Paper Reading #29: Usable gestures for blind people: understanding preference and performance

Usable gestures for blind people: understanding preference and performance

Chi '11

By:
Shaun Kane, Jacob Wobbrock, and Richard Ladner.

• Shaun Kane is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. He also holds a PhD from the University of Washington.
• Jacob Wobbrock is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Washington.
• Richard Ladner is current a Professor at the University of Washington. He also holds a PhD in Math from the University of California, Berkeley.

Summary
Hypothesis
Considering the different needs of blind people, especially in regards to touch based gestures, this paper approaches the problem and seeks a solution.

Methods
The researchers set up two studies to get appropriate data. They had 1 group of sighted participants and 1 group of blind participants. Both participants were asked to invent two gestures for commands that were read to them. These gestures were later evaluated based upon ease of use, and appropriateness. A second study targeted the specifics of blind people performing gestures. Both groups were asked to perform standardised gestures and the results were recorded for analysis.

Results
The first experiment showed that blind people were more liable to use complex, gestures that were closer to the edge of the tablet. They were also a lot more likely to use multi-touch gestures. The 2nd experiment showed no great difference, except for the fact that blind people had larger gestures which took them longer to draw.

Contents
This paper makes an effort to bring touch screen phones to the blind in a usable way. They discussed some previous work while later talking about their experiments and the rather predictable data gleaned from them. Using the results they recommended some improvements that could be made to touch screen devices to improve usability of touch screen devices for the blind.

Discussion
This paper does a fantastic job of bring something that is rarely thought about to the forefront. Blind people are hardly something one thinks about as users of touch screen phones, and this paper shows why there is no need that they can't use touch screen devices. Given the recommendations given in this paper and some further research, this gap could be bridged quite simply.