Tangible User Interfaces to Ease the Learning Process of Visually-Impaired Children

People with visual impairment face significant challenges during their learning process, especially children in the early stages of this process. Different assistive technologies have been developed in last decades to support people with visual impairment when interacting with computers. This kind of technologies assume certain skills and level of maturity in the users. Nevertheless, there is a lack of technologies for children, specifically designed to support their personal development especially in the earliest stages. In this paper we propose a novel system based on Tangible User Interfaces aiming at providing children with visual impairment a new way of learning basic concepts. The system implements an audio-based game through which children are guided and motivated with different activities designed to learn basic concepts by identifying objects physically available that children must grasp with their hands to interact with the system. We have also performed a preliminary evaluation of the system with real users obtaining positive results.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Maria D. Lozano

Victor M.R. Penichet

Barbara Leporini

Anil Fernando

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 1-5

Affiliations

[0001]Department of Computing Systems

University of Castilla-La Mancha

Albacete, Spain

[0002]ISTI - CNR

Via G. Moruzzi, 1 Pisa, Italy

[0003]Department of Electronic Engineering

University of Surrey

United Kingdom

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.87

SO-VID: 037fc04e-ccd0-42f2-9525-ec784ffc00fc

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 32

Conference location: Belfast, UK

Conference date: 4 - 6 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction Conference

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.87

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

References

L. A. Annetta 2008 Serious educational games. Theory into Practice 83
O. BalanA. MoldoveanuF. MoldoveanuM. I. Dascalu 2014 Audio games—a novel approach towards effective learning in the case of visually-impaired people Proceedings of seventh international conference of education, research and innovation, Seville
M. C. BuzziM. BuzziB. LeporiniC. Senette 2015 September Playing with geometry: a multimodal android app for blind children Proceedings of the 11th Biannual Conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter 134 137 ACM
T. G. DarinR. AndradeL. B. MerabetJ. H. Sánchez 2017 May Investigating the Mode in Multimodal Video Games: Usability Issues for Learners who are Blind Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2487 2495 ACM
K. DrossosN. ZormpasG. GiannakopoulosA. Floros 2015 July Accessible games for blind children, empowered by binaural sound Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments 5 ACM C. GirardJ. EcalleA. Magnan 2013 Serious games as new educational tools: how effective are they? A meta‐analysis of recent studies Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 29 3 207 219
D. GrammenosA. SavidisC. Stephanidis Designing universally accessible games ACM Computers in Entertainment 7, Article 8 2009
S. IwarssonA. Ståhl 2003 Accessibility, usability and universal design—positioning and definition of concepts describing person-environment relationships Disability and rehabilitation 25 2 57 66
L. R. MilneC. L. BennettR. E. LadnerS. Azenkot 2014 October BraillePlay: educational smartphone games for blind children Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility 137 144 ACM
L. ShoukryC. SturmG. H. Galal-Edeen 2015 Pre-MEGa: A Proposed Framework for the Design and Evaluation of Preschoolers’ Mobile Educational Games In Innovations and Advances in Computing, Informatics, Systems Sciences, Networking and Engineering 385 390 Springer International Publishing
D. SongA. KarimiP. Kim 2011 December Toward designing mobile games for visually challenged children In e-Education, Entertainment and e-Management (ICEEE), 2011 International Conference on 234 238 IEEE
F. J. Torrente VigilÁ. D. Blanco AguadoÁ. Serrano LagunaJ. A. Vallejo PintoP. Moreno GerB. Fernández Manjón 2014 Towards a low cost adaptation of educational games for people with disabilities Computer Science and Information Systems 11 1 369 391
B. YuanE. FolmerF. C. Harris 2011 Game accessibility: a survey Universal Access in the Information Society 10 1 81 100
J. Brooke 1996 SUS—A Quick and Dirty Usability Scale Digital Equipment Co., Ltd, Reading 1996
ISO/IEC 25062 2006 SQuaRE—Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports
O. ShaerE. Hornecker 2010 Tangible User Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction Series Now Publishers Inc
MIT 2017 Tangible Media Group - MIT http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/tangible-bits/
P. Marshall 2007 Do tangible interfaces enhance learning? Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction 163 170

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] L. A. Annetta 2008 Serious educational games. Theory into Practice 83

[2] O. BalanA. MoldoveanuF. MoldoveanuM. I. Dascalu 2014 Audio games—a novel approach towards effective learning in the case of visually-impaired people Proceedings of seventh international conference of education, research and innovation, Seville

[3] M. C. BuzziM. BuzziB. LeporiniC. Senette 2015 September Playing with geometry: a multimodal android app for blind children Proceedings of the 11th Biannual Conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter 134 137 ACM

[4] T. G. DarinR. AndradeL. B. MerabetJ. H. Sánchez 2017 May Investigating the Mode in Multimodal Video Games: Usability Issues for Learners who are Blind Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2487 2495 ACM

[5] K. DrossosN. ZormpasG. GiannakopoulosA. Floros 2015 July Accessible games for blind children, empowered by binaural sound Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments 5 ACM C. GirardJ. EcalleA. Magnan 2013 Serious games as new educational tools: how effective are they? A meta‐analysis of recent studies Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 29 3 207 219

[6] D. GrammenosA. SavidisC. Stephanidis Designing universally accessible games ACM Computers in Entertainment 7, Article 8 2009

[7] S. IwarssonA. Ståhl 2003 Accessibility, usability and universal design—positioning and definition of concepts describing person-environment relationships Disability and rehabilitation 25 2 57 66

[8] L. R. MilneC. L. BennettR. E. LadnerS. Azenkot 2014 October BraillePlay: educational smartphone games for blind children Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility 137 144 ACM

[9] L. ShoukryC. SturmG. H. Galal-Edeen 2015 Pre-MEGa: A Proposed Framework for the Design and Evaluation of Preschoolers’ Mobile Educational Games In Innovations and Advances in Computing, Informatics, Systems Sciences, Networking and Engineering 385 390 Springer International Publishing

[10] D. SongA. KarimiP. Kim 2011 December Toward designing mobile games for visually challenged children In e-Education, Entertainment and e-Management (ICEEE), 2011 International Conference on 234 238 IEEE

[11] F. J. Torrente VigilÁ. D. Blanco AguadoÁ. Serrano LagunaJ. A. Vallejo PintoP. Moreno GerB. Fernández Manjón 2014 Towards a low cost adaptation of educational games for people with disabilities Computer Science and Information Systems 11 1 369 391

[12] B. YuanE. FolmerF. C. Harris 2011 Game accessibility: a survey Universal Access in the Information Society 10 1 81 100

[13] J. Brooke 1996 SUS—A Quick and Dirty Usability Scale Digital Equipment Co., Ltd, Reading 1996

[14] ISO/IEC 25062 2006 SQuaRE—Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports

[15] O. ShaerE. Hornecker 2010 Tangible User Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction Series Now Publishers Inc

[16] MIT 2017 Tangible Media Group - MIT http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/tangible-bits/

[17] P. Marshall 2007 Do tangible interfaces enhance learning? Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction 163 170

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