Towards Designing User Interfaces on Mobile Touch- screen Devices for People with Visual Impairment

Although touch screens have great input flexibility, they are largely inaccessible to people with visual impairment. One of the issues with touch screens is the lack of clear tactile feedback, which is critical for visually-impaired people. We developed SemFeel, a tactile feedback technology that can express some semantic information by using multiple vibration motors in concert. We believe that the rich tactile feedback offered by SemFeel enables people with visual impairment to better use mobile touch-screen devices. In this paper, we report our findings from semi-structured interviews with three participants who have visual impairment about their experience of mobile devices. We then discuss a gesture-based user interface with tactile feedback for people with visual impairment. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. – Haptic I/O. K.4.2.[Computers and society]: Social issues – assistive technologies for persons with disabilities. General terms: Human Factors