AUDIO-TACTILE LOCATION MARKERS: ACCESSIBLE REAL-WORLD TAGGING FOR THE BLIND

摘要

In this paper we present the concept of Audio-tactile Location Markers (ALMs) as a remedy to the lack of accessibility in current tag-based applications. ALMs are an auxiliary enhancement for existing real-world tags, which propagates their existence and purpose to blind and vision-impaired people in the vicinity. Users can activate an audible signal based on a pre-selection of available tags (pull) or choose to be constantly informed about nearby tags (push). We evaluated both methods with blind and vision-impaired people using an NFC-enabled smartphone. Participants experienced no problems locating the ALM based on the audible signal, but required assistance with touching the tag. Pull was favored to push in specific situations.