Handscope: Enabling blind people to experience statistical graphics on websites through haptics

Abstract

Statistical graphics on the web such as a tag cloud visually represent statistical data which are generated by website users. While sighted people can scan the latest information through the dynamic changes of statistical graphics, blind people, who cannot perceive them, lose opportunities to keep up to date in this quickly-changing society. In order to enable blind people to experience socially-generated statistical graphics, we propose a new assistive device, namely, Handscope, which translates statistical graphics on websites into simple height changes of its haptic pole. We conducted a two-phase user study with blind people in order to test its usability and explore its effects on the quality of blind users' web experiences. The results show the meaningful contribution of Handscope in extending the area of blind people's web experiences.