Realization of direct manipulation for visually impaired on touch panel interface

Abstract

Touch panel interface is expanding its application rapidly, with the great flexibility and GUI that allows direct manipulation, and allows easy interaction for sighted people. Various approaches have been tried to achieve accessible touch panel for the visually impaired by combination of tactile sense and audio feedback. In this paper, we report the real benefit of direct manipulation of touch panel for the visually impaired by typical finger gestures such as finger flicks and taps only. Implementations of DAISY digital talking book navigation, by up/down and left/right finger flicks operations were compared with conventional up/down and left/right button operations. As a result, finger flicks achieved the same as or faster in regards to operation. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.