Assembling the Senses : Towards the Design of Cooperative Interfaces for Visually Impaired Users

• The needs of blind and visually impaired users are seriously under-investigated in CSCW. We review work on assistive interfaces especially concerning how collaboration between sighted and blind users across different modalities might be supported. To examine commonly expressed design principles, we present a study where blind and sighted persons play a game to which the former has an auditory interface, the latter a visual one. Interaction analyses are presented highlighting features of interface design, talk and gesture which are important to the participants’ abilities to collaborate. Informed by these analyses, we reconsider design principles for cooperative interfaces for the blind.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Work (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Universal (or disability) access

assistive technologies

auditory input/output

sound in the user-interface

sonification

user interface design

CSCW

qualitative empirical methods

interaction analysis

Conversation Analysis

cross-modal interaction

collaboration

Disability research

Handikappsforskning

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)