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Visually impaired children have a great disadvantage in the modern society since their ability to use modern computer technology is limited due to inappropriate user interfaces. The aim of the work presented in this paper was to develop a multimodal software architecture and applications to support visually impaired children and to enable them to interact equally with sighted children in learning situations. The architecture is based on software agents, and has specific support for visual, auditory and haptic interaction. It has been used successfully with different groups of 7-8-year-old and 12-year-old visually impaired children. In this paper we focus on the enabling software technology and interaction techniques aimed to realize our goal.

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Modern information technology allows us to seek out new ways to support the computer use and communication of disabled people. With the aid of new interaction technologies and techniques visually impaired and sighted users can collaborate, for example, in the classroom situations. The main goal of the MICOLE project was to create a software architecture that makes it easier for the developers to create multimodal multi-user applications. The framework is based on interconnected software agents. The hardware used in this study includes VTPlayer Mouse which has two built-in Braille displays, and several haptic devices such as PHANToM Omni, PHANToM Desktop and PHANToM Premium. We also used the SpaceMouse and various audio setups in the applications. In this paper we present a software architecture, a set of software agents, and an example of using the architecture. The example application shown is an electric circuit application that follows the single-user with many devices scenario. The application uses a PHANToM and a VTPlayer Mouse together with visual and audio feedback to make the electric circuits understandable through touch.