Designing a Tangible User Interface for Braille Teaching

Abstract

Nowadays, technology is present in all aspects of daily life. In many schools children use computers as part of their learning process. Attention to people with different abilities has been a topic of interest to different areas of science and technology. The development of new technologies focused on this issue is of vital importance as it allows improving the quality of life and incorporation into society. Special education needs new applications that allow teaching in an innovative way helping to improve the education of its students according to their specific needs. Attention to people with special needs is a growing area in society. This paper presents the development of a support tool for learning the Braille system. The design of an interactive concept with the integration of tangible elements and software applications is proposed. The proposed user interface is an RFID reader board and a set of objects with RFID tags so that they can be recognized by the software. Each of the objects represents the letters in the Braille system, which were made with a 3D printer and the RFID code was inserted through a card in a slot next to the object. The proposal was evaluated at first by special education teachers and at second by a child, obtaining favorable results in both case studies.