LATEST PUBLICATIONS

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  • In-context Q&A to Support Blind People Using Smartphones
  • Rodrigues, André and Montague, Kyle and Nicolau, Hugo and Guerreiro, João and Guerreiro, Tiago
  • Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, , 2017
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  Blind people face many barriers using smartphones. Still, previous research has been mostly restricted to non-visual gestural interaction, paying little attention to the deeper daily challenges of blind users. To bridge this gap, we conducted a series of workshops with 42 blind participants, uncovering application challenges across all levels of expertise, most of which could only be surpassed through a support network. We propose Hint Me!, a human-powered service that allows blind users to get in-app assistance by posing questions or browsing previously answered questions on a shared knowledge-base. We evaluated the perceived usefulness and acceptance of this approach with six blind people. Participants valued the ability to learn independently and anticipated a series of usages: labeling, layout and feature descriptions, bug workarounds, and learning to accomplish tasks. Creating or browsing questions depends on aspects like privacy, knowledge of respondents and response time, revealing the benefits of a hybrid approach.
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  • Investigating Laboratory and Everyday Typing Performance of Blind Users
  • Nicolau, Hugo and Montague, Kyle and Guerreiro, Tiago and Rodrigues, André and Hanson, Vicki L.
  • ACM Trans. Access. Comput., 4:1–4:26, 2017
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Over the last decade there have been numerous studies on touchscreen typing by blind people. However, there are no reports about blind users’ everyday typing performance and how it relates to laboratory settings. We conducted a longitudinal study involving five participants to investigate how blind users truly type on their smartphones. For twelve weeks, we collected field data, coupled with eight weekly laboratory sessions. This paper provides a thorough analysis of everyday typing data and its relationship with controlled laboratory assessments. We improve state-of-the-art techniques to obtain intent from field data, and provide insights on real-world performance. Our findings show that users improve over time, even though it is at a slow rate. Substitutions are the most common type of error and have a significant impact on entry rates in both field and laboratory settings. Results show that participants are 1.3-2 times faster when typing during everyday tasks. On the other hand, they are less accurate. We finished by deriving some implications that should inform the design of future virtual keyboard for non-visual input. Moreover, findings should be of interest to keyboard designers and researchers looking to conduct field studies to understand everyday input performance.
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  • The Use of Smart Glasses for Lecture Comprehension by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students
  • Miller, Ashley and Malasig, Joan and Castro, Brenda and Hanson, Vicki L. and Nicolau, Hugo and Brandão, Alessandra
  • CHI ’17 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, , 2017
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  Deaf and hard of hearing students must constantly switch between several visual sources to gather all necessary information during a classroom lecture (e.g., instructor, slides, sign language interpreter or captioning). Using smart glasses, this research tested a potential means to reduce the effects of visual field switches, proposing that consolidating sources into a single display may improve lecture comprehension. Results showed no statistically significant comprehension improvements with the glasses, but interviews indicated that participants found it easier to follow the lecture with glasses and saw the potential for them in the classroom. Future work highlights priorities for smart glasses consideration and new research directions.
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  • SlidePacer: A Presentation Delivery Tool for Instructors of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students
  • Brandão, Alessandra and Nicolau, Hugo and Tadas, Shreya and Hanson, Vicki L.
  • Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 25–32, 2016
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Following multimedia lectures in mainstream classrooms is challenging for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students, even when provided with accessibility services. Due to multiple visual sources of information (e.g. teacher, slides, interpreter), these students struggle to divide their attention among several simultaneous sources, which may result in missing important parts of the lecture; as a result, access to information is limited in comparison to their hearing peers, having a negative effect in their academic achievements. In this paper we propose a novel approach to improve classroom accessibility, which focuses on improving the delivery of multimedia lectures. We introduce SlidePacer, a tool that promotes coordination between instructors and sign language interpreters, creating a single instructional unit and synchronizing verbal and visual information sources. We conducted a user study with 60 participants on the effects of SlidePacer in terms of learning performance and gaze behaviors. Results show that SlidePacer is effective in providing increased access to multimedia information; however, we did not find significant improvements in learning performance. We finish by discussing our results and limitations of our user study, and suggest future research avenues that build on these insights.
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  • Effect of Target Size on Non-visual Text-entry Honorable Mention
  • Rodrigues, André and Nicolau, Hugo and Montague, Kyle and Carriço, Luı́s and Guerreiro, Tiago
  • Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, 47–52, 2016
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Touch-enabled devices have a growing variety of screen sizes; however, there is little knowledge on the effect of key size on non-visual text-entry performance. We conducted a user study with 12 blind participants to investigate how non-visual input performance varies with four QWERTY keyboard sizes (ranging from 15mm to 2.5mm). This paper presents an analysis of typing performance and touch behaviors discussing its implications for future research. Our findings show that there is an upper limit to the benefits of larger target sizes between 10mm and 15mm. Input speed decreases from 4.5 to 2.4 words per minute (WPM) for targets sizes below 10mm. The smallest size was deemed unusable by participants even though performance was in par with previous work.