BrailleTouch : Designing a Mobile Eyes-free Soft Keyboard

Texting is the essence of mobile communication and connectivity, as evidenced by today's teenagers, tomorrow's workforce. Fifty-four percent of American teens contact each other daily by texting, as compared to face-to-face (33%) and talking on the phone (30%) according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, 2010. Arguably, today's technologies support mobile text input poorly, primarily due to the size constraints of mobile devices. This is the case for everyone, but it is particularly relevant to the visually impaired. According to the World Health Organization, 284 million people are visually impaired worldwide. In order to connect these users to the global mobile community, we need to design effective and efficient methods for eyes-free text input on mobile devices. Furthermore, everyone would benefit from effective mobile texting for safety and speed. This design brief presents BrailleTouch, our working prototype solution for eyes-free mobile text input.QC 20160420