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A low duration vibro-tactile representation of Braille characters

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Abstract

Braille is a tactile writing/reading system used by people who are visually impaired. Traditionally, Braille has been used on static surfaces like books, signs or keypads, refreshable Braille displays are also available to be used as an interface for digital devices. The linear Braille alphabet proposed in this paper is a novel method to represent Braille characters using the vibration engine of a mobile device operated via vibro-tactile signal sequences. The standard vibration engine is driven to generate different haptic effects on the mobile device in a predefined sequence. Two different tests for distinguishing distinct sequences and characters were conducted over a subject group of 50 clear sighted people. Result of this test show that; signal distinguishability of the method is 99%, and character distinguishability is 97%, while maximum duration for a single character is 1050 ms. A second test on 10 visually impaired users presented a signal distinguishability result of 90% and a character distinguishability result of 82.5%. The method proposed in this paper shows promising results for representing Braille characters on a standard mobile device.

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All data and related materials are available and can be shared upon request during the review process.

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All of the software codes are available and can be shared upon request during review process.

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Funding

This work was supported in part by the The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey under Grant 3161176.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir, Turkey

    Özgür Tamer

  2. Research and Development Department, Vestel Electronics A.S., Manisa, Turkey

    Barbaros Kirişken

  3. Aselsan Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Ankara, Turkey

    Tunca Köklü

Authors
  1. Özgür Tamer
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  2. Barbaros Kirişken
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  3. Tunca Köklü
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Contributions

All of the authors have directly participated in the planning, execution, or analysis of the study and resulting paper, and have read and approved the version submitted. Mr. K developed the Mobile code and Mr. K conducted the tests while Dr. T analyzed the results and researched the state of art.

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Correspondence to Özgür Tamer.

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All authors have been personally and actively involved in substantial work leading to the paper, and will take public responsibility for its content.

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We, Özgür TAMER, Barbaros KİRİŞKEN and Tunca KÖKLÜ voluntarily agreed to participate in this research study. We have had the purpose and nature of the study explained to me in writing and I have had the opportunity to ask questions about the study. We understand that I will not benefit directly from participating in this research. We understand that all information I provide for this study will be treated confidentially.

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Appendices

Appendix

Vibro-tactile Braille test procedures

The test procedures are presented below. First, a questionnaire is administered to the participants who are involved in the test, which is presented in section A.1. Then test procedures presented in A.2 and A.3 are administered to the participant and results are recorded in the application with corresponding date and time information (HHmmDDMMYY) which will be used to identify the participant information during the evaluation process.

2.1 Pre-experiment questionnaire

Date and Time (used as an ID number for participant):……………..

Age:……………….

Gender:……………

Visually Impaired Status:………

Braille Experience:……………..

2.1.1 Signal distinguishability test

Signal distinguishability test procedure is given in the following flow chart.

figure a

2.1.2 Character distinguishability test

Character distinguishability test procedure is given in the following flow chart.

figure b

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Tamer, Ö., Kirişken, B. & Köklü, T. A low duration vibro-tactile representation of Braille characters. J Multimodal User Interfaces 17, 121–135 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-023-00405-w

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