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Designing an OS for Blind/Deaf Users?
Sushant Bhatia asks: "I work for a team developing technology for individuals who are blind and I have had the opportunity to use some screen reading software and while there have been leaps of progress it is still quite tedious to use, and not at all user friendly. One of my managers recently posed an interesting question for me: 'How would you design an OS from scratch that would target individuals who are blind and/or deaf?' What about inputs such as keyboards or refreshable Braille devices?"
Unless your tech support/any other user of the machine isn't blind.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Blind:
1. Use a device that creates a topographical image on a pad based on the screen color values. This would allow the blind user to "feel" his way around the screen. More advanced versions could allow the user to use his hands as a mouse, by accepting a certain amount of pressure as a click.
2. Controls on the device should allow the user to "zoom in" on particular areas. This would help the user more easily find toolbar buttons and the like.
3. Replace the system fonts with braille fonts. (I'm uncertain as to how one might add bold or italics for emphasis, but I'm sure a system can be devised. Perhaps extra bumps outside the normal character area?)
4. No right clicks. Right clicking is more of functionality for advanced users anyway. Mac OS X can get along without it, so other OSes should be able to do so as well.
5. "Selected" items should actually invert in the control device. This would allow the person to easily understand what (s)he has selected at the moment.
6. Standard controls such as checkboxes, radio buttons, and the like should be skinned to be more "feel" friendly. i.e. Simple invertable boxes would work better for checkboxes and radio buttons than our current iconic forms.
7. One handed brail keyboard? It's just a thought, but if the blind could be taught to use a one hand keyboard, they could read and type at the same time.
Deaf: What are some of the actual challenges facing a deaf computer user? Computers are primarily visual, and tend to suffer little with the loss of sound. (Unless I'm listening to music, I usually keep my machines muted.) My only thought is that the standard issues of movie subtitles apply.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
so youre saying people who are not blind would be completely incapable of using a machine that did not have a video interface?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
And not having to power a laptop screen means you should get great battery life.
The OS is going to be at least somewhat compatible with other OS's to be somewhat useful. I should also have specialized input devices for people with hearing or vision deficiencies, and probably be compatible with modern X86 hardware (unless you plan on starting everything from scratch).
Since visual input plays a huge part in interfacing with a modern OS and/or software, you're probably not going to need software compatability. You would need, however, to make the document formats compatible with say office, or a standard XML format, etc.
Still, an OS redesign is a big task. It might be better to go with an existing OS.
So basically, you're not going to need "video" drivers, but you will need an interface with specific hardware for the blind, various document formats, storage/printing devices, etc etc
this was in '97. one bit of advice i can give is to make it so blind AND sighted people can use it. this is important because often the blind user will need to be taught to use it, and another blind user isnt always available/ideal for teaching another blind user (depending).
What really weirds me out is braille signs in airports and subway stations. How is a blind person supposed to know that there is a sign there, feel the entire wall?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Some Links:
Linux Accessibility HOWTO
The Blind Linux Project with mailing list
brltty for your braille input needs
Or, get an all in one distro
What the hell does an OS have to do with who's using it?
An OS should be a standard toolset for applications to be built on. Memory management, driver management, and application management is what an OS should do... it should worry about dividing hardware resources up among it's processes, it should worry about managing drivers... it should not have anything to do with the user interface that runs on it. This question was obviously posed by someone who hasn't the first clue about what an OS actually is.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It must not be so obvious to other people, but this is quite obvious to me. Computers don't necessarily need screens, we don't need to be hand-eye-coordinating little pointers on screens anymore. FOr those of us that have (most of) our sense intact, doesn't it make sense to not shunt them into a little tiny box?
So I'm talking about UI.
Does it make sense to use a mouse to click the start button while you're in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and driving a manual transmission? I can't imagine why this is still the case. Hay you UI and interface designers -- take a lesson from those of us who can't hear, or can't see, and imagine how they'd get things done. Same concepts can and should apply to handhelds, phones, PDAs, remote controls, etc. There are far more attractive (women) things to look at than little blinkety gadgets. Also, lots of user-wishes can be infered from small sensors (photodiode, accelerometers, available Wi-Fi networks), and the laptop doesn't really have to be open all the time in order for us to be connected and informed.
