Alice and Her Friend: A Black "Picture Book" of Multisensory Interaction for Visually-Impaired Children

Abstract

Picture books are considered beneficial for children in many ways (e.g., psychological development and language acquisition), yet some children have less opportunity to receive such benefits because of their visual impairment. Considering such a situation, we designed Alice and Her Friend, an interactive book for visually-impaired children. While we put a significant focus on multisensory interaction, the book is designed entirely in black, intending both to emphasize that visually-impaired people also enjoy rich multisensory experiences and to raises awareness of the needs that visually-impaired children have. We used the book to interview experts in related fields to investigate practical needs among visually-impaired children. Based on their insights, we also propose a novel research topic, "creative technologies for the disabled"; it is necessary to support people with disabilities to create what they need by themselves, since the degrees and types of visual impairment significantly differ among visually-impaired people.