Abstract. The emergence of touch screen devices poses a new set of challenges regarding text-entry. These are more obvious when considering blind people, as touch screens lack the tactile feedback they are used to when interacting with devices. The available solutions to enable non-visual text-entry resort to a wide set of targets, complex interaction techniques or unfamiliar layouts. We propose BrailleType, a text-entry method based on the Braille alphabet. BrailleType avoids multi-touch gestures in favor of a more simple single-finger interaction, featuring few and large targets. We performed a user study with fifteen blind subjects, to assess this method's performance against Apple's VoiceOver approach. BrailleType although slower, was significantly easier and less error prone. Results suggest that the target users would have a smoother adaptation to BrailleType than to other more complex methods.

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Background: Gait impairments are common and highly disabling for Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. With the development of technology-based tools, it is now possible to measure the spatiotemporal parameters of gait with a reduced margin of error, thereby enabling a more accurate characterization of impairment. Objective: To summarize and critically appraise the characteristics of technology-based gait analysis in PD and to provide mean and standard deviation values for spatiotemporal gait parameters. Methods: A systematic review was conducted using the databases CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, and PEDro from their inception to September 2019 to identify all observational and experimental studies conducted in PD or atypical parkinsonism that included a technology-based gait assessment. Two reviewers independently screened citations and extracted data. Results: We included 95 studies, 82.1% (n = 78) reporting a laboratory gait assessment and 61.1% (n = 58 studies) using a wearable sensor. The most frequently reported parameters were gait velocity, stride and step length, and cadence. A statistically significant difference was found when comparing the mean values of each of these parameters in PD patients versus healthy controls. No statistically significant differences were found in the mean value of the parameters when comparing wearable versus non-wearable sensors, different types of wearable sensors, and different sensor locations. Conclusion: Our results provide useful information for performing objective technology-based gait assessment in PD, as well as mean values to better interpret the results. Further studies should explore the clinical meaningfulness of each parameter and how they behave in a free-living context and throughout disease progression.

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Touch screen mobile devices bear the promise of endless leisure, communication, and productivity opportunities to motor-impaired people. Indeed, users with residual capacities in their upper extremities could benefit immensely from a device with no demands regarding strength. However, the precision required to effectively select a target without physical cues creates problems to people with limited motor abilities. Our goal is to thoroughly study mobile touch screen interfaces, their characteristics and parameterizations, thus providing the tools for informed interface design for motor-impaired users. We present an evaluation performed with 15 tetraplegic people that allowed us to understand the factors limiting user performance within a comprehensive set of interaction techniques (Tapping, Crossing, Exiting and Directional Gesturing) and parameterizations (Position, Size and Direction). Our results show that for each technique, accuracy and precision vary across different areas of the screen and directions, in a way that is directly dependent on target size. Overall, Tapping was both the preferred technique and among the most effective. This proves that it is possible to design inclusive unified interfaces for motor-impaired and able-bodied users once the correct parameterization or adaptability is assured.

Mobile touch-screen interfaces and tetraplegic people have a controversial connection. While users with residual capacities in their upper extremities could benefit immensely from a device which does not require strength to operate, the precision needed to effectively select a target bars these people access to countless communication, leisure and productivity opportunities. Insightful projects attempted to bridge this gap via either special hardware or particular interface tweaks. Still, we need further insight into the challenges and the frontiers separating failure from success for such applications to take hold. This paper discusses an evaluation conducted with 15 tetraplegic people to learn the limits to their performance within a comprehensive set of interaction methods. We then present the results concerning a particular interaction technique: Tapping. Results show that performance varies across different areas of the screen whose distribution changes with target size.

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