Please take a lesson from the needs of our blind and deaf brothers -- and enlighten the UIs for everyone.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
uberdave: yeah, i'm sure they can, but when you come right down to it, speech is still much faster. i seem to recall 40 WPM being considered the desirable benchmark for anything other than executive assistants, etc. i type at 85-90. but that's nothing compared to the speed of speech, which IIRC can run from speeds of 110-120 WPM. why limit the user?
here's a question though: instead of the folder analogy, would everything have a flat file structure, with users performing search queries for desired files, etc.?
ed
It's not the user that's limited, but the speech recognition software. When I type, I can be reasonably sure that what I'm typing will actually appear on the screen (even with my eyes closed or looking away). Voice recognition, on the other hand, isn't as accurate, and any increase in speed gained by using speech will be lost for a for a blind person when they need to get the computer to read back what you've written and manually correct it.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
As the parent article states, "blind and/or deaf". That possible "and" puts an interesting twist on things that blows "sole useful input" right out of the water.
Yes, blind and visually impaired people can use vocal interfaces to use computers. Personally as a legally blind programmer I can't STAND vocal interfaces. They bloat the amount of time it takes me to tab through code by a factor of at least three. So I make do with using the PC at a lower resolution. I'm one of the lucky ones out there who can do this with no problems.
As well there are braille-based systems available for completely blind induviduals and these sometimes also work for deafblind folks. There are also ways to adapt current OS'es for deaf induviduals so that any audial cues are represented onscreen. I'm not familiar of any tools that can process an audio file and create captioning though, which is a shame as that'd rock.
My point boils down to there aren't suitable OS options available for deaf, blind, AND/or deafblind induviduals. As the BBC reported working with technology can be an excessively frustrating situation for deafblind induviduals. In addition when you want to create a solution for deaf, blind, AND/or deafblind induviduals you have the issue of no two snowflakes being the same so to speak. On top of that it has to be easy to use. For those of us who can't/don't want to spend an hour just trying to read the first email in our inbox it has to be fast to use as well. There's also considerations such as multi-format training materials, child-sized input devices, learning curves due to induviduals being used to using other devices, etc. The list goes on.
This, folks is a REAL challenge. One I hope someone can rise to and overcome.
Starkle, starkle, little twink.
Why the hell would I use a window-environment at all?
80xSomething, textmode. The same as the braille-device has. Various consoles, a screenreader in the background which starts reading on a specific key on any console and in any program (be that shell, editor or webbrowser); maybe a hacked up "screen"-program could do that, that would also allow for dozens of virtual terminals without logging in dozens of times. I've seen a *real hacker* work on a vt220 with screen, slrn, bitchx, mutt, dozens of consoles, vim, ssh. Incredibly fast.
In fact, most unices would already do nicely, I suspect, given some nice text-to-speech software and good drivers for braille-hardware.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
so youre saying people who are not blind would be completely incapable of using a machine that did not have a video interface?
I can't read braille, can you?
My wife uses some of these devices (BrailleNote QT) and the biggest problem is using the wrong underlying operating system. DOS and Linux work just fine when translated to the command line; the WinCE that underlies her machine sucks. Hard. Sure, it gives a bare modicum of device and software (read: Outlook) compatibility, but at the cost of needless hardware overhead, and a special version of the three finger salute.
/. response is "did they contribute for their market research?" To which I say "sod off". The market is fairly small, and should be one with a tighter feedback loop between vendors and users. My email address is non-obfuscated should you need some ideas or contact info for some groups.
