Smartphone Haptic Applications for Visually Impaired Users

Abstract

This paper focuses on the research of haptic technology and its potential applications for visually impaired people as well as how this technology can help to reduce their daily life difficulties. With the recent development of technology, people with visual disabilities are given the opportunity to use special equipment and applications, in order to actively participate in the activities of daily life. The operation of those devices and the corresponding applications is mainly based on stimuli that can be perceived by people with severe vision problems using other senses, such as touch and hearing. In this context, five applications for mobile devices were implemented, in order to investigate their usability for visually impaired users. These applications utilize the vibration of a mobile deviceand the HTML5 vibration API in such a way that it maximizes the haptic feedback to the user.