research-article

Wireless Smartphone Keyboard for Visually Challenged Users

Authors:

Vickram Parthasarathy,

Sethuraman N. RaoAuthors Info & Claims

WearSys '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Workshop on Wearable Systems and Applications

Pages 13 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/2935643.2935648

Published: 30 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

A Smartphone is a combination of a cell phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a media player, a GPS navigation unit and much more. To a blind and visually impaired (BVI) user, a Smartphone can assist and help connect with our modern day cyber social world. The only inconvenience to the BVI user is its user interface, which is a touch screen display. In this project, an economical user-friendly compact text-input device for a BVI Smartphone user is developed. This device is designed for daily use and it supports Braille text. The device is connected to the smart phone by Bluetooth interface. A Smartphone app pairs the phone with the device and switches the default keyboard service to use the device keyboard. The Smartphone operating system runs the screen reader when the keyboard is in use, giving real time audio feedback to the user. Thus, a setup for nearly seamless text input is provided to the BVI user. A low-cost Arduino based prototype has been developed as a proof of concept. As part of the future work, the prototype keyboard will be evaluated by BVI users and the results will be compared with other existing text input methods for BVI users.

References

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Chomchalerm, Gunta, et al. "Braille dict: Dictionary application for the blind on android Smartphone." Student Project Conference (ICT-ISPC), 2014 Third ICT International. IEEE, 2014.

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Romero, Mario, et al. "BrailleTouch: designing a mobile eyes-free soft keyboard." Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. ACM, 2011.

Digital Library

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Oliveira, João, et al. "BrailleType: unleashing Braille over touch screen mobile phones." Human-Computer Interaction?INTERACT 2011. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 100--107.

Digital Library

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Kocielinski, Daniel, and Jolanta Brzostek-Pawlowska. "Improving the accessibility of touchscreen-based mobile devices: Integrating Android-based devices and Braille notetakers." Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2013 Federated Conference on. IEEE, 2013.

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D'Andrea, Frances Mary. "Preferences and practices among students who read Braille and use assistive technology." PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010.

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C. Method, "Creating an Input Method | Android Developers", Developer.android.com, 2016. {Online}. Available: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/text/creating-input-method.html. {Accessed: 25- Feb- 2016}.

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C. Dsilva, S. Rao and V. Parthasarathy, "Survey of smartphone text input solutions for visually challenged users", International Journal of Applied Engineering Research (IJAER), 2016. {Online}. Available: http://www.ripublication.com/ijaerspl2015/ijaer10n92spl_62.pdf. {Accessed: 07- May- 2016}.

Cited By

Ariza JPearce J(2022)Low-Cost Assistive Technologies for Disabled People Using Open-Source Hardware and Software: A Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.322144910(124894-124927)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3221449
Tang WZhang XYu HGao LZhang QWei XHong MGu LLiao QKang ZZhang ZZhang Y(2022)A van der Waals Ferroelectric Tunnel Junction for Ultrahigh‐Temperature Operation MemorySmall Methods10.1002/smtd.2021015836:4Online publication date: 25-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/smtd.202101583
Shi WYu CFan SWang FWang TYi XBi XShi YBrewster SFitzpatrick GCox AKostakos V(2019)VIPBoardProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300747(1-12)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290605.3300747
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Wireless Smartphone Keyboard for Visually Challenged Users
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction devices
      1. Keyboards
  2. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. Interface design prototyping

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WearSys '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Workshop on Wearable Systems and Applications

June 2016

38 pages

ISBN:9781450343268

DOI:10.1145/2935643

Program Chairs:
Tam Vu
University of Colorado Denver, USA
,
Alanson Sample
Disney Research, USA
,
Ashwin Ashok
Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGMOBILE: ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing

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SIGOPS: ACM Special Interest Group on Operating Systems

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 June 2016

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MobiSys'16

Sponsor:

SIGMOBILE

MobiSys'16: The 14th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services

June 30, 2016

Singapore, Singapore

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WearSys '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 5 of 9 submissions, 56%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 28 of 36 submissions, 78%

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Cited By

Ariza JPearce J(2022)Low-Cost Assistive Technologies for Disabled People Using Open-Source Hardware and Software: A Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.322144910(124894-124927)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3221449
Tang WZhang XYu HGao LZhang QWei XHong MGu LLiao QKang ZZhang ZZhang Y(2022)A van der Waals Ferroelectric Tunnel Junction for Ultrahigh‐Temperature Operation MemorySmall Methods10.1002/smtd.2021015836:4Online publication date: 25-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/smtd.202101583
Shi WYu CFan SWang FWang TYi XBi XShi YBrewster SFitzpatrick GCox AKostakos V(2019)VIPBoardProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300747(1-12)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290605.3300747
Das SPatro SDas RMishra A(2019)Arduino based Safety Device for the Visually Challenged2019 International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing (ICCSP)10.1109/ICCSP.2019.8697987(0601-0605)Online publication date: Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSP.2019.8697987
Briotto Faustino DGirouard AHwang FMcGrenere JFlatla D(2018)Understanding Authentication Method Use on Mobile Devices by People with Vision ImpairmentProceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3234695.3236342(217-228)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3234695.3236342
Rao SD'silva CParthasarathy V(2017)Evaluation of a smartphone keyboard for the visually challenged2017 Second International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Technologies (ICECCT)10.1109/ICECCT.2017.8117933(1-4)Online publication date: Feb-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECCT.2017.8117933

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