Assisting people with visual impairments in aiming at a target on a large wall-mounted display

• Published in: International journal of human-computer studies 2016-02, Vol.86, p.109-120
• Main Authors: Kim, Kibum, Ren, Xiangshi, Choi, Seungmoon, Tan, Hong Z.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air gesture; Assistive technology; Blind; Haptic; Large vertical display; Visual impairment
• ISSN: 1071-5819; 1095-9300
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.10.002

Large interactive displays have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, but these displays are designed for the needs of sighted people. In this paper, we specifically address assisting people with visual impairments to aim at a target on a large wall-mounted display. We introduce a novel haptic device, which explores the use of vibrotactile feedback in blind user search strategies on a large wall-mounted display. Using mid-air gestures aided by vibrotactile feedback, we compared three target-aiming techniques: Random (baseline) and two novel techniques – Cruciform and Radial. The results of our two experiments show that visually impaired participants can find a target significantly faster with the Cruciform and Radial techniques than with the Random technique. In addition, they can retrieve information on a large display about twice as fast by augmenting speech feedback with haptic feedback in using the Radial technique. Although a large number of studies have been done on assistive interfaces for people who have visual impairments, very few studies have been done on large vertical display applications for them. In a broader sense, this work will be a stepping-stone for further research on interactive large public display technologies for users who are visually impaired. [Display omitted] •A directional vibrotactile feedback for people with visual impairments is proposed.•Two experiments for target-aiming tasks by blind participants are conducted.•Converting a 2D search space to linear searches improves target-aiming performance.•Augmenting speech with vibrotactile feedback improves target-aiming performance.