[Electronics-Talk] Article on appliance accessibility

[Tracy Carcione]

I am pasting below an Article from AFB AccessWorld on appliance
accessibility.  The first section talks about access using an iPhone, and
the 2nd section talks about an Etsy business that provides tactile overlays.

Tracy

 


New Developments in Appliance Access


VizLens and HALOS: Making Touchscreen Appliances and Other Devices More
Blind Friendly


Bill Holton

Here at AccessWorld, we have published an ongoing series of articles focused
on emerging research and breakthrough technologies to help prevent blindness
and restore lost vision. This article describes an emerging solution to a
growing accessibility issue: the increasing prevalence of terminals, kiosks,
vending machines, and other interactive objects that use touchscreen
interfaces inaccessible to people with visual impairments. The article also
introduces a brand new "low-tech" solution available right now that can help
you better label and navigate the touch controls on your microwave, oven,
dishwasher, and other home appliances.


VizLens


If you have used an iPhone for any length of time, you likely have
experience with an app called VizWiz <http://vizwiz.org/> . VizWiz was
developed by the ROC HCI Group at the University of Rochester, with the
support of Google and the National Science Foundation. With VizWiz, you can
take a photo and send it along with a question to a contact, Facebook
friend, Twitter user, or Amazon Mechanical Turk worker, who can return an
answer. Unfortunately, if you've tried using VizWiz lately, you have
doubtless noticed a decided lack of response.

"VizWiz was produced as a research project," says Jeffrey Bigham, one of
VizWiz's lead developers. "Once other people took the ideas and produced
other free and commercial options, it became time to let it lapse."

Bigham's dedication to accessibility has not flagged, however. He's now an
Associate Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer
Interaction Institute, where one of his PhD students, Anhong Guo, expressed
an interest in using computer vision to assist people with visual
impairments. Bigham became a project advisor to Guo, as the student began
looking for ways to make non-voicing touch interfaces more accessible. Today
they have a working prototype, called VizLens.

The VizLens user begins by taking an iPhone photo of a touch interface, and
giving it a name (such as "Home Microwave," or "Office Vending Machine").
Then, the user uploads the photo to the service, where the image is
crowdsourced for text labeling of each of the interface controls, along with
its accompanying position. The image is then sent to a server where it is
stored for access whenever the user wants to operate the device.

The user receives a text map of the touch panel, which can be explored using
VoiceOver touch and swipe navigation. Say your dishwasher has a single row
of touch controls. You would now know that the extreme right button is
"Start," and the one to its immediate left is "Rinse and Hold," and so on
and so forth. You could also snap a pic of your new TV remote, and then use
the resulting map to familiarize yourself with the various controls.

But wait--as they say on TV infomercials--there's more!

After a touch controlled appliance or other device has been mapped, the user
can open the VizLens app, activate the named item, then hold the phone with
one hand with the camera aimed at the controls, then hover a finger from the
other hand over the touchpad. The app announces, button-by-button, which
control your finger is pointing at. A second mode allows the user to tap the
control they wish to use, at which point the app guides your finger toward
the correct position with either beeps or spoken "left, right, up, down"
instructions.

"This works well for touch panels with a single layer of controls," says
Guo. "But there are many touch interfaces, such as the ones on our office
coffee pot and copying machine, that offer dynamic displays, using Mode
buttons that change the entire layout with each new press."

The solution the VizLens team has developed involves a one-time series of
photographs, one for each mode. "At this point, the app could identify which
mode the device is in, and offer navigation for that particular screen,"
says Guo.

The VizWiz team does not plan to use a library of appliance and other touch
panel devices, since the angle and lighting for each user will vary.
However, once you have taken the first picture, it will be placed in an
on-device library so it won't be necessary to reshoot every time you wish to
preheat the oven or start a load of wash.

Future enhancements include using OCR to verify that the information you
enter is correct, and combining OCR with crowdsourcing to enable
near-real-time use of dynamic displays that have not already been added to
your device's library--such as the ticket kiosk at an airport where you have
never traveled from before.

