TY - GEN
T1 - Touch screen exploration of visual artwork for blind people
AU - Ahmetovic, Dragan
AU - Kwon, Nahyun
AU - Oh, Uran
AU - Bernareggi, Cristian
AU - Mascetti, Sergio
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the 2019 Science Technology Humanity and Social Science Convergence Research Program of National Research Foundation of Korea (2018M3C1B6061353).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 ACM.
PY - 2021/4/19
Y1 - 2021/4/19
N2 - This paper investigates how touchscreen exploration and verbal feedback can be used to support blind people to access visual artwork. We present two artwork exploration modalities. The first one, attribute-based exploration, extends prior work on touchscreen image accessibility, and provides fine-grained segmentation of artwork visual elements; when the user touches an element, the associated attributes are read. The second one, hierarchical exploration, is designed with domain experts and provides multi-level segmentation of the artwork; the user initially accesses a general description of the entire artwork and then explores a coarse segmentation of the visual elements with the corresponding high-level descriptions; once selected, coarse segments are subdivided into fine-grained ones, which the user can access for more detailed descriptions. The two exploration modalities, implemented as a mobile web app, were evaluated through a user study with 10 blind participants. Both modalities were appreciated by the participants. Attribute-based exploration is perceived to be easier to access. Instead, the hierarchical exploration was considered more understandable, useful, interesting and captivating, and the participants remembered more details about the artwork with this modality. Participants commented that the two modalities work well together and therefore both should be made available.
AB - This paper investigates how touchscreen exploration and verbal feedback can be used to support blind people to access visual artwork. We present two artwork exploration modalities. The first one, attribute-based exploration, extends prior work on touchscreen image accessibility, and provides fine-grained segmentation of artwork visual elements; when the user touches an element, the associated attributes are read. The second one, hierarchical exploration, is designed with domain experts and provides multi-level segmentation of the artwork; the user initially accesses a general description of the entire artwork and then explores a coarse segmentation of the visual elements with the corresponding high-level descriptions; once selected, coarse segments are subdivided into fine-grained ones, which the user can access for more detailed descriptions. The two exploration modalities, implemented as a mobile web app, were evaluated through a user study with 10 blind participants. Both modalities were appreciated by the participants. Attribute-based exploration is perceived to be easier to access. Instead, the hierarchical exploration was considered more understandable, useful, interesting and captivating, and the participants remembered more details about the artwork with this modality. Participants commented that the two modalities work well together and therefore both should be made available.
KW - Art accessibility
KW - Audio feedback.
KW - Blindness
KW - Touch screen
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107327352&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3442381.3449871
DO - 10.1145/3442381.3449871
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85107327352
T3 - The Web Conference 2021 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2021
SP - 2781
EP - 2791
BT - The Web Conference 2021 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2021
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 2021 World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2021
Y2 - 19 April 2021 through 23 April 2021
ER -