was that the product should be designed to support easy manipulation of the product as well as the tablet application as the use of technology can be challenging for visually impaired students. Progressing the project further, the form of the product was improved which supported the making of small angles. The introduction of a conductive material around the perimeter also solved our problem of the product being recognized on the tablet, but to reduce cost of product, further iteration of form with mechanism was conducted. A ‘circuit type’ mechanism comprising of a conductive cap linked to a magnet (at one end) and a magnet connected to a rubber foot (at the other end that would be in contact with the tablet surface) with both ends connected by a copper wire was used. When the pieces are joined, it closes the circuit and touching the conductive cap makes the points are recognizableed. The user interaction with the tablet saw the creation of hinged ‘buttons’ on the holder for the tablet to aid navigation of the application. A proposed interface flow of the software was discussed in this report using the Curriculum of Ontario and California Department of Education as reference. A prototype of the software was made with a UX web based tool Proto.io which gives first hand some of the processes of the use of the product.ope

Tabletop tangible maps and diagrams for visually impaired users

En dépit de leur omniprésence et de leur rôle essentiel dans nos vies professionnelles et personnelles, les représentations graphiques, qu'elles soient numériques ou sur papier, ne sont pas accessibles aux personnes déficientes visuelles car elles ne fournissent pas d'informations tactiles. Par ailleurs, les inégalités d'accès à ces représentations ne cessent de s'accroître ; grâce au développement de représentations graphiques dynamiques et disponibles en ligne, les personnes voyantes peuvent non seulement accéder à de grandes quantités de données, mais aussi interagir avec ces données par le biais de fonctionnalités avancées (changement d'échelle, sélection des données à afficher, etc.). En revanche, pour les personnes déficientes visuelles, les techniques actuellement utilisées pour rendre accessibles les cartes et les diagrammes nécessitent l'intervention de spécialistes et ne permettent pas la création de représentations interactives. Cependant, les récentes avancées dans le domaine de l'adaptation automatique de contenus laissent entrevoir, dans les prochaines années, une augmentation de la quantité de contenus adaptés. Cette augmentation doit aller de pair avec le développement de dispositifs utilisables et abordables en mesure de supporter l'affichage de représentations interactives et rapidement modifiables, tout en étant accessibles aux personnes déficientes visuelles. Certains prototypes de recherche s'appuient sur une représentation numérique seulement : ils peuvent être instantanément modifiés mais ne fournissent que très peu de retour tactile, ce qui rend leur exploration complexe d'un point de vue cognitif et impose de fortes contraintes sur le contenu. D'autres prototypes s'appuient sur une représentation numérique et physique : bien qu'ils puissent être explorés tactilement, ce qui est un réel avantage, ils nécessitent un support tactile qui empêche toute modification rapide. Quant aux dispositifs similaires à des tablettes Braille, mais avec des milliers de picots, leur coût est prohibitif. L'objectif de cette thèse est de pallier les limitations de ces approches en étudiant comment développer des cartes et diagrammes interactifs physiques, modifiables et abordables. Pour cela, nous nous appuyons sur un type d'interface qui a rarement été étudié pour des utilisateurs déficients visuels : les interfaces tangibles, et plus particulièrement les interfaces tangibles sur table. Dans ces interfaces, des objets physiques représentent des informations numériques et peuvent être manipulés par l'utilisateur pour interagir avec le système, ou par le système lui-même pour refléter un changement du modèle numérique - on parle alors d'interfaces tangibles sur tables animées, ou actuated. Grâce à la conception, au développement et à l'évaluation de trois interfaces tangibles sur table (les Tangible Reels, la Tangible Box et BotMap), nous proposons un ensemble de solutions techniques répondant aux spécificités des interfaces tangibles pour des personnes déficientes visuelles, ainsi que de nouvelles techniques d'interaction non-visuelles, notamment pour la reconstruction d'une carte ou d'un diagramme et l'exploration de cartes de type " Pan & Zoom ". D'un point de vue théorique, nous proposons aussi une nouvelle classification pour les dispositifs interactifs accessibles.Despite their omnipresence and essential role in our everyday lives, online and printed graphical representations are inaccessible to visually impaired people because they cannot be explored using the sense of touch. The gap between sighted and visually impaired people's access to graphical representations is constantly growing due to the increasing development and availability of online and dynamic representations that not only give sighted people the opportunity to access large amounts of data, but also to interact with them using advanced functionalities such as panning, zooming and filtering. In contrast, the techniques currently used to make maps and diagrams accessible to visually impaired people require the intervention of tactile graphics specialists and result in non-interactive tactile representations. However, based on recent advances in the automatic production of content, we can expect in the coming years a growth in the availability of adapted content, which must go hand-in-hand with the development of affordable and usable devices. In particular, these devices should make full use of visually impaired users' perceptual capacities and support the display of interactive and updatable representations. A number of research prototypes have already been developed. Some rely on digital representation only, and although they have the great advantage of being instantly updatable, they provide very limited tactile feedback, which makes their exploration cognitively demanding and imposes heavy restrictions on content. On the other hand, most prototypes that rely on digital and physical representations allow for a two-handed exploration that is both natural and efficient at retrieving and encoding spatial information, but they are physically limited by the use of a tactile overlay, making them impossible to update. Other alternatives are either extremely expensive (e.g. braille tablets) or offer a slow and limited way to update the representation (e.g. maps that are 3D-printed based on users' inputs). In this thesis, we propose to bridge the gap between these two approaches by investigating how to develop physical interactive maps and diagrams that support two-handed exploration, while at the same time being updatable and affordable. To do so, we build on previous research on Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) and particularly on (actuated) tabletop TUIs, two fields of research that have surprisingly received very little interest concerning visually impaired users. Based on the design, implementation and evaluation of three tabletop TUIs (the Tangible Reels, the Tangible Box and BotMap), we propose innovative non-visual interaction techniques and technical solutions that will hopefully serve as a basis for the design of future TUIs for visually impaired users, and encourage their development and use. We investigate how tangible maps and diagrams can support various tasks, ranging from the (re)construction of diagrams to the exploration of maps by panning and zooming. From a theoretical perspective we contribute to the research on accessible graphical representations by highlighting how research on maps can feed research on diagrams and vice-versa. We also propose a classification and comparison of existing prototypes to deliver a structured overview of current research

"Clicks" Appcessory for Visually Impaired Children

Visually impaired children face challenges in learning spatial contents and materials, such as geometry. While many existing tools, such as string boards, or protractors with physical angle markers, can facilitate learning, these devices are highly specific. This problem contributes to low levels numeracy levels in visually impaired individuals. Addressing these problems, this paper presents Clicks, a digital manipulative for visually impaired children (KG to grade 3) that supports a range of geometry education tasks and ties physical adjustments to the device to a dynamic digital representation and additional audio feedback. The tool is a construction kit of simple geometric primitives that snap together to produce a range of more complex forms such as lines, angles, triangles and rectangles. When placed on a tablet computer, the geometry of these objects is sensed (via the capacitive touch screen and electrodes embedded in the objects) and audio feedback provided