Refine
Document Type
- conference proceeding (article) (20)
- Article (4)
Keywords
- Limited input space (2)
- Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation (2)
- Projector (2)
- Projektionsapparat (2)
- Smartphone (2)
- 3D printer (1)
- 3D-Drucker (1)
- Accessibility (1)
- App <Programm> (1)
- Authentifikation (1)
Tactile graphics play an essential role in knowledge transfer for blind people. The tactile exploration of these graphics is often challenging because of the cognitive load caused by physiological constraints and their complexity. The coupling of physical tactile graphics with electronic devices offers to support the tactile exploration by auditory feedback. Often, these systems have strict constraints regarding their mobility or the process of coupling both components. Additionally, visually impaired people cannot appropriately benefit from their residual vision. This article presents a concept for 3D printed tactile graphics, which offers to use audio-tactile graphics with usual smartphones or tablet-computers. By using capacitive markers, the coupling of the tactile graphics with the mobile device is simplified. These tactile graphics integrating these markers can be printed in one turn by off-the-shelf 3D printers without any post-processing and allows us to use multiple elevation levels for graphical elements. Based on the developed generic concept on visually augmented audio-tactile graphics, we presented a case study for maps. A prototypical implementation was tested by a user study with visually impaired people. All the participants were able to interact with the 3D printed tactile maps using a standard tablet computer. To study the effect of visual augmentation of graphical elements, we conducted another comprehensive user study. We tested multiple types of graphics and obtained evidence that visual augmentation may offer clear advantages for the exploration of tactile graphics. Even participants with a minor residual vision could solve the tasks with visual augmentation more quickly and accurately.
This paper introduces an approach for the (semi)automatic generation of worldwide available, detailed tactile maps including buildings and blind-specific features based on recognized illustrators’ guidelines and standards. These guidelines for tactile maps are investigated in order to define a formal rule set and to automatically filter map data accordingly. Using the rule set, our approach automatically abstracts map data in order to generate a 2.1D tactile model providing multiple height levels (layers) which can be printed by usual consumer 3D printers. Based on the popular OpenStreetMap map data, our automated approach allows to generate arbitrary detail maps blind persons individually interested in, without the need for manual adaption of the tactile map. Thus, this approach contributes to the goal to increase the autonomy of blind persons.
Nowadays, 3D models can be downloaded from the internet and increasingly be printed by low cost 3D printers. In the future, blind people could benefit from this tendency. Unfortunately, many of these models are rather complex and not appropriate for the purely tactile exploration. To obtain quantitative data about how 3D printable models for blind people should be constructed, the tactile exploration can be recorded by video. However, the analysis of these videos is quite time consuming and expensive. Additionally, inaccuracies and masking effects may impede the use of this technique. In this paper we introduce a novel approach to automatically equip existing 3D models with a mesh of conductive wires which enable a touch sensitive surface for the printed 3D objects. These touch sensing 3D models can be printed in one turn by off-the-shelf 3D printers and used as an alternative to video recording. It allows exact registration of when and where the 3D object has been touched. In our multi-touch solution, particular attention has been paid to limit the number of necessary wires between 3D object and sensing electronics. Finally, our approach is evaluated by a feasibility study.
SmartTactMaps: A Smartphone-Based Approach to Support Blind Persons in Exploring Tactile Maps
(2019)
Despite increasing digitalization of our society many blind persons still have very limited access to predominantly pictorial information such as maps. In this paper we introduce a novel approach to improve the accessibility of maps for blind users by utilizing the abilities of standard smartphones. A major issue of tactile maps is the limited discriminability of the humans' tactile sense. Textual annotation of maps is crucial, but adds much complexity to tactile maps. Additionally, only few Braille labels can be accommodated to maintain legibility. In our approach we link smartphones with adapted tactile maps which transforms the physical maps into interactive surfaces using both the tactile and the auditory modality. We integrate machine readable metadata into these maps which can be recognized by the smartphones' camera to immediately obtain detailed map descriptions from a free global database. During tactile exploration of the map, blind users can request auditory explanations by interacting with the mobile application. An experimental application and a user study demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.
Touch input on modern smartphones can be tedious, especially if the touchscreen is small. Smartphones with integrated projectors can be used to overcome this limitation by projecting the screen contents onto a surface, allowing the user to interact with the projection by means of simple hand gestures. In this work, we propose a novel approach for projector smartphones that allows the user to remotely interact with the smartphone screen via its projection. We detect user's interaction using the built-in camera, and forward detected hand gestures as touch input events to the operating system. In order to avoid costly computations, we additionally use built-in motion sensors. We verify the proposed method using an implementation for the consumer smartphone Samsung
Galaxy Beam equipped with a deflection mirror.
