Abstract
Charts, for example bar or line charts, represent data visually. They make use of domain specific skills of the visual sense like fast pattern recognition. Tactile charts enable blind and visually impaired people to access charts by the sense of touch. Their design differ from visual chart design. It is unclear how effective design of tactile charts looks like for different chart types. That is why we conducted a remote user study with 45 blind and visually impaired people to investigate several design criteria for tactile charts. Therefore, we have mailed tactile charts to participants who evaluated the charts on the basis of an online survey. In this paper, we analyze four comparison tasks with two bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, and pie charts, that differ in one specific design criteria - in particular, inner and outer helplines in bar charts, the design of grid lines in line charts, the use of grid lines in scatter plots, and the usage of textures in pie charts. We compare these charts regarding the computed error rate, the number of correct answers as well as a rating given by participants.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
References
Aldrich, F.K., Parkin, A.J.: Tangible line graphs: an experimental investigation of three formats using capsule paper. Hum. Factors 29(3), 301–309 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1177/001872088702900304
Braille Authority of North America, Canadian Braille Authority: Guidelines and Standards for Tactile Graphics (2011)
Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Inc.: Guidelines on Conveying Visual Information (2005)
Engel, C., Weber, G.: Analysis of tactile chart design. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, pp. 197–200, PETRA 2017. ACM, New York (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3056540.3064955
Engel, C., Weber, G.: Improve the accessibility of tactile charts. In: Bernhaupt, R., Dalvi, G., Joshi, A., Balkrishan, D.K., O’Neill, J., Winckler, M. (eds.) INTERACT 2017. LNCS, vol. 10513, pp. 187–195. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67744-6_12
Goncu, C., Marriott, K.: Tactile chart generation tool. In: Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - Assets 2008, p. 255 (2008)
Goncu, C., Marriott, K., Hurst, J.: Usability of accessible bar charts. In: Goel, A.K., Jamnik, M., Narayanan, N.H. (eds.) Diagrams 2010. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6170, pp. 167–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14600-8_17
Panëels, S., Roberts, J.C.: Review of designs for haptic data visualization. IEEE Trans. Haptics 3(2), 119–137 (2010)
Watanabe, T., Yamaguchi, T., Nakagawa, M.: Development of software for automatic creation of embossed graphs. In: Miesenberger, K., Karshmer, A., Penaz, P., Zagler, W. (eds.) ICCHP 2012. LNCS, vol. 7382, pp. 174–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31522-0_25
Acknowledgments
We thank all participants for their contribution. The paper is part of the Mosaik project, which is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) under the grant number 01KM151112. Only the authors of this paper are responsible for its content.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Engel, C., Weber, G. (2018). A User Study to Evaluate Tactile Charts with Blind and Visually Impaired People. In: Miesenberger, K., Kouroupetroglou, G. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10897. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94274-2_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94274-2_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94273-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94274-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)