CAREER: Scaling Up Mobile Accessibility Through Touchscreen Personalization

触摸屏界面作为人们与计算机交互的界面正变得越来越普遍，然而，对于有运动障碍的人来说，许多触摸屏命令很难或不可能执行。随着触摸屏界面部署的增加，硬件和软件开发人员确保这些设备能够被广泛的用户访问变得至关重要。虽然这些挑战可以通过多模态（语音）输入部分抵消，但触摸和手势仍然是许多触摸屏设备功能完备、高效和社会可接受的必要条件。对于美国近2000万有运动障碍的人来说，这是一个严重的问题，他们的上半身受到了影响，随着美国老年人口的空前增加，这个数字只会上升。该项目旨在推进对运动能力下降如何影响触摸屏交互的基本理解，以及如何个性化触摸屏交互以支持每个用户的能力。虽然大量的用户界面开发工作集中在个性化内容上，但个性化交互界面，例如改变触屏设备使用的敲击、滑动和点击的方式，受到的关注却少得多。由于整个交互界面是由软件控制的，因此触摸屏的使用增加为基于软件的修改提供了巨大的机会，这一优势已经被研究人员利用来调整触摸屏键盘，以适应残疾人在某些情况下（如走路时）的运动能力变化。这个项目远远超出了这项初步工作，为永久性运动障碍患者提供了巨大的好处。该项目包括两个相互补充的主要活动。第一个主要活动采用大规模的研究来可靠地评估和预测运动能力对触屏互动的影响。通过开发新的方法来利用用户生成的内容（例如，视频，推特）和采用大规模的在线实验，大规模的研究将提供一个更深入和生态有效的表征运动能力如何影响触摸屏的使用比以前可能。该项目的第二个主要活动建立在第一个主要活动的基础上，设计和评估个性化触摸屏交互的新方法。第二项活动将为个性化移动交互提供新技术，生成触摸屏性能的新算法和预测模型，并确定个性化移动交互的设计指南。更广泛的影响：这项工作将改变运动障碍人士的移动无障碍。实现移动访问可使残疾人获得更大的权能和独立性。许多提出的技术也可能使更广泛的用户受益。这项工作对下一代移动设备的无障碍设计也有影响，包括可穿戴设备和3d手势界面。许多技术应该适用于商业上下文中，这对于确保所有用户都可以访问新的商业接口非常重要。教育计划包括两门与无障碍相关的课程，其中一门课程与华盛顿特区公共图书馆建立了合作关系，为残疾人提供触摸屏培训。

Touchscreen interfaces are becoming increasingly prevalent as the interface with which people interact with computers and yet, for people with motor impairments, many touchscreen commands are difficult or impossible to execute. With the increased deployment of touchscreen interfaces, it becomes critically important for hardware and software developers to ensure that such devices are accessible to a broad range of users. While these challenges can be partially offset by multimodal (speech) input, touch and gesture remain necessary for fully functional, efficient, and socially acceptable use of many touchscreen devices. This is a serious concern for the almost 20 million people in the U.S. who have motor impairments that affect their upper body, a number that will only rise with the unprecedented increase in America's senior population.This project pursues a research program to advance a fundamental understanding of how decreased motor ability impacts touchscreen interaction and, in turn, how touchscreen interactions can be personalized to support each user's abilities. While substantial user-interface-development effort has focused on personalizing content, personalized-interaction interfaces, such as to alter the means of issuing the taps, swipes, and clicks that underlie the use of touchscreen devices, have received much less attention. The increased use of touchscreens presents a tremendous opportunity for software-based modifications because the entire interactive surface is software-controlled, an advantage that this researcher has already leveraged to adapt touchscreen keyboards to how motor abilities for people without disabilities change in some situations such as while walking. This project goes far beyond this preliminary work to provide great benefits to people with permanent motor impairments.The project consists of two complementary major activities. The first major activity employs large-scale studies to reliably assess and predict the impact of motor abilities on touchscreen interaction. By developing new methods to leverage user-generated content (e.g., videos, tweets) and by employing large-scale online experimentation, the large-scale studies will provide a more in-depth and ecologically valid characterization of how motor ability impacts touchscreen use than has been previously possible. The second major activity of the project builds on findings from the first major activity to design and evaluate new approaches for personalizing touchscreen interaction. The second activity will contribute new techniques for personalizing mobile interactions, generate new algorithms and predictive models of touchscreen performance, and identify design guidelines for personalizing mobile interaction.Broader Impacts: This work will transform mobile accessibility for people with motor impairments. Enabling mobile access can lead to greater empowerment and independence for people with disabilities. Many of the proposed techniques will also likely benefit users more broadly. This work also has implications for the accessible design of the next generation of mobile devices, including wearables and 3D-gesture interfaces. Many of the techniques should be applicable in a commercial context, which is important to insure that new commercial interfaces are accessible to all users. Education plans include two courses related to accessibility, one of which establishes a partnership with the DC Public Library on touchscreen training for people with disabilities.