Enhancing independence and safety for blind and deaf-blind public transit riders

Blind and deaf-blind people often rely on public transit for everyday mobility, but using transit can be challenging for them. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 blind and deaf-blind people to understand how they use public transit and what human values were important to them in this domain. Two key values were identified: independence and safety. We developed GoBraille, two related Braille-based applications that provide information about buses and bus stops while supporting the key values. GoBraille is built on MoBraille, a novel framework that enables a Braille display to benefit from many features in a smartphone without knowledge of proprietary, devicespecific protocols. Finally, we conducted user studies with blind people to demonstrate that GoBraille enables people to travel more independently and safely. We also conducted co-design with a deaf-blind person, finding that a minimalist interface, with short input and output messages, was most effective for this popul...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Shiri Azenkot, Sanjana Prasain, Alan Borning, Emily Fortuna, Richard E. Ladner, Jacob O. Wobbrock
• Keywords: Braille Display, CHI 2011, Human Computer Interaction, Minimalist Interface, Semi Structured Interviews