Enhancing Mobile Phones for People With Visual Impairments Through Haptic Icons: The Effect of Learning Processes

Galdón, Pedro María; Madrid, R. Ignacio; Rubia-Cuestas, Ernesto J. de la; Díaz-Estrella, A.; González, Lourdes Pérez de Eulate

doi:10.1080/10400435.2012.715112

Cited by 13 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Commercial screenreading solutions for smartphones, such as Apple's VoiceOver and Android's TalkBack, have achieved widespread adoption in the US [35]. Researchers have also tackled touchscreen mobile accessibility, both through software solutions that provide interaction with the screen and audio output [3,4,6,8,13,22], and through hardware solutions such as tactile overlays [18] and haptic output [12,17]. Many eyes-free multitouch text input solutions have been proposed (e.g., [4,6,8]), although efficient accessible text input remains a challenge [2].…”

Section: Accessible Mobile Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current and future mobile and wearable device use by people with visual impairments

Malu

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

115

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With the increasing popularity of mainstream wearable devices, it is critical to assess the accessibility implications of such technologies. For people with visual impairments, who do not always need the visual display of a mobile phone, alternative means of eyes-free wearable interaction are particularly appealing. To explore the potential impacts of such technology, we conducted two studies. The first was an online survey that included 114 participants with visual impairments and 101 sighted participants; we compare the two groups in terms of current device use. The second was an interview and design probe study with 10 participants with visual impairments. Our findings expand on past work to characterize a range of trends in smartphone use and accessibility issues therein. Participants with visual impairments also responded positively to two eyes-free wearable device scenarios: a wristband or ring and a glasses-based device. Discussions on projected use of these devices suggest that small, easily accessible, and discreet wearable input could positively impact the ability of people with visual impairments to access information on the go and to participate in certain social interactions.

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Section: Accessible Mobile Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current and future mobile and wearable device use by people with visual impairments

Malu

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In a previous study [10], an application (ConTactos) was presented that associated the haptic icons and the vibration pattern using a metaphor. For instance, the vibration associated with the contact called ‘partner’ was a heartbeat, and the vibration of the contact called ‘neighbours’ was a knocking door.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvements in the learnability of smartphone haptic interfaces for visually impaired users

et al. 2019

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We report the results of a study on the learnability of haptic icons used as alerts or notifications in smartphones. The aim was to explore the feasibility of using haptic icons to create assistive technologies for people with visual impairments. We compared the performance and satisfaction of users with different visual capacities (visually impaired vs. sighted) and using different learning processes (with or without a reinforcement learning stage). The reinforcement learning stage improves the recognition rate in both types of users, although the improvement obtained by the visually impaired users is even better as their recognition rates become very similar to those obtained by the sighted users. Finally, it was observed that the better recognized haptic icons are those assigned to the most employed applications by the user.

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“…This technique is widely used on current screen readers [27]. In addition, new technologies allow users to develop a great variety of distinguishable vibrotactile patterns that can be used to identify icons without seeing or hearing them, which is suitable for visually impaired people [28][29][30].…”

Section: Vibrotactile Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the Screen Exploration of Smartphones Using Haptic Icons for Visually Impaired Users

González-Cañete

López-Rodríguez

Galdón

et al. 2021

Sensors

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We report the results of a study on the learnability of the locations of haptic icons on smartphones. The aim was to study the influence of the use of complex and different vibration patterns associated with haptic icons compared to the use of simple and equal vibrations on commercial location-assistance applications. We studied the performance of users with different visual capacities (visually impaired vs. sighted) in terms of the time taken to learn the icons’ locations and the icon recognition rate. We also took into consideration the users’ satisfaction with the application developed to perform the study. The experiments concluded that the use of complex and different instead of simple and equal vibration patterns obtains better recognition rates. This improvement is even more noticeable for visually impaired users, who obtain results comparable to those achieved by sighted users.

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Enhancing Mobile Phones for People With Visual Impairments Through Haptic Icons: The Effect of Learning Processes

Cited by 13 publications

References 24 publications

Current and future mobile and wearable device use by people with visual impairments

Current and future mobile and wearable device use by people with visual impairments

Improvements in the learnability of smartphone haptic interfaces for visually impaired users

Improving the Screen Exploration of Smartphones Using Haptic Icons for Visually Impaired Users

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