EarTouch: Facilitating smartphone use for people with visual impairments

2020-04-22 Institute for Accessibility Develeopment

Interacting with a smartphone using touch input and speech output is challenging for visually impaired people in mobile and public scenarios, where only one hand may be available for input (e.g., while holding a cane) and using the loud-speaker for speech output is constrained by environmental noise, privacy, and social concerns. EarTouch is designed as a one-handed interaction technique that allows the users to interact with a smartphone using the ear to tap or perform gestures on the touch screen. Users hold the phone to their ears and listen to speech output from the ear speaker privately. Results show that EarTouch is easy, efficient, fun and socially acceptable to use. It also improves one-handed use, provides an alternative to protect privacy and avoid social awkwardness for visually impaired people.

The shadow indicates the range of sound propagation of speech output

Some example images of touch after preprocessing and the pipeline of image processing

Final set of ear interactions including ratings of "easy to perform" and typical use