Self-Identifying Tactile Overlays

Tactile overlays for touch-screen devices are an opportunity to display content for users with visual impairments. However, when users switch tactile overlays, the displayed content on the touch-screen devices still correspond to the previous overlay. Currently, users have to change the displayed content on the touch-screen devices manually which hinders a fluid user interaction. In this paper, we introduce self-identifying overlays - an automated method for touch-screen devices to identify tactile overlays placed on the screen and to adapt the displayed content based on the applied tactile overlay. We report on a pilot study with two participants with visual impairments to evaluate this approach with a functional content exploration application based on an adapted textbook.