Mobility training is an essential part of blind people’s education in order to move in public spaces. In order to safely learn new routes in public space, however, a seeing trainer must assist the blind person. With the increasing availability of VR hardware, it is possible to transfer real spatial environments to virtual representations. The digitized environments can be used as a basis for this training without safety problems by real world hazards. This allows to cope with the limited resources of sighted assistants and enables blind people to become more independent. We propose to capture real public spaces (such as sidewalks, train stations etc.) and make them in this way ascertainable. Orientation and mobility can be trained in this digital model via multimodal sensory feedback while involving intuitive locomotion and white cane exploration. This paper sketches the related work and proposes our novel approach. Furthermore, we suggest additional improvements on our ongoing research.
Tactile maps support blind and visually impaired people in orientation and to familiarize with unfamiliar environments. Interactive approaches complement these maps with auditory feedback. However, commonly these approaches focus on blind people. We present an approach which incorporates visually impaired people by visually augmenting relevant parts of tactile maps. These audiovisual tactile maps can be used in conjunction with common tablet computers and smartphones. By integrating conductive elements into 3D printed tactile maps, they can be recognized by a single touch on the mobile device's display, which eases the handling for blind and visually impaired people. To allow multiple elevation levels in our transparent tactile maps, we conducted a study to reconcile technical and physiological requirements of off-the-shelf 3D printers, capacitive touch inputs and the human tactile sense. We propose an interaction concept for 3D printed audiovisual tactile maps, verify its feasibility and test it with a user study. Our discussion includes economic considerations crucial for a broad dissemination of tactile maps for both blind and visually impaired people.
Tactile maps may support blind persons in orientation and understanding geographical relations, but their availability is still very limited. However, recent technologies such as 3D printers allow to autonomously print individual tactile maps which can be linked with interactive applications. Besides geographical depictions, textual annotation of maps is crucial. However, this often adds much complexity to tactile maps. To limit tactile complexity, interactive approaches may help to complement maps by the auditive modality. The presented approach integrates barcodes into tactile maps to allow their detection by standard smartphones' cameras. Automatically, more detailed map data is obtained to auditively support the exploration of the tactile map. Our experimental implementation shows the principal feasibility and provides the basis of ongoing comprehensive user studies.
Small mobile devices such as smartwatches are a rapidly growing market. However, they share the issue of limited input and output space which could impede the success of these devices in future. Hence, suitable alternatives to the concepts and metaphors known from smartphones have to be found. In this paper we present InclineType a tilt-based keyboard input that uses a 3-axis accelerometer for smartwatches. The user may directly select letters by moving his/her wrist and enters them by tapping on the touchscreen. Thanks to the distribution of the letters on the edges of the screen, the keyboard dedicates a low amount of space in the smartwatch. In order to optimize the user input our concept proposes multiple techniques to stabilize the user interaction. Finally, a user study shows that users get familiar with this technique with almost no previous training, reaching speeds of about 6 wpm in average.
Fitts’ Gesetz ist Gegenstand vieler Lehrveranstaltungen in der Informatik. Neben der ursprünglichen Quelle existieren mehrere Formeln für verfeinerte Approximationen des Phänomens. Dieses Paper beschreibt einen Ansatz zum Einsatz dieses Themenkomplexes für Lehrzwecke für Studierende des 3. Regelstudiensemesters. Zunächst setzen Studierende den Sachverhalt als Programmieraufgabe mit mehreren zu testenden Variablen um. Im Weiteren führen sie selbst mit einer Benutzerstudie eine Verifikation durch welche im Folgenden ausgewertet wird. Bei der gemeinsamen Diskussion werden die Ergebnisse durch verschiedene Formeln sowie empirische Grundlagen wie die Ausreiserproblematik erörtert. Durch dieses Lehrkonzept, welches über mehrere Jahrgänge verfeinert wurde, werden mehrere Themen der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion mit praktischen Tätigkeiten für die Studierenden verknüpft. Ziel dessen war, Studierende in die softwaretechnische Umsetzung, die Durchführung und Auswertung der Studie zu involvieren und ihnen damit eine ganzheitliche Sicht auf die Zusammenhänge unterschiedlicher Sachverhalte aus dem Bereich der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion zu geben.