Can Visually Impaired Smartphone Users Correctly Manipulate Tiny Screen Keyboards Under a Screen Reader Condition?
Accessibility functions on touchscreen computers improved user experience of people with visual impairments. Regardless of this situation, they have some problems using touchscreen interfaces including smartphones and tablets. The reason includes the arra
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Faculty of Health Science, Tsukuba University of Technology, 4-12-7 Kasuga, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8521, Japan [email protected], {sakajiri,ohnishi,ono}@cs.k.tsukuba-tech.ac.jp 2 Institute of Gerontology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan [email protected]
Abstract. Accessibility functions on touchscreen computers improved user experience of people with visual impairments. Regardless of this situation, they have some problems using touchscreen interfaces including smartphones and tablets. The reason includes the arrangements of accessible objects may differ for visually impaired users because of the manipulations under screen readers are different from those without screen readers, the characteristics of desired object sizes and arrangements on the touchscreen computers for the visually impaired remain unclear. The purpose of this research is to find a way for the visually impaired to accurately and efficiently manipulate the keyboard. This study especially seeks to find the optimum conditions for the number and sizes of buttons (including the area) for the visually impaired. For this purpose, we developed an experimental application.
Keywords: Visually impaired people keyboard · Screen reader
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Introduction
As touch screens on smart phones and tablets have become more prevalent, increasing number of visually impaired people are using them. Due to the fact that these devices have few hardware switches and tactile feedback, accessibility features are being introduced for the visually impaired. The most common features are VoiceOver [3] for iOS and TalkBack [4] for Android. Apple also provides an application design guideline for visually impaired iOS users [5]. Applications developed along this guideline are accessible to visually impaired people using VoiceOver. Leporini et al. and Wong et al. reported on the usage situations for Italian and American visually impaired c Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.): ICCHP 2016, Part I, LNCS 9758, pp. 157–164, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-41264-1 21
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users using VoiceOver, respectively [6,7]. Montague et al. investigated user situations for those with visual and motor impairments [9]. Kane reported preferable gestures in some cases by American visually impaired people [8]. They proposed guidelines for touchscreen interfaces for visually impaired users based on their results. Oliveira et al. presented the different demands about the various text entry methods of touchscreen display in visually impaired people [10]. Miura et al. investigated touchscreen computers usage and interaction situations for the Japanese visually impaired population [11]. Based on the improvements of accessibility functions and the accumulation of user situations, visually impaired persons can comfortably use the accessibility features to operate touch devices. However, totally blind people find it difficult to locate the target object on some screen layouts.
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