"It would also be a simple matter to use the scans to produce 3D templates
with tactile controls," notes Bigham.

As to what these tactile controls might conceivably feel like, read on.


HALOS


Currently, the best solution to operating touch interface home appliances is
via adhesive dots to mark often used controls or a braille overlay, either
handmade or produced by third-party providers or one of a very few appliance
makers who offer them. Recently, a new alternative has appeared which offers
tremendous potential. It's called the Home Appliance Label and Overlay
System <http://tangiblesurfaceresearch.com/halos.html>  (HALOS), produced by
Anne DeWitte, proprietor of Tangible Surface Research.

As an engineering grad student, DeWitte studied tactile displays. "Today we
have LEDs that can change colors. Hopefully, soon we will also have
materials that can shrink or expand using similar display commands to
produce touchable buttons, sliders, and even graphics."

It occurred to DeWitte that these same developing screen technologies could
also be used to help consumers with visual impairments to operate the
touch-sensitive control panels that are becoming standard on more and more
home appliances. Thinking ahead toward this possibility, DeWitte began to
wonder, "Once we do have the ability, what will the universal tactile
representation for, say, a timer clock feel like?"

DeWitte was familiar with braille appliance overlays, but she rejected these
as programmable tactile elements. "Not everyone, especially newly blind
seniors, reads braille, so they cannot be considered universal design
elements."

DeWitte wanted to develop a tactile icon library that identifies tactile
shapes that have meaning for the home appliance domain. She took her
proposal
<https://experiment.com/projects/designing-touch-surfaces-to-help-the-visual
ly-impaired-operate->  to Experiment.com, a crowdfunding site for scientific
research. Her project received funding, and with the help of design students
at the Rochester Institute of Technology--who designed some of the tactile
icon shapes--and guidance from members of the Association for the Blind and
Visually Impaired (ABVI) in Rochester, who also supplied test volunteer
subjects, she began compiling a library of proposed universal tactile icons
that could be used over a variety of appliance models and manufacturers.

"The tactile Start button on a Microwave should be the same as the tactile
Start button on a dishwasher," observes DeWitte.

Too much research winds up being published in a journal, then put on a back
shelf waiting for someone else to turn the theoretical into the actual. But
DeWitte is an engineer, and wanted to see tangible results of her work. So
she began creating transparent silicon appliance overlays, which used shapes
instead of braille to note various functions. If you've used an NLS player
you are already familiar with several of these tactile icons: a
left-pointing arrow for Rewind, a raised letter X for Stop.

Today, DeWitte offers custom appliance templets on her Etsy store for just
$30. Instead of raised dots, these overlays use different shapes to signify
what each control does. A raised right-facing triangle shape signifies the
Start button on an oven, microwave or a dishwasher, for example, while a
popped kernel shape signifies a microwave's Popcorn setting.

"Once I get a product model name and number I can usually find the display
layout in a parts list so I can get the layout and measurements," she says.
"If it isn't available, I ask the customer to place a quarter against the
display for context and then snap a photo for me to work from."

Since the overlays are transparent, a sight-impaired individual can use them
without blocking the view for their sighted spouse, children, or other
housemates. DeWitte also offers a second option if you don't wish to use a
full template. Currently, she produces three different sets of foam-based,
stick-on Tactile Icons, which include HALOS for most popular controls. HALOS
are priced at $5 per set, but DeWitte is also willing to consider creating
custom HALOS packs, or even creating individual custom icons with the shapes
of your choice.

"My most popular custom requests are for clothes washers and driers," she
says. Which is why DeWitte is actively seeking feedback on what shapes would
work best for various appliance functions such as "Delicate Wash," and "Air
Dry."


Further Information


You can read more about VizLens and stay up to date on the VizLens website
<https://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/2016/vizlens-interactive-smartphone-app-blind
> , which includes research materials and a YouTube video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JKxcFUpUlc>  demonstration.

HALOS are available through DeWitte's Etsy shop
<https://www.etsy.com/shop/halosystem> .