Enlightened: the art of finger reading*

Abstract

For some forty years the eye-tracking technology has facilitated the study of eye movement patterns for sighted people during reading and other visual activities. Today -a newly developed automatic finger tracking system makes it possible to reconstruct blind peopleÕs tactile reading in real time and to automatically analyze finger movements during Braille text reading and tactile picture recognition. In this case study, the very first automatic finger tracking system is presented together with results indicating how Braille readers can increase awareness of their own reading styles. This opens up for future Braille education to become more evidence-based and, at the same time, for a new research field: contrastive studies of language in its auditory, visual and tactile manifestations.

Hand movement investigations inspired by Yarbus

“…These latter studies, although interesting, are not directly relevant for the current study (e.g. [2,5]). …”

Multi-touch Interaction Data Analysis System (MIDAS) for 2-D tactile display research

“…To obtain actual motion data from these videos, Bertelson et al (1985) manually transcribed the position of the main reading finger of each hand every 1/10th of a second, entering the grid coordinates of stimuli into an actogram; in their words, this was a "very tedious procedure." Millar (2003), Breidegard et al (2008), and Morash and van der Velden (2016) also filmed, but from underneath, using a transparent stimulus placed on a clear plastic sheet through which touches were made readily apparent by the whitening of the finger pads as they pressed on the surface.…”

“…complexity of behaviors involved in the interaction with tactile graphics as compared to reading braille. Although braille is a 2-D display at the level of letters and a whole text, reading may be characterized as a "1.5-D" process with the linear reading of lines of characters only punctuated with returns and movements down the page (Aranyanak & Reilly, 2013;Breidegard et al, 2008;Millar, 2003). So, many questions remain open.…”

Disclosing the Secrets of Braille Reading—Computer-Aided Registration and Interactive Analysis

“…1 The current interdisciplinary pilot project (involving experts from computer engineering, rehabilitation technology, linguistics, cognition, education, and art) is the first to utilize a computer-based on-line registration of finger movements during Braille reading and an interactive computeraided analysis of the results.…”