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Tactile graphics are a common way to present information to people with vision impairments. Tactile graphics can be used to explore a broad range of static visual content but aren’t well suited to representing animation or interactivity. We introduce a new approach to creating dynamic tactile graphics that combines a touch screen tablet, static tactile overlays, and small mobile robots. We introduce a prototype system called RoboGraphics and several proof-of-concept applications. We evaluated our prototype with seven participants with varying levels of vision, comparing the RoboGraphics approach to a flat screen, audio-tactile interface. Our results show that dynamic tactile graphics can help visually impaired participants explore data quickly and accurately.
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The Comprehension of STEM Graphics via a Multisensory Tablet Electronic Device by Students with Visual Impairments
Introduction:The current work probes the effectiveness of multimodal touch screen tablet electronic devices in conveying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graphics via vibrations and sounds to individuals who are visually impaired (i.e., blind or low vision) and compares it with similar graphics presented in an embossed format. Method:A volunteer sample of 22 participants who are visually impaired, selected from a summer camp and local schools for blind students, were recruited for the current study. Participants were first briefly (∼30 min) trained on how to explore graphics via a multimodal touch screen tablet. They then explored six graphic types (number line, table, pie chart, bar chart, line graph, and map) displayed via embossed paper and tablet. Participants answered three content questions per graphic type following exploration. Results:Participants were only 6% more accurate when answering questions regarding an embossed graphic as opposed to a tablet graphic. A paired-samples t test indicated that this difference was not significant, t(14) = 1.91, p = .07. Follow-up analyses indicated that presentation medium did not interact with graphic type, F(5, 50) = 0.43, p = .83, nor visual ability, F(1, 13) = 0.00, p = .96. Discussion:The findings demonstrate that multimodal touch screen tablets may be comparable to embossed graphics in conveying iconographic science and mathematics content to individuals with visual impairments, regardless of the severity of impairment. The relative equivalence in response accuracy between mediums was unexpected, given that most students who participated were braille readers and had experience reading embossed graphics, whereas they were introduced to the tablet the day of testing. Implications for practitioners:This work illustrates that multimodal touch screen tablets may be an effective option for general education teachers or teachers of students with visual impairments to use in their educational practices. Currently, preparation of accessible graphics is time consuming and requires significant preparation, but such tablets provide solutions for offering “real-time” displays of these graphics for presentation in class.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1660242
- PAR ID:
- 10655530
- Publisher / Repository:
- Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness
- Volume:
- 113
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0145-482X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 404 to 418
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Introduction: Informational graphics and data representations (e.g., charts and figures) are critical for accessing educational content. Novel technologies, such as the multimodal touchscreen which displays audio, haptic, and visual information, are promising for being platforms of diverse means to access digital content. This work evaluated educational graphics rendered on a touchscreen compared to the current standard for accessing graphical content. Method: Three bar charts and geometry figures were evaluated on student ( N = 20) ability to orient to and extract information from the touchscreen and print. Participants explored the graphics and then were administered a set of questions (11–12 depending on graphic group). In addition, participants’ attitudes using the mediums were assessed. Results: Participants performed statistically significantly better on questions assessing information orientation using the touchscreen than print for both bar chart and geometry figures. No statistically significant difference in information extraction ability was found between mediums on either graphic type. Participants responded significantly more favorably to the touchscreen than the print graphics, indicating them as more helpful, interesting, fun, and less confusing. Discussion: Accessing and orienting to information was highly successful by participants using the touchscreen, and was the preferred means of accessing graphical information when compared to the print image for both geometry figures and bar charts. This study highlights challenges in presenting graphics both on touchscreens and in print. Implications for Practitioners: This study offers preliminary support for the use of multimodal, touchscreen tablets as educational tools. Student ability using touchscreen-based graphics seems to be comparable to traditional types of graphics (large print and embossed, tactile graphics), although further investigation may be necessary for tactile graphic users. In summary, educators of students with blindness and visual impairments should consider ways to utilize new technologies, such as touchscreens, to provide more diverse access to graphical information.more » « less
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null (Ed.)We present a multimodal deep learning framework that can generate summarization text supporting the main idea of an information graphic for presentation to a person who is blind or visually impaired. The framework utilizes the visual, textual, positional, and size characteristics extracted from the image to create the summary. Different and complimentary neural architectures are optimized for each task using crowdsourced training data. From our quantitative experiments and results, we explain the reasoning behind our framework and show the effectiveness of our models. Our qualitative results showcase text generated from our framework and show that Mechanical Turk participants favor them to other automatic and human generated summarizations. We describe the design and results of an experiment to evaluate the utility of our system for people who have visual impairments in the context of understanding Twitter Tweets containing line graphs.more » « less
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Video and animation are common ways of delivering concepts that cannot be easily communicated through text. This visual information is often inaccessible to blind and visually impaired people, and alternative representations such as Braille and audio may leave out important details. Audio-haptic displays with along with supplemental descriptions allow for the presentation of complex spatial information, along with accompanying description. We introduce the Haptic Video Player, a system for authoring and presenting audio-haptic content from videos. The Haptic Video Player presents video using mobile robots that can be touched as they move over a touch screen. We describe the design of the Haptic Video Player system, and present user studies with educators and blind individuals that demonstrate the ability of this system to render dynamic visual content non-visually.more » « less
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Graphical representations are ubiquitous in the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, these materials are often not accessible to the over 547,000 students in the United States with blindness and significant visual impairment, creating barriers to pursuing STEM educational and career pathways. Furthermore, even when such materials are made available to visually impaired students, access is likely through literalized modes (e.g., braille, verbal description), which is problematic as these approaches (1) do not directly convey spatial information and (2) are different from the graphic-based materials used by students without visual impairment. The purpose of this study was to design and evaluate a universally accessible system for communicating graphical representations in STEM classes. By combining a multisensory vibro-audio interface and an app running on consumer mobile hardware, the system is meant to work equally well for all students, irrespective of their visual status. We report the design of the experimental system and the results of an experiment where we compared learning performance with the system to traditional (visual or tactile) diagrams for sighted participants (n = 20) and visually impaired participants (n =9) respectively. While the experimental multimodal diagrammatic system (MDS) did result in significant learning gains for both groups of participants, the results also revealed no statistically significant differences in the capacity for learning from graphical information across both comparison groups. Likewise, there were no statistically significant differences in the capacity for learning from graphical information between the stimuli presented through the experimental system and the traditional (visual or tactile) diagram control conditions, across either participant group. These findings suggest that both groups were able to learn graphical information from the experimental system as well as traditional diagram presentation materials. This learning modality was supported without the need for conversion of the diagrams to make them accessible for participants who required tactile materials. The system also provided additional multisensory information for sighted participants to interpret and answer questions about the diagrams. Findings are interpreted in terms of new universal design principles for producing multisensory graphical representations that would be accessible to all learners.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482X19876463
