No-Look Notes: Accessible Eyes-Free Multi-touch Text Entry

Abstract

Abstract. Mobile devices with multi-touch capabilities are becoming increasingly common, largely due to the success of the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. While there have been some advances in touchscreen accessibility for blind people, touchscreens remain inaccessible in many ways. Recent research has demonstrated that there is great potential in leveraging multi-touch capabilities to increase the accessibility of touchscreen applications for blind people. We have created No-Look Notes, an eyes-free text entry system that uses multi-touch input and audio output. No-Look Notes was implemented on Apple's iPhone platform. We have performed a within-subjects (n = 10) user study of both No-Look Notes and the text entry component of Apple's VoiceOver, the recently released official accessibility component on the iPhone. No-Look Notes significantly outperformed VoiceOver in terms of speed, accuracy and user preference.

Pointing for non-visual orientation and navigation

“…This design allows the user to slide her finger over the screen to find the right button without accidentally selecting something unwanted. In contrast to the accessibility design used in the Apple iPhone or in [9] this type of screen interaction requires no double tapping or special multi touch gestures.…”

"I can do everything but see!" -- How People with Vision Impairments Negotiate their Abilities in Social Contexts

“…Examples include systems to support spatial awareness and navigation [12,13,21,22,26,62], to aid the identification of specific objects or their characteristics [5,14,15], to assist the detection and identification of text [17], barcodes [31], signs [18,51], or currency [32], and help with handwriting [43]. For digital user interfaces, we further find many applications for the input and recognition of Braille on touchscreens [3,27,34,52], and alternatives for text-entry or navigating digital menus [7,38,24,25,63]. These technologies have been oriented towards assisting practical, well-defined functional tasks that are often treated in isolation from the wider social contexts in which they occur.…”

Designing Multimodal Mobile Interaction for a Text Messaging Application for Visually Impaired Users

“…Guerreiro et al (2008a,b) developed NavTouch, a technique based on directional strokes to navigate through the alphabet in a way that decreased the cognitive load of memorizing the position of where the characters are located on the screen. Bonner et al (2010) presented a novel solution for touchscreen's accessibility issues when used by visually impaired people. No-look Notes is an eyes-free text entry system that uses multitouch input and auditory feedback.…”