AR-Based Haptic Whiteboard User Interface for Blind People

Abstract

In a professional as well as an educational context, visual two-dimensional information spaces, like whiteboards, are frequently used to explain complex relations of the topic at hand, highlight important thoughts during discussion or structure ideas. During meetings facilitating this kind of aids, blind people can participate in the actual verbal discussion, and, if the tool used is digital and accessible, can access the textual information via screen readers. However, the spatial arrangement of pieces of information, which is usually crucial information as well, is not accessible. This work presents an AR-based user interface approach and prototype, which allows blind people to haptically access spatial information on two-dimensional information spaces, like whiteboards.