Enabling audio-haptics

This thesis deals with possible solutions to facilitate orientation, navigation and overview of non-visual interfaces and virtual environments with the help of sound in combination with force-feedback haptics. Applications with haptic force-feedback, s

A Bi-directional Bi-Lingual Translation Braille-Text System

AbstractVisually impaired people are an integral part of the society. However, their disabilities have made them to have less access to computers, the Internet, and high quality educational software than the people with clear vision. Consequently, they have not been able to improve on their own knowledge, and have significant influence and impact on the economic, commercial, and educational ventures in the society. One way to narrow this widening gap and see a reversal of this trend is to develop a system, within their economic reach, and which will empower them to communicate freely and widely using the Internet or any other information infrastructure. Over time, the Braille system has been used by the visually impaired for communication and contact with the outside world. Translation between one language and another, using the Braille coding system, has been limited, problematic, and in many cases, one-directional.This paper describes an Arabic Braille bi-directional and bi-lingual translation/editor system that does not need expensive equipments. With appropriate rule file for any other languages, this system can be generalized to facilitate communication among literate people regardless of their disabilities (visually impaired or sighted), income, languages, and geographical locations

Instructional eLearning technologies for the vision impaired

The principal sensory modality employed in learning is vision, and that not only increases the difficulty for vision impaired students from accessing existing educational media but also the new and mostly visiocentric learning materials being offered through on-line delivery mechanisms. Using as a reference Certified Cisco Network Associate (CCNA) and IT Essentials courses, a study has been made of tools that can access such on-line systems and transcribe the materials into a form suitable for vision impaired learning. Modalities employed included haptic, tactile, audio and descriptive text. How such a multi-modal approach can achieve equivalent success for the vision impaired is demonstrated. However, the study also shows the limits of the current understanding of human perception, especially with respect to comprehending two and three dimensional objects and spaces when there is no recourse to vision

Evaluating Cisco e-learning courses modified for the vision impaired

The needs of vision impaired students are quite different to sighted students. The increasing use of e-learning means higher education must move to multi-modal user interfaces in order to make e-learning materials accessible to all students. E-Learning materials (particularly in the sciences and technology) are predominantly visual, presented via computer keyboard and screen. Software and devices designed to aid the visin impaired are unable to decipher most images and visual-centric objects contained in e-learning materials.This paper discusses a project undertaken over the past two years to modify the content and presentation of Cisco certification e-learning courses to enable accessibility by vision impaired and blind students. These modifications necessitated rewriting the learning materials so they could be effectively presented via multi-modal user interfaces to vision impaired students, involving speech, aufio, haptics and force-feed devices and methods.Evaluatin of sections of the project by the vision impaired students using a model based upon Stufflebeam's CIPP model and Kirkpatrick's Four-Level training program evaluation model has been carried out and the results are presented

Designing a New Tactile Display Technology and its Disability Interactions

People with visual impairments have a strong desire for a refreshable tactile interface that can provide immediate access to full page of Braille and tactile graphics. Regrettably, existing devices come at a considerable expense and remain out of reach for many. The exorbitant costs associated with current tactile displays stem from their intricate design and the multitude of components needed for their construction. This underscores the pressing need for technological innovation that can enhance tactile displays, making them more accessible and available to individuals with visual impairments. This research thesis delves into the development of a novel tactile display technology known as Tacilia. This technology's necessity and prerequisites are informed by in-depth qualitative engagements with students who have visual impairments, alongside a systematic analysis of the prevailing architectures underpinning existing tactile display technologies. The evolution of Tacilia unfolds through iterative processes encompassing conceptualisation, prototyping, and evaluation. With Tacilia, three distinct products and interactive experiences are explored, empowering individuals to manually draw tactile graphics, generate digitally designed media through printing, and display these creations on a dynamic pin array display. This innovation underscores Tacilia's capability to streamline the creation of refreshable tactile displays, rendering them more fitting, usable, and economically viable for people with visual impairments

Interactive Accessibility for the Visually Impaired

To help those visitors with visual impairments access the experiences and content presented in the light area in Launch Pad (a hands-on gallery at the Science Museum London), two exhibit extensions were developed. Exhibit extensions are tools that allow visitors to interact with the phenomena of an exhibit on a personal level. These exhibit extensions dealt with the reflective abilities of light and the color spectrum of light, and allow visually impaired visitors to conceptualize the scientific principles involved through tactile and auditory means. The extensions also bridge the gap in the understanding between those who experience visual phenomena and those whose sight is limited. The design of the exhibits was supported by research into techniques for educating the visually impaired

Computer Entertainment Technologies for the Visually Impaired: An Overview

Over the last years, works related to accessible technologies have increased both in number and in quality. This work presents a series of articles which explore different trends in the field of accessible video games for the blind or visually impaired. Reviewed articles are distributed in four categories covering the following subjects: (1) video game design and architecture, (2) video game adaptations, (3) accessible games as learning tools or treatments and (4) navigation and interaction in virtual environments. Current trends in accessible game design are also analysed, and data is presented regarding keyword use and thematic evolution over time. As a conclusion, a relative stagnation in the field of human-computer interaction for the blind is detected. However, as the video game industry is becoming increasingly interested in accessibility, new research opportunities are starting to appear

Developing an interactive overview for non-visual exploration of tabular numerical information

This thesis investigates the problem of obtaining overview information from complex tabular numerical data sets non-visually. Blind and visually impaired people need to access and analyse numerical data, both in education and in professional occupations. Obtaining an overview is a necessary first step in data analysis, for which current non-visual data accessibility methods offer little support. This thesis describes a new interactive parametric sonification technique called High-Density Sonification (HDS), which facilitates the process of extracting overview information from the data easily and efficiently by rendering multiple data points as single auditory events. Beyond obtaining an overview of the data, experimental studies showed that the capabilities of human auditory perception and cognition to extract meaning from HDS representations could be used to reliably estimate relative arithmetic mean values within large tabular data sets. Following a user-centred design methodology, HDS was implemented as the primary form of overview information display in a multimodal interface called TableVis. This interface supports the active process of interactive data exploration non-visually, making use of proprioception to maintain contextual information during exploration (non-visual focus+context), vibrotactile data annotations (EMA-Tactons) that can be used as external memory aids to prevent high mental workload levels, and speech synthesis to access detailed information on demand. A series of empirical studies was conducted to quantify the performance attained in the exploration of tabular data sets for overview information using TableVis. This was done by comparing HDS with the main current non-visual accessibility technique (speech synthesis), and by quantifying the effect of different sizes of data sets on user performance, which showed that HDS resulted in better performance than speech, and that this performance was not heavily dependent on the size of the data set. In addition, levels of subjective workload during exploration tasks using TableVis were investigated, resulting in the proposal of EMA-Tactons, vibrotactile annotations that the user can add to the data in order to prevent working memory saturation in the most demanding data exploration scenarios. An experimental evaluation found that EMA-Tactons significantly reduced mental workload in data exploration tasks. Thus, the work described in this thesis provides a basis for the interactive non-visual exploration of a broad range of sizes of numerical data tables by offering techniques to extract overview information quickly, performing perceptual estimations of data descriptors (relative arithmetic mean) and managing demands on mental workload through vibrotactile data annotations, while seamlessly linking with explorations at different levels of detail and preserving spatial data representation metaphors to support collaboration with sighted users