Multimodal interfaces and applications for visually impaired children

Abstract

Applications specially designated for visually handicapped children are rare. Additionally, this group of users is often not able to obtain the needed applications and machinery to their homes due to the expenses. However, the impairment these children have should not preclude them from the benefits and possibilities computers have to offer. In a modern society services and applications that open up along with the computers can be considered as a necessity to its citizens. This is the core issue of our research interest; to test various haptic devices and design usable applications to give this special user group the possibility to become acquainted with the computers so that they are encouraged to use and benefit from the technology also later in their lives.Similar research to ours where the haptic sensation is present has been carried out by Sjostrom [3]. He has developed and tested haptic games that are used with the Phantom device [1]. Some of his applications are aimed for visually impaired children.During the project Computer-based learning environment for visually impaired people we designed, implemented and tested three different applications. Our target group was from three- to seven-year-old visually impaired children. Applications were tested in three phases with the chosen subjects. During the experiments a special testing procedure was developed [2]. The applications were based on haptic and auditory feedback but the simple graphical interface was available for those who were only partially blind. The chosen haptic device was the Phantom [1] that is a six-degrees-of-freedom input device. The Phantom is used with the stylus that resembles a pen. A pen is attached to a robotic arm that generates force feedback to stimulate touch.The first application consisted on simple materials and path shapes. In the user tests the virtual materials were compared with real ones and the various path shapes were meant to track along with the stylus. The second application was more a game-like environment. There were four haptic rooms where children had to do different tasks. The last tested application was a modification of the previous one. Its user interface consisted of six rooms and the tasks in them were simplified based on the results gained in the previous user tests.As the Phantom device is expensive and also difficult to use for some of the children the haptic device was decided to be replaced with simple machinery. In our current project Multimodal Interfaces for Visually Impaired Children the applications will be used with haptic devices such as tactile mouse or force feedback joystick. Some applications are designed and implemented from the start and some applications are adapted from the games that are originally meant for sighted children. The desirable research outcome is practical; to produce workable user interfaces and applications whose functionality and cost are reasonable enough to be acquired to the homes of the blind children.