Making Gestural Interaction Accessible to Visually Impaired People

International audienceAs touch screens become widely spread, making them more accessible to visually impaired people is an important task. Touch displays possess a poor accessibility for visually impaired people. One possibility to make them more accessible without sight is through gestural interaction. Yet, there are still few studies on using gestural interaction for visually impaired people. In this paper we present a comprehensive summary of existing projects investigating accessible gestural interaction. We also highlight the limits of current approaches and propose future working directions. Then, we present the design of an interactive map prototype that includes both a raised-line map overlay and gestural interaction for accessing different types of information (e.g., opening hours, distances). Preliminary results of our project show that basic gestural interaction techniques can be successfully used in interactive maps for visually impaired people

User Experience and Perceived Usability of Traditional and Multimodal Interfaces for Scientific Information Seeking

The current study was carried out to investigate users’ preferences for different input modalities (i.e., mouse or gaze) when involved in scientific information-seeking tasks. According to the task that they had to perform (i.e., abstract opening, gaze bookmarking, or keyword highlighting), participants were randomly assigned to three different conditions. They had to carry out the same task twice with both means of interaction (i.e., mouse or gaze); input modalities were counterbalanced across participants. The findings showed that users were faster and perceived the system as more pleasant when they performed the tasks using their gaze. However, when participants controlled the system with a more familiar mouse interface, they perceived the system as more accurate, easy to use, and efficient. Future studies will evaluate how increasing users’ familiarity with alternative input modalities (i.e., gaze) can affect their perception of accuracy, easiness, and efficiency

Material selection in machine design: The change of cast iron for improving the high-quality Iin woodworking

This paper analyses the possibility to substitute the gray iron, traditionally used for the production of relevant parts in woodworking machines, with ductile iron or vermicular iron. A large experimental campaign to determine the mechanical beaviour of ductile and vermicular irons respect to tensile, fatigue and fracture loads was conducted and the microstructures were also analyzed. Results show that ductile or vermicular cast iron in parts and components of machine tools could provide additional stiffness and resistance for the high precision woodworking respect to Grey Iron. A balanced utilization of these alternative irons would permit to take a full advantage by each specific propriety (as strength, hardness, weight, etc.)