In this work, we show how our open source accessibility software, the FaceSwitch, can help motor-impaired subjects to efficiently interact with a computer hands-free. The FaceSwitch enhances gaze interaction with video-based face gestures interaction. The emerging multimodal system allows for interaction with a user interface by means of gaze pointing for target selection and facial gestures for target-specific action commands. The FaceSwitch maps facial gestures to specific mouse or keyboard events such as: left mouse click, right mouse click, or page scroll down. Hence, facial gestures serve the purpose of mechanical switches. With this multimodal interaction paradigm, the user gazes at the object in the user interface with which it wants to interact and then triggers a target-specific action by performing a face gesture. Through a rigorous user study, we have obtained quantitative evidence that suggests our proposed interaction paradigm improves the performance of traditional accessibility options, such as gaze-only interaction or gaze with a single mechanical switch interaction while coming close in terms of speed and accuracy with traditional mouse-based interaction. We make the FaceSwitch software freely available to the community so the output of our research can help the target audience.

Audio-only interfaces, facilitated through text-to-speech screen reading software, have been the primary mode of computer interaction for blind and low-vision computer users for more than four decades. During this time, the advances that have made visual interfaces faster and easier to use, from direct manipulation to skeuomorphic design, have not been paralleled in nonvisual computing environments. The screen reader–dependent community is left with no alternatives to engage with our rapidly advancing technological infrastructure. In this article, we describe our efforts to understand the problems that exist with audio-only interfaces. Based on observing screen reader use for 4 months at a computer training school for blind and low-vision adults, we identify three problem areas within audio-only interfaces: ephemerality, linear interaction, and unidirectional communication. We then evaluated a multimodal approach to computer interaction called the Tangible Desktop that addresses these problems by moving semantic information from the auditory to the tactile channel. Our evaluation demonstrated that among novice screen reader users, Tangible Desktop improved task completion times by an average of 6 minutes when compared to traditional audio-only computer systems.

Technology-based social skills interventions have shown promise for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication. Primary advantages of a technology-based approach to intervention relate to consistency of service delivery as well as an ability to quantitatively measure process and outcomes. Despite these strengths, however, many current computer-supported systems rely on survey data or data collected post-interaction. In response, we have developed and pilot-tested DOSE (Dyad-Operated Social Encouragement), a novel game and data acquisition platform for collaborative skills intervention that leverages the ability of software to collect time-series, speech audio, and event information for the purposes of finer-grained analyses of dyadic interactions. A pilot study involving 12 participant dyads—comprised of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) peers (6 ASD-TD dyads and 6 TD-TD dyads)—was conducted and several metrics were computed during interactions. Preliminary results suggest that the DOSE system is engaging to users, is capable of collecting a wide range of quantitative process measures, and that post-training measures show preliminary evidence of increased communication and activity coordination. Furthermore, DOSE has been made open-source, allowing other investigators to use and extend DOSE for a variety of applications.

In this article, a virtual reality system for vocational rehabilitation of individuals with disabilities (VR4VR) is presented. VR4VR uses immersive virtual environments to assess and train individuals with cognitive and physical disabilities. This article focuses on the system modules that were designed and developed for the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) population. The system offers training on six vocational skills that were identified as transferrable to and useful in many common jobs. These six transferable skills are cleaning, loading the back of a truck, money management, shelving, environmental awareness, and social skills. This article presents the VR4VR system, the design considerations for the ASD population, and the findings with a cohort of nine neurotypical individuals (control group) and nine high-functioning individuals with ASD (experiment group) who used the system. Good design practices gathered throughout the study are also shared for future virtual reality applications targeting individuals with ASD. Research questions focused on the effectiveness of the virtual reality system on vocational training of high-functioning individuals with ASD and the effect of distracters on task performance of high-functioning individuals with ASD. Follow-up survey results indicated that for individuals with ASD, there was improvement in all of the trained skills. No negative effects of the distracters were observed on the score of individuals with ASD. The proposed VR4VR system was found by professional job trainers to provide effective vocational training for individuals with ASD. The system turned out to be promising in terms of providing an alternative practical training tool for individuals with ASD.

No abstract available.

Touchscreen devices, such as smartphones and tablets, represent a modern solution for providing graphical access to people with blindness and visual impairment (BVI). However, a significant problem with these solutions is their limited screen real estate, which necessitates panning or zooming operations for accessing large-format graphical materials such as maps. Non-visual interfaces cannot directly employ traditional panning or zooming techniques due to various perceptual and cognitive limitations (e.g., constraints of the haptic field of view and disorientation due to loss of one's reference point after performing these operations). This article describes the development of four novel non-visual panning methods designed from the onset with consideration of these perceptual and cognitive constraints. Two studies evaluated the usability of these panning methods in comparison with a non-panning control condition. Results demonstrated that the exploration, learning, and subsequent spatial behaviors were similar between panning and non-panning conditions, with one panning mode, based on a two-finger drag technique, revealing the overall best performance. Findings provide compelling evidence that incorporating panning operations on touchscreen devices -- the fastest growing computational platform among the BVI demographic -- is a viable, low-cost, and immediate solution for providing BVI people with access to a broad range of large-format digital graphical information.

The widespread availability of digital media has changed the way that people consume information and has impacted the consumption of auditory information. Despite this recent popularity among sighted people, the use of auditory feedback to access ...

No abstract available.

This article explores the design and development of voice interfaces via traditional telephones as a way of supporting asynchronous online communication for older adults. E-mail is the primary form of online communication for older adults. However, e-mail communication currently requires access to and the ability to use an Internet-connected computer or device, which may be problematic due to barriers of physical access, expense, insufficient computer skill, or other accessibility issues. To address this, the present work leverages the pervasive hardware of traditional phones and familiar nonvisual models of phone-based interaction to create a new e-mail interface for older adults. We examine the potential of e-mail interaction via traditional phones through long-term field observations, prototype testing, and a four-week field-based user study. Our findings indicate that a simple voice e-mail interface accessed through traditional phones is usable for older adults and is a useful way for offline older adults to interact with an e-mail account. The ease of use and convenience of a phone-based interface are important given the “work” of keeping in touch over e-mail, and this approach has the potential to open up new avenues of online access for older adults who are still offline or who have late-life disabilities that make using traditional graphical e-mail systems difficult. This project contributes new insights regarding the ways in which voice interfaces can support asynchronous online communication for older adults and provides design guidance for the development of subsequent voice interfaces.

This article compares two methods of employing novice Web workers to author descriptions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics images to make them accessible to individuals with visual and print-reading disabilities. The goal is to identify methods of creating image descriptions that are inexpensive, effective, and follow established accessibility guidelines. The first method explicitly presented the guidelines to the worker, then the worker constructed the image description in an empty text box and table. The second method queried the worker for image information and then used responses to construct a template-based description according to established guidelines. The descriptions generated through queried image description (QID) were more likely to include information on the image category, title, caption, and units. They were also more similar to one another, based on Jaccard distances of q-grams, indicating that their word usage and structure were more standardized. Last, the workers preferred describing images using QID and found the task easier. Therefore, explicit instruction on image-description guidelines is not sufficient to produce quality image descriptions when using novice Web workers. Instead, it is better to provide information about images, then generate descriptions from responses using templates.