Designing and evaluating a wearable device for accessing gaze signals from the sighted

Abstract

Gaze signals, frequently used by the sighted in social interactions as visual cues, are hardly accessible for low-vision and blind people. In this paper, we proposed a prototype, namely Tactile Band, to aim at testing the hypothesis that tactile feedback can enable the blind person to feel attention (gaze signals) from the sighted, enhancing the level of engagement in face-to-face communication. We tested our hypothesis with 30 participants with a face-to-face conversation scenario, in which the blindfolded and the sighted participants talked about a given daily topic. Comments from the participants and the reflection on the experiment provided useful insights for improvements and further research.