VibHand: On-Hand Vibrotactile Interface Enhancing Non-Visual Exploration of Digital Graphics

This paper has been selected to receive a Best of ISS Honorable Mention Award. The Best of ISS Awards honor exceptional submissions to the conference; receiving an Honorable Mention Award indicates that your paper was identified by the ISS Program Committee Members and ISS Best Paper Committee as being among the top 5% of all submissions to ISS 2020.; International audience; Visual graphics are widely spread in digital media and are useful in many contexts of daily life. However, access to this type of graphical information remains a challenging task for people with visual impairments (VI). In this study, we designed and evaluated an on-hand vibrotactile interface that enables users with VI to explore digital graphics presented on tablets. We first conducted a set of exploratory tests with both people with VI and blindfolded (BF) people to investigate several design factors. We then conducted a comparative experiment to verify that on-hand vibrotactile cues (indicating direction and progression) can enhance the non-visual exploration of digital graphics. The results based on 12 participants with VI and 12 BF participants confirmed the usability of the technique and revealed that the visual status of the users does not impact graphics identification and comparison tasks.