Perception and haptics: towards more accessible computers for motion-impaired users

Hwang, Faustina; Keates, Simeon; Langdon, Patrick; Clarkson, P. John; Robinson, Peter

Abstract

For people with motion impairments, access to and independent control of a computer can be essential. Symptoms such as tremor and spasm, however, can make the typical keyboard and mouse arrangement for computer interaction difficult or even impossible to use. This paper describes three approaches to improving computer input effectivness for people with motion impairments. The three approaches are: (1) to increase the number of interaction channels, (2) to enhance commonly existing interaction channels, and (3) to make more effective use of all the available information in an existing input channel. Experiments in multimodal input, haptic feedback, user modelling, and cursor control are discussed in the context of the three approaches. A haptically enhanced keyboard emulator with perceptive capability is proposed, combining approaches in a way that improves computer access for motion impaired users.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: PUI'01 Workshop on Perceptive User Interfaces
• Start Date: Nov 15, 2001
• End Date: Nov 16, 2001
• Publication Date: 2001
• Deposit Date: Feb 5, 2019
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Book Title: Proceedings of the 2001 workshop on Perceptive user interface
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/971478.971507
• Keywords: Perception, haptics, accessible computers, motion-impaired users, Interfaces for all, user models, force-feedback, keyboard emulator, Logitech Wingman, cursor control
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1497500
• Additional Information: This research is funded in part by the EPSRC, the Canadian Cambridge Trust, and NSERC.