Improving game accessibility with vibrotactile-enhanced hearing instruments

Abstract

In this work we present enhanced hearing instruments (HIs) that provide vibrotactile feedback behind the user's ears in parallel to sound. Using an additional feedback modality we display dedicated vibrotactile patterns to support the user in localizing sound sources. In a study with 4 HI users and 5 normal hearing participants we deploy the system in a gaming scenario. The open source availability of the mainstream 3D first person shooter game used in the study allowed us to add code for accessibility. We evaluate the system qualitatively with user questionnaires and quantitatively with performance metrics calculated from statistics within the game. The system was perceived as beneficial and allowed the HI users to achieve gaming performance closer to that of normal hearing participants. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.