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Designing Wearable Haptic Information Displays for People with Vision Impairments

Published: 15 January 2015 Publication History

Abstract

With the ubiquity of wearable computing, an important and emerging challenge is to understand how to design wearable information displays for non-visual, non-auditory interaction. This is particularly relevant to the design of accessible technologies for people with vision impairments. Working towards this aim, we developed a smartwatch prototype that uses variable friction surface haptics to test initial design concepts. Through interviews and iterative prototyping with seven blind users, we identified three key use cases for a haptic smartwatch as well as embodied conceptual models for presenting haptic information. We found that a physical clock face, compass, and numerical keypad are productive representations for presenting information haptically, and these models build on existing tactile and spatial understandings of our target user group.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)A Wearable Haptic Interface for Assisting Blind and Visually Impaired Students in Learning Algebraic EquationsExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585815(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Understanding Tabletop Games Accessibility: Exploring Board and Card Gaming Experiences of People who are Blind and Low VisionProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3490149.3501327(1-17)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2022
  • (2021)ColorWatch: Color Perceptual Spatial Tactile Interface for People with Visual ImpairmentsElectronics10.3390/electronics1005059610:5(596)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2021
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    TEI '15: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
    January 2015
    766 pages
    ISBN:9781450333054
    DOI:10.1145/2677199
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 15 January 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. blind
    2. surface haptics
    3. variable friction
    4. watch

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    TEI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 63 of 222 submissions, 28%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 393 of 1,367 submissions, 29%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)A Wearable Haptic Interface for Assisting Blind and Visually Impaired Students in Learning Algebraic EquationsExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585815(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2022)Understanding Tabletop Games Accessibility: Exploring Board and Card Gaming Experiences of People who are Blind and Low VisionProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3490149.3501327(1-17)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2022
    • (2021)ColorWatch: Color Perceptual Spatial Tactile Interface for People with Visual ImpairmentsElectronics10.3390/electronics1005059610:5(596)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2021
    • (2020)Tactile Board: A Multimodal Augmentative and Alternative Communication Device for Individuals with DeafblindnessProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3428361.3428465(223-228)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2020
    • (2020)Towards a Material Landscape of TUIs, Through the Lens of the TEI Proceedings 2008-2019Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3374920.3374944(95-110)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2020
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    • (2019)Feeling FireworksProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300659(1-11)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2018)TacttooProceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3242587.3242645(365-378)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2018
    • (2017)PyroProceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3126594.3126615(553-563)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2017
    • (2016)Loaded DiceProceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/2971485.2971524(1-10)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2016
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