Designing a universal keyboard using chording gloves

A universal input device for both text and Braille input was developed in a Glove-typed interface using all the joints of the four fingers and thumbs of both hands. The glove-typed device works as of now for input of Korean characters, numbers, and Braille characters using mode conversion. Considering the finger force and the fatigue from repeated finger motions, the input switch was made of conductible silicon ink, which is easy to apply to any type of surface, light, and enduring. The usability testing with (1) blind subjects showed the performance matching with a commercial Braille keypad, and (2) non-blind subjects for Korean characters showed comparable performance with cellular phone input keypads, but inferior to conventional keyboard. Subjects' performance showed that the chording gloves can input approximately 122 Braille characters per minute and 108 words per minute in Korean character. The chording gloves developed in our study is expected to be used with common computing devices such as PCs and PDAs, and can contribute to replacing the Braille-based note-takers with less expensive computing devices for blind users.