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Spatial Reading System for Individuals with Blindness

In this research we introduce a novel reading system that enables Individuals with Blindness<br />or Severe Visual Impairment (IBSVI) to have equivalent spatial reading experience to their<br />sighted counterparts, in terms of being able to engage in different reading strategies e.g.<br />scanning, skimming, and active reading. IBSVI are enabled to read in a self-paced manner<br />with spatial access to the original layout of any electronic text document. This system<br />renders text on iPad-type devices, and reads aloud each word touched by the user\'s finger.<br />The user could move her finger smoothly along the lines to read continuously with the<br />support of tactile landmarks. A tactile overlay on the iPad screen helps IBSVI to navigate<br />a page, furnishing a framework of tactile landmarks to give IBSVI a sense of place on the<br />page. As the user moves her finger along the tangible pattern of the overlay, the text on the<br />screen that is touched is rendered audibly to speech. The system supports IBSVI to develop<br />and maintain a cognitive map of the structure and the layout of the page. IBSVI are enabled<br />to fuse audio, tactile landmarks, and spatial information in order to read.<br />The system\'s initial design is founded on a theoretical hypothesis. A participatory design<br />approach with IBSVI consultants was then applied to refine the initial design. The re"fined<br />design was tested in a usability study, which revealed two major issues with the tested<br />design. These issues are related to the lack of instant feedback from the system (psycho-<br />motorical problem), and the lack of conveying the semantic level of the page structure.<br />We adapted the reader design to solve the usability problems. The improved design was<br />tested in an experience sampling study. The results showed a leap in the system usability.<br />IBSVI participants successfully self-paced read spatial text. Further reading support was<br />then added to the system to improve the user experience while reading and interacting with<br />the system. We tested the latest design of the reader system with respect to its featured<br />function of enabling self-paced reading and re-finding information. A decomposition study<br />was conducted to evaluate the main components of the system; the tactile overlay, and the<br />intelligent active reading support. The results showed that both components are required<br />to achieve the best performance in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and spatial perception.<br />We conducted an evaluation study to compare our reader system to the state-of-the-art<br />iBook with VoiceOver. The results show that our reader system is more effective than iBook<br />with VoiceOver in finding previously read information and in estimating the layout of the<br />page, implying that IBSVI were able to construct a cognitive map for the pages they read,<br />and perform advanced reading strategies. Our goal is to to enable IBSVI to access digital<br />reading materials effectively, so that they may have equal learning opportunities as their<br />sighted counterparts. / Ph. D.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/22016
Date06 May 2013
CreatorsElglaly, Yasmine Nader Mohamed
ContributorsComputer Science, Quek, Francis K. H., Ehrich, Roger W., Gracanin, Denis, Smith-Jackson, Tonya L., Rizk, Mohamed Rizk Mohamed
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
FormatETD, application/pdf, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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