Kin'touch: understanding how visually impaired people explore tactile maps

Anke Brock (1) , Samuel Lebaz (2) , Bernard Oriola (1, 3) , Delphine Picard (4) , Christophe Jouffrais (1, 3) , Philippe Truillet (1)

1 IRIT-ELIPSE - Etude de L’Interaction Personne SystèmE
2 UNIMES - Université de Nîmes
3 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
4 AMU - Aix Marseille Université

Tactile or interactive maps are largely used as an orientation aid for visually impaired people. Yet, little is known about haptic exploration strategies and their influence on the resultant cognitive mapping. We have designed a prototype with the potential to automatically analyze different users' exploration strategies. This prototype integrates data from the MS Kinect camera and a multi-touch table. It registers location of hands and digits on a tactile map. Results of preliminary studies show that this approach is promising.

Mots clés: haptic exploration; visual impairment; tactile maps; depth cameras; multi-touch; finger tracking; kinect; fusion

Domaines: Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]

Anke Brock, Samuel Lebaz, Bernard Oriola, Delphine Picard, Christophe Jouffrais, et al.. Kin'touch: understanding how visually impaired people explore tactile maps. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2012, Austin, United States. pp.2471 - 2476, ⟨10.1145/2212776.2223821⟩. ⟨hal-01099506⟩