TactualPlot: Spatializing Data as Sound using Sensory Substitution for Touchscreen Accessibility.

Tactile graphics are one of the best ways for a blind person to perceive a chart using touch, but their fabrication is often costly, time-consuming, and does not lend itself to dynamic exploration. Refreshable haptic displays tend to be expensive and thus unavailable to most blind individuals. We propose TACTUALPLOT, an approach to sensory substitution where touch interaction yields auditory (sonified) feedback. The technique relies on embodied cognition for spatial awareness-i.e., individuals can perceive 2D touch locations of their fingers with reference to other 2D locations such as the relative locations of other fingers or chart characteristics that are visualized on touchscreens. Combining touch and sound in this way yields a scalable data exploration method for scatterplots where the data density under the user's fingertips is sampled. The sample regions can optionally be scaled based on how quickly the user moves their hand. Our development of TactualPlot was informed by formative design sessions with a blind collaborator, whose practice while using tactile scatterplots caused us to expand the technique for multiple fingers. We present results from an evaluation comparing our TactualPlot interaction technique to tactile graphics printed on swell touch paper.

"Creatures of habit": influential factors to the adoption of computer personalization and accessibility settings.

Purpose: Customizing the accessibility and ease-of-use settings of a computer can improve the overall user experience for people with and without disabilities. However, the adoption of such settings remains poor. This study investigates why various factors may influence people as they personalize and when they choose to integrate those changes into everyday use. Methods: To better understand how these factors may impact people's personalization process, we conducted a series of interviews involving 15 people with and without disabilities across several months in 2020 when computer usage became required due to the COVID-19 lockdown. We used grounded theory to analyze 49 semi-structured interviews with participants. During these interviews, people reflected upon: past attempts at personalization using built-in accessibility or ease-of-use features of their Operating System (OS) or other assistive technologies (AT), current customization activities using the personalization software, Morphic, and future opportunities for personalization systems and features. Results: We identified several barriers, facilitators, and perpetuating factors that can influence why and when people choose to adopt and integrate their personalization changes. We also outline the overall personalization lifecycle, which illustrates when various factors may impact computer personalization. Conclusion: Personalization activities are complex and easily affected by an ecosystem of influential factors that surround them. When paired with the three design considerations and ten lessons learned from this qualitative study, the overall personalization lifecycle may be useful during the design and development of future personalization systems or features for people with and without disabilities.

Are accessible software accountable?: A commentary.

Accessible software is increasingly important as the incidence of disability continues to increase and the population ages globally, ensuring people are not left behind in the digital revolution. Likewise, there is increased interest in ensuring software is accountable such that it is clear about the information it uses and the actions that it takes. While there have been some agreed-upon definitions for accessible, interpretable, and transparent software, accountable software lacks a universal definition and methodology. We argue that for a software to be accountable, it must also be accessible, interpretable, and transparent, and provide a methodology for developing accountable software.

An Open-source Tool for Simplifying Computer and Assistive Technology Use: Tool for simplification and auto-personalization of computers and assistive technologies.

Computer access is increasingly critical for all aspects of life from education to employment to daily living, health and almost all types of participation. The pandemic has highlighted our dependence on technology, but the dependence existed before and is continuing after. Yet many face barriers due to disability, literacy, or digital literacy. Although the problems faced by individuals with disabilities have received focus for some time, the problems faced by people who just have difficulty in using technologies has not, but is a second large, yet less understood problem. Solutions exist but are often not installed, buried, hard to find, and difficult to understand and use. To address these problems, an open-source extension to the Windows and macOS operating systems has been under exploration and development by an international consortium of organizations, companies, and individuals. It combines auto-personalization, layering, and enhanced discovery, with the ability to Install on Demand (IoD) any assistive technologies a user needs. The software, called Morphic, is now installed on all of the computers across campus at several major universities and libraries in the US and Canada. It makes computers simpler to use, and allows whichever features or assistive technologies a person needs to appear on any computer they encounter (that has Morphic on it) and want to use at school, work, library, community center, etc. This demonstration will cover both the basic and advanced features as well as how to get free copies of the open-source software and configure it for school, work or personal use. It will also highlight lessons learned from the placements.