Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Disabilities: Auditory | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Medical | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Visual | Interfaces: Tactile |
Description - Computer interfaces are mostly sequential. Consider telephone menu systems: enter 1 for parts, enter 2 for service, etc. As another example, when you kill an unresponsive program, Windows XP pops up a dialog asking me if you want to send an error report to MS. You must respond to it before proceeding. An alternative user interface strategy (for both sighted and blind) depends on asynchronous alerts and user responses. Think of the underlining of misspelled words in many editors; it occurs sometime after typing and can be corrected (or not) anytime. Emacspeak has some nice features like this. The presence of a footnote associated with a word is indicated by a audible signal played along with the speech for the word without stopping. The listener can respond to the signal by requesting the footnote be followed or ignore it. A project investigating what is known about asynchronous user interfaces and perhaps a prototype implementation would be really interesting and likely result in a paper.
Categories | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - How does tactile feedback help people who are visually impaired? What can we do with a $20 game pad with rumble feedback? What does wireless capability add? Work with products like the Logitech Wingman Rumblepad and Microsoft Sidewinder Joystick to see what information they can provide to a user for games, exploration, navigation, etc.
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Visual | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Tactile | Information visualization: Maps and diagrams | Information visualization: Rendering |
Description - What does it mean to 'zoom in' without sight? Can users without vision effectively zoom in and out of parts of images, maps, and diagrams to get more and less information? Research methods for using the numeric keypad with its directional layout to zoom into and out of certain regions on the screen. Try to develop an interface that allows navigation both in and out of the screen. Such a development would be very useful in displaying maps to the blind.
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - In most NC public schools the kids go to computer lab at least once per week. The sighted kids use interactive story books (click on the picture something interesting happens), ordinary games, and math tutor programs. The blind kids have NOTHING to do! Using commodity PC (or Apple) hardware, spatial sound, and force-feedback (haptic) devices like the Microsoft Force-feedback Joystick, make a game that is first fun, then maybe educational. Check out http://drive.soundsupport.net/ for an example of a driving game for blind people. "Adventure" (http://www.adventurecollective.com/index.shtml) might be an interesting game to adapt. Multi-player games could be really cool. What would "The Sims" be like for blind people? How about "Pac Man" or "Break Out"? There a lots of possibilities here for games addressing different age groups and objectives.
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Auditory | Social impact: Education |
Description - Kids who are blind often have poor muscle tone because they don't move around much. The idea of this project is to get kids to move AND to teach them something at the same time. So called "DDR Mats" such as the RedOctane Dance Pad http://redoctane.com/exreddanpad.html are intended for playing the game "Dance Dance Revolution" with the PlayStation or XBox. With an adapter these mats can be connected to the USB port on a PC. I think we could make a neat game something like Twister that is fun for kids and teaches Braille. The idea is for the child to use their hands, feet, head, or whatever to press the appropriate dots (up to 6) for a Braille character.
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices | Information visualization: Maps and diagrams | Social impact: Education |
Description - BATS is a project at UNC that uses audio and tactile feedback to convey map information to blind users. It focuses on helping students with visual impairments.
Submitted by Peter Parente
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Information visualization: Maps and diagrams | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - News article about a tactile display for computer images developed by NIST.
Submitted by Fred Brooks
Categories | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices | Communication: Internet |
Description - An alternative input device requiring only tilting.
Submitted by Gary Bishop
Categories | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - An alternative input method involving measuring tilt.
Submitted by Gary Bishop
Categories | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - A proposed Tactile Display for handheld devices. Might be really itneresting for portable maps and such for people who are blind.
Submitted by Gary Bishop
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Visual | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices | Information visualization: Text | Information visualization: Maps and diagrams | Information visualization: Rendering |
Description - This site has lots of information about orientation and mobility. Among other things, there is an entire book on teaching orientation and mobility to kids and a "living" book in progress about assistive technologies for wayfinding.
Submitted by Andrew Raij
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Tactile |
Description - Software that allows a user to feel the pixels on the screen.
Submitted by Peter Parente
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Tactile | Interfaces: Devices | Communication: Telephone |
Description - A combination PDA/Phone that uses braille and speech output. No visual display at all.
Submitted by Andrew Raij