Haptically Enhanced Mouse

We designed and built a haptically enhanced mouse for blind and severely visually impaired computer users. A haptic mouse uses tactile feedback to convey information about the cursor position on the screen. A basic trackball mouse was modified to include a brake to indicate when the pointer reaches the edge of the screen and a vibrating motor that alerts the user when the pointer passes over an icon or the edge of a window. In addition, an audio feedback feature was developed that provides information about what the pointer is over. The mouse connects through the USB port to a computer running Linux. A GUI in Java was developed to test the functionality of the mouse. Although there was a large variation in the performance of our test subjects, the results indicated that users who are unable to the screen can locate and identify objects faster with haptic and speech feedback than with only speech feedback. They also demonstrated that users can determine basic spatial relationships between objects on a screen through exploration using the haptic mouse