HAPTIC TABLET FOR THE ACCESSIBILITY OF DIGITAL CONTENT TO THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED

数字技术已经在我们的日常生活中变得无处不在，并从根本上改变了我们与信息以及彼此之间沟通和互动的方式。我们现在可以随时随地以多种格式访问数字内容，从图像、视频、文本、语音到虚拟和增强现实体验。通常情况下，这使得智能手机和类似的移动设备成为宝贵的信息来源，以及与世界和他人联系的手段。然而，由于几乎完全依赖视觉和听觉反馈，这些设备存在明显的可访问性问题。目前的智能手机和平板电脑提供了辅助功能，但主要是文本到语音的形式，这可能不切实际，而且会影响读写能力，而且需要连接到可刷新的盲文显示器，这需要额外的外设，通常体积庞大，价格昂贵，或者体积太小，功能太有限。这些设备仍然阻止视障人士访问图形内容和复杂的符号。一种解决方案是为视力受损的人开发一种特殊的平板电脑，但目前很少有这样的平板电脑能够解决所有这些挑战。在ABILITY中，这将通过提出一种新颖的成本效益高的多行盲文显示驱动机制来实现，依赖于能够独立控制盲文细胞的更少和远程驱动器，以及具有创新多点触控振动触觉局部反馈的平板电脑。该设备将提供多感官交互和反馈，利用人工智能算法使设备适应用户的需求和行为，用于图像分析和预测写作。目标是通过触觉、视觉和听觉反馈的结合，提供一种涵盖广泛的视觉障碍和视障人群需求的多感官设备。为此，ABILITY会在整个项目中采用以用户为中心的设计方法，让用户在不同的设计和评估阶段反复参与。

Digital technologies have become pervasive in our daily lives and have fundamentally changed the ways we communicate and interact with information and with each other. We now have access to digital content anytime, anywhere and in a palette of formats, ranging from images, videos, text, speech to virtual and augmented reality experiences. Typically, this has made smartphones, and similar mobile devices, an invaluable source of information and a mean of connection to the world and to others. Yet, by relying almost exclusively on visual and auditory feedbacks, these devices pose evident accessibility issues. Current smartphones and tablets provide accessibility features, but mostly in the form of text-to-speech, which can be impractical and affect literacy, and through connectivity to refreshable Braille displays, which involve an additional peripheral, often bulky and expensive or when small too limited. These devices still prevent the visually impaired access to graphical content and complex notations. A solution would be to develop a specific tablet for the visually impaired, but few of them exist and currently tackle all these challenges. In ABILITY, this will be achieved by proposing a novel cost effective actuation mechanism for multiline Braille display, relying on fewer and remote actuators able to control independently the Braille cells, and a tablet with innovative multitouch vibrotactile localised feedbacks. This device will provide multisensory interactions and feedback, leveraging AI algorithms for device adaptability to the users’ needs and behaviour for image analysis and predictive writing. The goal is to provide a multisensory device covering the wide range of visual disabilities and needs of the visually impaired population, through combinations of tactile, visual and auditory feedbacks. For this, ABILITY will adopt a user-centred design approach throughout the project to involve the users iteratively in the different design and evaluation stages.