Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display

Tactile displays are now becoming available in a form that can be easily used in a user interface. This paper describes a new form of tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured, abstract messages that can be used to communicate messages non-visually. A range of different parameters can be used for Tacton construction including: frequency, amplitude and duration of a tactile pulse, plus other parameters such as rhythm and location. Tactons have the potential to improve interaction in a range of different areas, particularly where the visual display is overloaded, limited in size or not available, such as interfaces for blind people or in mobile and wearable devices. This paper describes Tactons, the parameters used to construct them and some possible ways to design them. Examples of where Tactons might prove useful in user interfaces are given

Non-visual information display using tactons

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of different parameters can be used to construct Tactons, e.g.: frequency, amplitude, waveform and duration of a tactile pulse, plus body location. Tactons have the potential to improve interaction in a range of different areas, particularly where the visual display is overloaded, limited in size or not available, such as interfaces for blind people or on mobile and wearable devices

Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the current methods of accessing them are highly visually mediated. Representing data using audio feedback is a common method of making data more accessible, but methods of navigating and accessing the data are often serial in nature and laborious. Tactile or haptic displays could be used to provide additional feedback to support a point-and-click type interaction for the visually impaired. A requirements capture conducted with sight impaired computer users produced a review of current accessibility technologies, and guidelines were extracted for using tactile feedback to aid navigation. The results of a qualitative evaluation with a prototype interface are also presented. Providing an absolute position input device and tactile feedback allowed the users to explore the graph using tactile and proprioceptive cues in a manner analogous to point-and-click techniques

ENHANCING USERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH SMART MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

The aim of this thesis is to investigate mobile guides for use with smartphones. Mobile guides have been successfully used to provide information, personalisation and navigation for the user. The researcher also wanted to ascertain how and in what ways mobile guides can enhance users' experience. This research involved designing and developing web based applications to run on smartphones. Four studies were conducted, two of which involved testing of the particular application. The applications tested were a museum mobile guide application and a university mobile guide mapping application. Initial testing examined the prototype work for the ‘Chronology of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah’ application. The results were used to assess the potential of using similar mobile guides in Brunei Darussalam’s museums. The second study involved testing of the ‘Kent LiveMap’ application for use at the University of Kent. Students at the university tested this mapping application, which uses crowdsourcing of information to provide live data. The results were promising and indicate that users' experience was enhanced when using the application. Overall results from testing and using the two applications that were developed as part of this thesis show that mobile guides have the potential to be implemented in Brunei Darussalam’s museums and on campus at the University of Kent. However, modifications to both applications are required to fulfil their potential and take them beyond the prototype stage in order to be fully functioning and commercially viable

Academic use of smart phones for social development of visually impaired students of University of Karachi: A study of android Smartphone applications by VI students.

Smart phones are very common in Pakistan since last 5 years. Smart phone is a mobile phone that performs many of the functions of a computer, typically having a touch screen interface, internet access, and an operating system capable of running downloaded apps. (Woyke,2014) states that the first true smart phone actually made its debut earlier in 1992. Smart phone has now captured the human life at a very large extent. Smart phone has become a part of daily, professional, social and academic life. Students are dependent on smart phones for their academic and social activities. It could be used for dictionary, for browsing and searching a piece of information or interacting with others for social needs. Visually impaired refers to the condition in which a person is partially or completely blind. The VI students have equal information and social needs as sighted people. VI students are a part of society and play an equal role in the social development of a society. Smart phones are helpful in routine academic tasks and social activities of the students. It is difficult task to satisfy their immediate information and social needs using an android Smartphone. The focus of this study is to show the academic use of smart phone for the social development of visually impaired students of faculty of social science and faculty of Education of University of Karachi. There are 24 departments in these faculties and more than 20 VI students are getting education from these departments. This study aims to discuss the Applications of android Smartphone used for academic purpose and their social development. VI students of faculty of social science and education, university of Karachi identify some specific apps during data collection. These applications will be helpful to increase the accessibility of Smartphone among VI students. The study identified that smart phone is very useful for academic and social activities

Understanding the IT-Related Attitudes and Needs of Persons with Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Case Study

In the UK, 20 per cent of people aged 75 years and over are living with sight loss; this percentage is expected to increase as the population ages (RNIB, 2011). Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the UK’s leading cause of severe visual impairment amongst the elderly. It accounts for 16,000 blind/partial sight registrations per year and is the leading cause of blindness among people aged 55 years and older in western countries (Bressler, 2004). Our ultimate goal is to develop an assistive mobile application to support accurate and convenient diet data collection on which basis to then provide customised dietary advice and recommendations in order to help support individuals with AMD to mitigate their ongoing risk and retard the progression of the disease. In this paper, we focus on our knowledge elicitation activities conducted to help us achieve a deep and relevant understanding of our target user group. We report on qualitative findings from focus groups and observational studies with persons with AMD and interviews with domain experts which enable us to fully appreciate the impact that technology may have on our intended users as well as to inform the design and structure of our proposed mobile assistive application