SBIR Phase I: Web-Based Touch Display for Accessible Science Education

9860813这个由Immersion Corporation推出的小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将降低盲人和视障学生在科学教育中遇到的障碍。静电场、空气动力学、分子引力和力学是本科生密集使用视觉媒介(如绘图数据、计算机图形和插图)的课程的例子。沉浸式已经开发出了能够显示力量的低成本计算机鼠标。这款鼠标将使学生能够感受到模拟这些现象所产生的力量，将难以触及的抽象变成有形的现实。拟议的工作将为互联网力量反馈开发使能软件，并将其应用于为盲人和视障学生设计的演示模块。一个由盲人科学家和教育工作者组成的团队将通过互联网对这项应用进行评估。下一阶段的研究将继续推动软件开发，对视障初学者的成果进行深入评估，并将实施范围扩大到多个教育网站。该项目将为残疾人融入基于万维网的学习技术提供必要的步骤。虽然许多研究人员已经研究了将视觉信息映射到触觉的可能性，但到目前为止，这些都没有被证明在商业上是可行的。然而，沉浸提议的触摸面有潜力满足盲人和视障人士的无障碍需求，同时通过大众市场吸引力实现批量经济。

9860813 This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project from Immersion Corporation will lower barriers that blind and visually impaired students experience in science education. Electrostatic fields, aerodynamics, molecular attraction, and mechanics are examples of undergraduate topics that intensively utilize visual media such as plotted data, computer graphics, and illustrations. Immersion has developed low-cost computer mouse capable of force display. This mouse will enable students to feel forces generated by simulations of these phenomena, turning inaccessible abstractions into tangible reality. The proposed work will develop enabling software for Internet force feedback and will apply it to a demonstration module designed for blind and visually impaired students. A team of blind scientists and educators will evaluate the application over the Internet. The next phase of the research will continue enabling software development, concluding in-depth assessment of outcomes using visually-impaired novice learners, and it will expand implementation to multiple educational sites. This project will provide essential steps in integrating persons with disabilities into Word Wide Web based learning technologies. While a number of investigators have examined the potential for mapping visual information to the sense of touch, to date, these have not proven commercially viable. Immersion's proposed touch surface, however, has the potential to meet accessibility needs of the blind and visually-impaired while achieving volume economies through mass-market appeal.