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Text input on mobile devices without physical keys can be challenging for people who are blind or low-vision. We interview 12 blind adults about their experiences with current mobile text input to provide insights into what sorts of interface improvements may be the most beneficial. We identify three primary themes that were experiences or opinions shared by participants: the poor accuracy of dictation, difficulty entering text in noisy environments, and difficulty correcting errors in entered text. We also discuss an experimental non-visual text input method with each participant to solicit opinions on the method and probe their willingness to learn a novel method. We find that the largest concern was the time required to learn a new technique. We find that the majority of our participants do not use word predictions while typing but instead find it faster to finish typing words manually. Finally, we distill five future directions for non-visual text input: improved dictation, less reliance on or improved audio feedback, improved error correction, reducing the barrier to entry for new methods, and more fluid non-visual word predictions.
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The Impact of Number of Predictions on User Performance in a Dwell Keyboard
Word predictions in a text entry interface can help accelerate a user’s input. This may especially be true for users who have a slow input rate due to some form of motor-impairment. The choice of how many word predictions to offer in a text entry interface is an important design decision. In this work, we offered different number of word predictions in a keyboard where able-bodied users had to dwell on a key for one second to click it. We found participants’ text entry rate did not improve with increasing number of predictions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1750193
- PAR ID:
- 10383457
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- MobileHCI 2022 Workshop on Shaping Text Entry Research for 2030
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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