An Exploratory Study of Marking Menu Selection by Visually Impaired Participants

Abstract

Although there have been recent advances in smartphone accessibility for blind people, they rely on screen readers and voice commands which are not ideal for users with visual impairment in mobile situations. By contrast, recent research has shown that marking menus would be beneficial to users' eyes-free interactions. However, the literature lacks accessibility implications and adaptation to the needs of blind people. This paper investigates blind people's capabilities to perform marking menu selections using the 3D motion of a smartphone in order to invoke smartphone functions. We present the bounds and range of marking gestures that a blind person can perform at each level, and the number of levels that a blind person can successfully cope with. Based on the experiment results, we also presented design guidelines.