An Evaluation of Access method to GUIs and EPG Table Using Tactile Interface for Visually impaired People

Abstract

Our aim is to provide visually impaired persons with information-barrier-free interfaces as a countermeasure to the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) of digital broadcasts, the Web, etc. It isn't enough to access and comprehend visual representations of information such as GUI control screens and figures and tables by means of only information presented in a time series like audio descriptions, Braille. We here report on a tactile interface (called Tactile NAVI) that can recognize by touch the hierarchical structure and objects of content and the configuration of tables in a screen while also performing interactive operations. First, we describe a search experiment on GUI and table data to compare differences in search time between tactile navigation using Tactile NAVI and audio navigation based on key operations. It was found that tactile navigation could significantly reduce search time. Next experiment, we describe an accessibility-evaluation experiment using the content of an actual data broadcast and an electronic programming guide (EPG). It is shown that the learning effect on search time is large in the case of tactile navigation. It was also suggested by subjective evaluations in both experiments that tactile navigation and associated tactile presentations were effective in comprehending hierarchical tree structures, table configurations, and their positional relationships.