Background display for visually impaired people in mobile touch devices

Abstract

Existing visual representation and control restricts the access of visually impaired people to information in touch screen devices, but a flexible touch interface and multimodal representation can provide easy accessibility to blind users. To improve the accessibility of touch screen devices for visually impaired people, we propose a new approach to information representation and interaction using the concepts of `background display' and `foreground display'. Background display is defined as indirect representation elements, such as color, size, and location. Foreground display is defined as direct representation elements, such as text. We use auditory and tactile modality to present background display, and auditory display is used for foreground display. We found that blindfolded users understood the information on buttons more effectively and performed touch input tasks more quickly when background display was offered.