Despite growing awareness of the accessibility issues surrounding touch screen use by blind people, designers still face challenges when creating accessible touch screen interfaces. One major stumbling block is a lack of understanding about how blind people actually use touch screens. We conducted two user studies that compared how blind people and sighted people use touch screen gestures. First, we conducted a gesture elicitation study in which 10 blind and 10 sighted people invented gestures to perform common computing tasks on a tablet PC. We found that blind people have different gesture preferences than sighted people, including preferences for edge-based gestures and gestures that involve tapping virtual keys on a keyboard. Second, we conducted a performance study in which the same participants performed a set of reference gestures. We found significant differences in the speed, size, and shape of gestures performed by blind people versus those performed by sighted people. Our results suggest new design guidelines for accessible touch screen interfaces.

https://faculty.washington.edu/wobbrock/pubs/chi-11.05.pdf

Usable gestures for blind people: understanding preference and performance

This paper describes work to provide mappings between X-based graphical interfaces and auditory interfaces. In our system, dubbed Mercator, this mapping is transparent to applications. The primary motivation for this work is to provide accessibility to graphical applications for users who are blind or visually impaired. We describe the design of an auditory interface which simulates many of the features of graphical interfaces. We then describe the architecture we have built to model and transform graphical interfaces. Finally, we conclude with some indications of future research for improving our translation mechanisms and for creating an auditory “desktop” environment.

/pdf/mapping-guis-to-auditory-interfaces-2s9f420vur.pdf

Mapping GUIs to auditory interfaces

Publisher Summary
There are a myriad of opportunities for using sound in computers. Many of the most obvious involve using speech as input or output. This chapter focuses on ways to use non-speech audio in the interface—use of sound that may be less obvious but as powerful as those involving speech. Non-speech audio can be used in computers as they are used in the everyday world. The chapter starts with three examples of experimental auditory interfaces in order to ground the discussion and give an idea of the space of audio interface design. Then, the chapter discusses why sound is a valuable resource for interaction design and speculates why sound has not been used more extensively. Following this, a variety of ways to think about and manipulate sound are also discussed in the chapter. Finally, the chapter reviews systems that have used non-speech audio to convey information.

Chapter 42 – Auditory Interfaces

While graphical user interfaces have gained much popularity in recent years, there are situations when the need to use existing applications in a nonvisual modality is clear. Examples of such situations include the use of applications on hand-held devices with limited screen space (or even no screen space, as in the case of telephones), or users with visual impairments.We have developed an architecture capable of transforming the graphical interfaces of existing applications into powerful intuitive nonvisual interfaces. Our system, called Mercator, provides new input and output techniques for working in the nonvisual domain. Navigation is accomplished by traversing a hierarchical tree representation of the interface structure. Output is primarily auditory, although other output modalities (such as tactile) can be used as well. The mouse, an inherently visually-oriented device, is replaced by keyboard and voice interaction.Our system is currently in its third major revision. We have gained insight into both the nonvisual interfaces presented by our system and the architecture necessary to construct such interfaces. This architecture uses several novel techniques to efficiently and flexibly map graphical interfaces into new modalities.

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~keith/pubs/merc-uist94.pdf

An architecture for transforming graphical interfaces

oriented textual output displayed on the screen was stored in the computer’s framebuffer. An access program could simply copy the contents of the framebuffer to a speech synthesizer, a Braille terminal or a Braille printer. Conversely, the contents of the framebuffer for a graphical interface are simple pixel values. To provide access to GUIs, it is necessary to intercept application output before it reaches the screen. This intercepted application output becomes the basis for an offscreen model of the application interface.The information in the off-screen model is then used to create alternative, accessible interfaces.

/pdf/auditory-presentation-of-graphical-user-interfaces-192wljojow.pdf

Auditory Presentation of Graphical User Interfaces

The use of computers in the workplace has increased our opportunity to open new avenues of employment for handicapped people. However, the full potential of this opportunity is far from being realized. In fact, as Lawrence Scadden points out, some design decisions aimed at improving the interface for the non-disabled user are making those same systems less accessible to those that are handicapped. (" Direct Manipulation " interfaces, for example, present real problems of access for the visually impaired, compared to more traditional keyboard-based interaction.) Our hope for this panel is to increase designers' awareness of issues pertarning to the interface of systems used by physically handicapped indrviduals. We have four main objectives: Director Trace R &D Centre Waisman Center 1500 Highland Avenue Madison Wisconsin 1. To present a basic taxonomy of motor, sensory, and cognitive disabilities and how they affect performance. 2. To familiarize designers with what special interfacing devices are available to the handicapped user, and where these devices and information about them are available. 3. To present the case for a standard interface (hardware and software) for alternative devices on future computers, and to inform the CHI community about efforts in this direction being undertaken by the Department of Education. 4. To help designers better understand the impact of how their decisions will inhibit or facilitate the use of their systems by handicapped users. Within the context of the panel, it is clear that these issues can only be addressed at a very general level The best that we can hope for is to raise the general level of awareness of the issues, and provide pointers to more detailed sources There are two marn sections to the remainder of this written presentation First, we present some Introductory statements of position. Second, we provrde pointers to sources of additional literature and technologies. Innovations in interface technology have advanced to the level where even the most severely physically disabled person can now operate a computer. A few years ago, rehabilitation professionals were asking, " How could a disabled person control a computer? " , and " What could they do once they achieved control? ". Today, a multitude of specialized input systems enable disabled persons to access computers, and they can potentially engage in the same activities as everyone else and a few special applications such as augmentative communication. Now the key question is, " How can someone who …

Human interface design and the handicapped user

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Human interface design and the handicapped user