Evaluation of the Accessibility of Touchscreens for Individuals who are Blind or have Low Vision: Where to go from here

Touchscreen devices are well integrated into daily life and can be found in both personal and public spaces, but the inclusion of accessible features and interfaces continues to lag behind technology’s exponential advancement. This thesis aims to explore the experiences of individuals who are blind or have low vision (BLV) while interacting with non-tactile touchscreens, such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, coffee machines, smart home devices, kiosks, ATM machines, and more. The goal of this research is to create a set of recommended guidelines that can be used in designing and developing either personal devices or shared public technologies with accessible touchscreens. This study consists of three phases, the first being an exploration of existing research related to accessibility of non-tactile touchscreens, followed by semi-structured interviews of 20 BLV individuals to address accessibility gaps in previous work, and finally a survey in order to get a better understanding of the experiences, thoughts, and barriers for BLV individuals while interacting with touchscreen devices. Some of the common themes found include: loss of independence, lack or uncertainty of accessibility features, and the need and desire for improvements. Common approaches for interaction were: the use of high markings, asking for sighted assistance, and avoiding touchscreen devices. These findings were used to create a set of recommended guidelines which include a universal feature setup, the setup of accessibility settings, universal headphone jack position, tactile feedback, ask for help button, situational lighting, and the consideration of time

mBrailler: Multimodal Braille Keyboard for Android

Touchscreen devices have paved their way into the mobile scene, presenting a wide set of possibilities but a comparable number of new challenges, particularly for people who are blind. While these devices have a small number of tactile cues, such as buttons, they provide the opportunity to create novel interaction techniques. In this paper, we present mBrailler. mBrailler is a mobile braille keyboard that combines the benefits of physical keyboards (speed and accuracy) and gestural interfaces (flexibility and personalization). We built an 8-button Braille keyboard that can be attached to the back of mainstream smartphones allowing fast and familiar chorded input. On the other hand,the touchscreen enables thumb entered gestures for more complex text editing operations, such as caret movement, text selection, copy, and paste. This project combines the tactile benefits of Braille typewriters with the customization of smartphone applications. We aim to provide a more efficient and effective typing experience for blind users, thus increasing their productivity with current mobile devices

Touchscreen Smartphone User Interfaces for Older Adults

Today the world is experiencing the rapid growth of the older population. The number of older adults who own digital devices such as smartphones is increasing as well. The current smartphone user interfaces, however, appear not optimized for older adults. When designing smartphone user interfaces for older adults, we must consider their age-related physical and cognitive changes, which most likely affect their user experience. The present paper explores smartphone user interface guidelines for older adults and heuristics for evaluating the usability of Android launchers for older adults as well as a research study that developed an Android launcher for older adults

ACCESSIBILITY IN CONTEXT: UNDERSTANDING THE TRULY MOBILE EXPERIENCE OF USERS WITH MOTOR IMPAIRMENTS

Touchscreen smartphones are becoming broadly adopted by the US population. Ensuring that these devices are accessible for people with disabilities is critical for equal access. For people with motor impairments, the vast majority of studies on touchscreen mobile accessibility have taken place in the laboratory. These studies show that while touchscreen input offers advantages, such as requiring less strength than physical buttons, it also presents accessibility challenges, such as the difficulty of tapping on small targets or making multitouch gestures. However, because of the focus on controlled lab settings, past work does not provide an understanding of contextual factors that impact smartphone use in everyday life, and the activities these devices enable for people with motor impairments. To investigate these issues, this thesis research includes two studies, first, an in-person study with four participants with motor impairments that included diary entries and an observational session, and, secondarily, an online survey with nine respondents. Using case study analysis for the in-person participants, we found that mobile devices have the potential to help motor-impaired users reduce the physical effort required for everyday tasks (e.g., turning on a TV, checking transit accessibility in advance), that challenges in touchscreen input still exist, and that the impact of situational impairments to this population can be impeding. The online survey results confirm these findings, for example, highlighting the difficulty of text input, particularly when users are out and mobile rather than at home. Based on these findings, future research should focus on the enhancement of current touchscreen input, exploring the potential of wearable devices for mobile accessibility, and designing more applications and services to improve access to physical world

Voice-For-Blind: An Utilizable Email Client for Visually Impaired Users

For people who are sighted, visually impaired, or blind, electronic mail has evolved into a vital tool for collaboration and communication. However, the current email-related activities on smartphones cause a number of problems due to insufficient mapping of haptic feedback, complex text-entry layouts, a variety of screen sizes and orientations, illogical ordering of navigational items, and inconsistent interface design. The Components on touch-screen interfaces that can't be seen can be difficult for blind people to precisely access, making it difficult for them to carry out common mailing tasks such as receiving, sending, organising, managing spam, deleting, searching, and filtering. Due to these issues, blind people are having trouble using smartphones and completing a number of tasks related to email. Junk and Spam email frustration and cognitive overload are additional effects. We proposed Voice-For-Blind an utilizable email client that is friendly to visully imapired individuals to get around the obstacles relating to the usability and accessibility of smartphone-related mailing activities. 38 blind participants in an empirical study who carried out 14 email-related tasks are used to evaluate the proposed email client. The outcomes of this prototype's use demonstrate an elevated accuracy in complettion, improved user experience, and improved touchscreen interface control for basic tasks like email management. The findings show that Voice-For-Blind is an email client that is inclusive of accessibility, giving blind individuals an enhanced user - interface experience and reducing cognitive load when managing emails