Asking 'what about blind and/or deaf' shows a bit of lack of understanding. The best replacement for the blind is speech. The only option for DB is refreshable braille. I suggest you and/or your employer make some contact with DB groups. At a DB camp a couple of weeks ago, some devs and sales reps from some tech outfit (forget which one) displayed their wares. The kneejerk
Finally, expose the API and make some generic libraries available to use to people who like to program. PulseData/HumanWare wants, I belive a dev kit fee. Umm, screw that. Entry level prices on the BrailleNote are ca. $3000, IIRC, so there's plenty of money out there. Not sure about you, but Franklin Scientific, Blazie, PD, etc. are Hardware companies. Let a little bit of "Open Source"ism do some development for you. There is tremendous word of mouth, and if some third party makes some brilliant add on, it will get around the community. Depending on how you license it, you may be able to ship later. (Personally, I would go BSD or LGPL.)
In summation:
1. Don't confuse blind and deaf and deaf-blind. Each is unique with unique needs. An attempt to be all things to all people will either have stratospheric costs or poor quality or both.
2. Ask your customers instead of some random slashbots. They are out there.
3. Build it from the ground up, since you'll likely have bizarro hardware anyway.
4. Make it possible to program for it. It (the DB group) is a tight community, with lots of people looking out for others, so it's not like you'll be helping a competitor. Think of third parties as value added.
5. (Not mentioned above, but kinda goes with 2) Update your freaking website with real, up to date, and complete information. Have a company policy of a real, human reply to all correspondence within x hours, where x72. Even "I got your note and am investigating your concerns" is better than some of what I get from PD from time to time.
And a freebie. My wife never uses the voice prompts on her BN, but I activate them if I have to do tech support (needing an onsite geek is a bad thing, BTW). Try to get a speech synth chip that sounds better than the WOPR or Speak and Spell I had as a kid. Seriously. It's 2005, and every time I hear the voice, I expect to hear "Would you like to play a game?"
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
* Most deaf-blind people are not born deaf and blind. Most deaf-blind people are born either deaf or blind and then lose the other sense as they get older. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but the overwhelming majority of deaf-blind people we met suffered from Usher Syndrome. Most people who have this genetic disorder are born deaf and then start going blind around 30. From my experience, most of these people only start to learn braille when they start to experience vision loss. It can be difficult for adults to learn braille. As a result, it's very useful to have a display suitable for people with reduced vision in addition to a braille display to ease the transition as these people are learning braille.
* Deaf-blind people communicate by using sign language and feeling the speaker's hand as things are signed. However, deaf-blind people often need to communicate with people who do not know sign langage (a repairman, neighbor, paramedics, etc). To do this, they often rely on a computer, text telephone, or similar device that allows them to type messages back and forth to the person they need to communicate with. It's important to keep secondary uses like this in mind when designing a product.
* For the severely vision impaired, we found that LCD and CRT based displays were not easy to read. The displays that were easiest to read had about 2-inch letters and emitted a bright light in the blue-green area of the color spectrum. Scrolling text is very difficult to read for people with severe vision impairments. Many of the people we worked with had severe tunnel vision that made multi-line displays confusing. These people would keep their head a couple of inches from the screen and move their head to scan across the line. We ended up using a large vacuum-flourescent display that would advance a line at a time at the user's control. We also found that having interchangeable color filters for the display made it useful for more people since everyone's vision loss is different.
* We found that multi-line braille displays were confusing for a lot of people and didn't serve much purpose since you can only read one line at a time. The design we used that people seemed to like the best was a 20 character braille display with a button on the left-hand side for scrolling up one line and a button on the right hand side for scrolling down one line.
* Some people we met were good typists, but most people tended to one-finger it. That's bad enough if you can see, but it's even worse for blind people. We had braille lettering on our keys, and we found that a lot of people would scan the keys with their fingers to locate the letter they wanted to type. However, they often ended up inadvertantly pressing these keys as they were scanning the braille. Using very stiff key switches greatly reduced this problem.
* Placement of keys, power switches, etc is very important. Things need to be easy to locate but difficult to inadvertantly hit. This is harder than it sounds and you probably won't know the mistakes in the layout until you ask a blind person to use it.
* Before I worked on this project, I had no idea that there are two different kinds of braille: 6-dot and 8-dot. Far more people are familiar with 6-dot since it's what's used for most books, but 6-dot has a lot of limitations. The only symbols you get are period and comma. Numbers are letters that are prefixed by the number symbol. As you can see, there can be some information l