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，对于硬件和软件开发人员来说，确保此类设备可供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式(语音)输入部分抵消，但对于许多触摸屏设备的全功能、高效和社会可接受的使用，触摸和手势仍然是必要的。这对美国近2000万上半身有运动障碍的人来说是一个严重的问题，这个数字只会随着美国老年人口的空前增加而上升。该项目开展了一个研究计划，以促进对运动能力下降如何影响触摸屏交互的基本理解，并反过来，如何个性化触摸屏交互来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，如改变触摸屏设备使用基础上的点击、滑动和点击的方式，受到的关注要少得多。触摸屏使用的增加为基于软件的修改提供了巨大的机会，因为整个交互界面是由软件控制的，这位研究人员已经利用这一优势来调整触摸屏键盘，以适应非残疾人在某些情况下(如行走时)运动能力的变化。这个项目远远超出了这项前期工作的范围，为永久性运动障碍患者提供了极大的好处。该项目由两项相辅相成的主要活动组成。第一个主要活动采用大规模研究，以可靠地评估和预测运动能力对触摸屏交互的影响。通过开发利用用户生成的内容(如视频、推特)的新方法，并采用大规模的在线实验，大规模研究将提供比以前可能的更深入和更生态有效的关于运动能力如何影响触摸屏使用的表征。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，即设计和评估个性化触摸屏交互的新方法。第二个活动将贡献个性化移动交互的新技术，生成新的触摸屏性能算法和预测模型，并确定个性化移动交互的设计指南。广泛影响：这项工作将改变运动障碍者的移动可访问性。启用移动接入可以为残疾人带来更大的赋权和独立性。许多拟议的技术也可能使用户更广泛地受益。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环境，这对于确保所有用户都可以访问新的商业界面非常重要。教育计划包括两个与无障碍相关的课程，其中一个与区公共图书馆建立了合作伙伴关系，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.