ColorWatch: Color-Tactile Interpretation to Improve Color Perception and Accessibility for People with Visual Impairments

摘要

This study aims toward the development of an automatic wristwatch(ColorWatch) tactile system which may assist People with Visual Impairments (PVI) to recognize object colors in their daily life. This work identified perpetual colors in daily lives and associated them with cross-modular tactile patterns. The designed system considers the fundamentals of tactile actuation, color perception, and the intuitive learnability of humans. Achromatic and monochromatic colors as well as the tone of these for each color in two levels are considered and a one-to-one cross-modular mapping with the tactile pattern has been proposed. Furthermore, the system considers artwork as well as a variety of general-purpose object color translation. Focus group experiments indicate good recognition results and usability of tactile patterns for the tactile actuation and their color associations. Based on the proposed concept and experimental evaluation, further ColorWatch prototype and user devices for translation of color into an automatic tactile system may be developed.