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Improving Smartphone Accessibility with Personalizable Static Overlays
- Source :
- ASSETS
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- ACM, 2017.
-
Abstract
- The physical keypads that used to dominate our mobile devices provided additional support for non-visual interaction - the keys could be recognized tactually, the interfaces were simpler and consistent. When combined with a screen reader, these devices could be easily operated by blind people. The advent of smartphones, with their rich, feature-filled applications and interfaces, have brought forward additional challenges for blind users. Apps and features are no longer developed by a single entity leading to an overwhelming variety of interfaces. We present an approach that superimposes a virtual overlay to all other interfaces ensuring interface consistency by re-structuring how content is accessed in every screen. To explore the approach, we split the screen, dedicating half to a configurable set of static options mimicking always available physical buttons regardless of context; while the other enables the standard content navigation gestures with the ability to re-order content and apply filters. In a qualitative study with nine visually impaired participants, the virtual overlays were reported as simpler to use, while still providing full-fledged usage of the system and the third party applications, and were seen as effective and useful, particularly for novice users.
- Subjects :
- Screen reader
Multimedia
Computer science
Interface (computing)
05 social sciences
020207 software engineering
Context (language use)
02 engineering and technology
Overlay
computer.software_genre
Consistency (database systems)
0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Set (psychology)
Mobile device
computer
050107 human factors
Gesture
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........072213ca418ee85310c05b314053d0c9