Improving Image Accessibility by Combining Haptic and Auditory Feedback

Advancements in accessibility have led to mobile applications that help blind or low vision people (BLV) access surrounding information independently. Unfortunately, accessibility of visual information such as images remains limited. Previous research demonstrated that spatial interaction can help BLV users build a mental model of the relative locations of image objects. As haptics has recently become a core component of modern smartphones, we extend this prior research by designing three prototypes that use haptic feedback to reveal object location in images. We evaluate these techniques in terms of experience and ability of BLV users to locate multiple objects in images. Evaluation results in a preliminary study with seven BLV users suggest that the proposed haptic feedback prototype with auditory notifcations to identify people and auditory caption can provide a more accessible and engaging image experience.