3 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Understanding and Creating Accessible Information Representations for People with Blindness
Visual graphics present an access barrier to participating in online communities, education, and employment for people who are blind and visually impaired. Overcoming this barrier requires adapting visual content to nonvisual accessible representations. Most existing accessible representations of visual graphics are slow and cumbersome to create and render, and the output is often difficult to interpret without help from a sighted individual. This dissertation presents an approach to redesigning accessible graphics to enable blind people to access complex graphical content. I developed two prototypes that introduce new techniques for representing visual information nonvisually: WeeGee, a kinesthetic interface that enables blind users to access visual information in live lectures through audio-kinetic representations; RoboGraphics, a haptic interface that combines tactile and kinesthetic stimuli to enable blind users to interpret and interact with charts, diagrams, and stories effectively. In addition, I conducted a formative research study to explore the factors that influence the quality of accessible information and ways in which the accessibility of information can be improved through collaborations between sighted and blind individuals. Taken together, this work presents an approach to authoring and rendering nonvisual graphics that supports blind users’ information access needs and preferences.The thesis of this dissertation is: Tools and methods, designed to support the cognitive and perceptual abilities of blind users, can enable people who are blind and visually impaired to effectively interpret and even author nonvisual representations of visual content.</p