FluxMarker: Enhancing tactile graphics with dynamic tactile markers

For people with visual impairments, tactile graphics are an impor-tant means to learn and explore information. However, raised line tactile graphics created with traditional materials such as emboss-ing are static. Whileavailable refreshable displays can dynamically change the content, they are still too expensive for manyusers, and are limited in size. Thesefactors limit wide-spread adoption and the representation of large graphics or data sets. In this paper, we present FluxMaker, an inexpensive scalable system that renders dy-namic information on top of static tactile graphics with movable tactile markers. These dynamic tactile markers can be easily re-configured and used to annotate static raised line tactile graphics, including maps, graphs, and diagrams. We developed a hardware prototype that actuates magnetic tactile markers driven by low-cost and scalable electromagnetic coil arrays, which can befabricated with standard printed circuit boardmanufacturing.Weevaluate our prototype with six participants with visual impairments and found positive results across four application areas: location finding or navigating on tactile maps, data analysis, and physicalization, fea-ture identification for tactile graphics, and drawing support. The user study confirms advantages in application domains such as ed-ucation and data exploration.