HCI for People with Disabilities
Description/Abstract
This article deals with the Human Computer Interaction(HCI)
of people with disability and how the designed system can assist the disable
person. This issue of disable people is currently becoming the interest of both
the expert and non-expert population in the field of HCI. The introduction
focuses on the clarification that what is HCI, how it is related to disabled
people in aspect of communication, its requirement and importance. After that
dimensions and types of disability is defined which ultimately leads to the
requirement of having the solution of disability type in field of HCI. Solution
of four major disabilities (i.e., visual, hearing, physical and speech
disability) is explained that what kind of system is required for the concerned
problem and how a related person can use it. References/Sources are mentioned at
the end of the Article/Blog.
Introduction
Human-Computer Interface (HCI) is the study and development
of computer based interfaces with the express purpose of making them convenient,
simpler, easier and productive for the human. We can find applications and
devices inferring new concepts of HCI. It is about designing new systems
(specifically computer systems) that support human so they carry out their
deeds productively and safely. It attempts to study new modes of communication
that could be used for human computer communication and simultaneously to
develop devices and techniques to use such modes. The technique devices can be
used for communication with the human and in the same way human can communicate
with such techniqued devices using their perceptual abilities, processes and
organs. The serious and sensitive aspect of using such technology for the
disabled people. They need more inclusive technology rather than having
separate world(i.e., Virtual Reality). HCI is actively considering the
assistance of disabled people. Human-Computer Interface (HCI) systems allows
more natural communication with the machines.
What is Disability?
A disability is any condition of the body or mind
(impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to
do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around
them (participation restrictions). According to WorldBank.org , out of One
billion people, 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of
disability, and disability prevalence is higher for developing countries.
One-fifth of the estimated global total, or between 110 million and 190 million
people, experience significant disabilities. Persons with disabilities are more
likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes such as less education,
poorer health outcomes, lower levels of employment, and higher poverty rates.
Dimensions:
According to the WHO, disability
has three dimensions:
1.
Impairment in a person’s body structure or
function, or mental functioning; examples of impairments include loss of a
limb, loss of vision or memory loss.
2.
Activity limitation, such as difficulty seeing,
hearing, walking, or problem solving.
3.
Participation restrictions in normal daily
activities, such as working, engaging in social and recreational activities,
and obtaining health care and preventive services.
Major types:
Disability has many types which
affects the person:
·
Vision
·
Movement
·
Thinking
·
Remembering
·
Learning
·
Communicating
·
Hearing
·
Mental health
·
Social relationships
People with Visual Disabilities
Visual disability is one that impairs one’s vision or causes
loss of vision. The main reason of assistance of HCI in this field is the
interaction of disable people with computers. They can hardly read contexts of
computer with their naked eyes and it also depends upon the level of vision that
one find it difficult to see small icons and read small font of text. Normal eyeglasses
and better interface design is the best solution for this level of vision. But
for the people with extreme vision disability (who find trouble seeing large
amount of text, keys of keyboard), one way is the use of system that make
sounds when using multimedia. Sound multimedia helps visually disabled human to
navigate through the multimedia menu and text reader helps to read the written
message, screen readers such as JAWS, exist for blind people to navigate
through a website. They read the text of the screen.
To perform a user's required task or activity, the user
firstly needs to input the required information via some input device such as
keyboard. But in case of visually impaired persons, they can not enter value or
input in a normal way so new keyboard have been established to help them enter
data into the system.
As the input is provided to the system with the use of
input devise. Computer monitor is the component where the entered information
has been displayed to see or get the output. So to ease this, the screen
magnifiers have been developed to magnify the content of the screen.
Such a system should also have an option to zoom in and zoom out text feature or change of the text size so it becomes convenient for vision impaired people to read the content and context. Meanwhile, proper color contrast should be used (prominent between text, background and graphics) for color blind people. In other words, system with screen magnifier is better for such people but not for completely blind persons though having said they need a system with screen reader.
People with Hearing Disabilities
Hearing loss, deafness, hard of hearing, or hearing impairment, is defined as a partial or total inability to hear. Audio commonly used for feedback and situational awareness. Many such people with this disability cannot express themselves clearly in public as they cannot use speech as a medium of communication, yet a large part of the hearing population cannot communicate with the deaf because they do not know sign language.
Sign Language
is the main
communication medium of
the hearing impaired or deaf people. In order to assist such
people with hearing disability, a system is required which can help people with
hearing loss one way is through auto
transcription. Increase use of captions in video can help their accessibility. In
most cases, websites or products have speech or video based clips. In this
scenerio, speech/audio clips should have transcript and videos should have
captions available. In this way, not only those with hearing impaired people
are benefitted but also other users (like if someone is new in that language or
one is travelling in a noisy environment i.e., bus, train so this can be
helpful for both). Introducing Gesture-based interfaces can be somehow better
for such people.
Having
said earlier sign language is the better medium of communication for such
people. Infering this knowledge, a new technology (which is still in its early
stages of innovation) is Sign Language Recognition and Synthesis. It uses
computer vision techniques to convert sign language videos into the spoken or
written form. A hearing disabled person can wear a glove having sensors
connected, and make gestures of sign language which will be converting to the
spoken or written form. In the same way sign language is synthesized with
gestures and can make a video visualisation though the system is not certain
completely.
People with Physical Disabilities
A
physical disability is a physical condition that affects a person’s mobility,
physical capacity, stamina, or dexterity. This can include brain or spinal cord
injuries, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, respiratory disorders, epilepsy,
hearing and visual impairments and more. People with physical disability have
limited control over their body. Fine
mouse movements, keyboard usage or any precise motion is difficult for them.
For devising a system for such users, one
can think of speech input rather than keyboarding. Head pointer technology
(demo image is displayed below) can also be considered if motor control of
extremities is greatly impaired
People with physical impairment have difficult precise
motion than other technology user do when using components of system. For this,
the system should be made least precision as possible. For example, buttons
with mild hit should be triggered and enhancing the button's hit area. In case
of interfaces, the designs should not be closed up too close as the probability
of hitting wrong target is greater in physically impaired people.
People with Speech Disabilities
People
who cannot speak or having difficulty in producing sounds fall under the class
of speech disability. Such people only have a lack in slow communication as the
medium of their communication is typing or writing. Spoken communication is far
more faster than typing/writing. Such people can also use sign language and its
technology to communicate. To make their communication more faster, common communication
auto text suggestion is recommended in system which is already available in
most of the system in this era.
Conclusion
It is necessary to say this research blog/article has its
limitations. The first limitation is that the people has wide classification in
sense of disability and they are further divided into sub-classes so it was not
possible to mention all so a generic research based blog is made. HCI has
always been characterized by the successful fallout of technologies from one
application to other ones. Its technology getting innovated and improved
according to the better concept. We live in an imperfect world and hence we
should design products to be used by everyone with various different flaws,
backgrounds, disabilities, and experiences. Technical developments in HCI
allows us to be optimistic in forseeing the overcoming barriers to gain access
to computer and through them to technical networks.
References
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/disability.html
https://medium.com/@kalyan.vejalla/hci-for-people-with-disabilities-979b6371467b
https://blog.google/products/android/braille-keyboard/
https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/types/hearing/
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