New input methods for blind users on wide touch devices

• Main Author: Krot, Andrii
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för datavetenskap (DV) 2016
• Subjects: input method; touchscreen; muscle memory; touch-typing; blind; text entry; Computer Sciences; Datavetenskap (datalogi)
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-54221

Blind people cannot enter text on touch devices using common input methods. They use special input methods that have lower performance (i.e. lower entry rate and higher error rate). Most blind people have muscle memory from using classic physical keyboards, but the potential of using this memory is not utilized by existing input methods. The goal of the project is to take advantage of this muscle memory to improve the typing performance of blind people on wide touch panels. To this end, four input methods are designed, and a prototype for each one is developed. These input methods are compared with each other and with a standard input method. The results of the comparison show that using input methods designed in this report improves typing performance. The most promising and the least promising approaches are specified.