Beyond screen and voice: augmenting aural navigation with screenless access

Abstract

The current interaction paradigm to access the mobile web forces people who are blind to hold out their phone at all times, thus increasing the risk for the device to fall or be robbed. Moreover, such continuous, two-handed interaction on a small screen hampers the ability of people who are blind to keep their hands free to control aiding devices (e.g., cane) or touch objects nearby, especially on-the-go. To investigate alternative paradigms, we are exploring and reifying strategies for "screenless access": a browsing approach that enables users to interact touch-free with aural navigation architectures using one-handed, in-air gestures recognized by an off-the-shelf armband. In this article, we summarize key highlights from an exploratory study with ten participants who are blind or visually impaired who experienced our screenless access prototype. We observed proficient navigation performance after basic training, users conceptual fit with a screen-free paradigm, and low levels of cognitive load, notwithstanding the errors and limits of the design and system proposed. The full paper appeared in W4A2018 [1].