Mohammed Fakrudeen

Eliciting Usability from Blind User Mental Model for Touch Screen Devices

A novel mental model of born blind users for touch screen devices to aid software developers in designing and building better usability applications for blind users is presented. The work of Kurniawan was the basis to examine the mental model of blind users. A user case study was carried out to assess the subjective mental model of users in regards to application of usability. This revealed that two stages: listening and interaction are used to facilitate the development of the Kurniawan mental model. This paper also suggests twelve usability features that can be added to facilitate the design phase of the system.

Success Criteria For Implementing Technology in Special Education: a Case Study.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has made a large investment in deploying technology to develop the infrastructure and resources for special education. The aims of the present research were to find out the rate of return of these investments in terms of success and, based on the findings, to propose a framework for success criteria. To achieve these aims, a mixed methodology-based research was conducted. Our study found that the use of technology in special education could not reach the desired level of implementation. We found that various success criteria such as professional experience and technology skills of special educators, administrative support, assistive hardware issues and assistive software issues, pedagogical issues, and teaching style are the key influencing factors of the implementation process.

FINGER BASED TECHNIQUES FOR NONVISUAL TOUCHSCREEN TEXT ENTRY

This research proposes Finger Based Technique (FBT) for non-visual touch screen device interaction designed for blind users. Based on the proposed technique, the blind user can access virtual keys based on finger holding positions. Three different models have been proposed. They are Single Digit Finger-Digit Input (FDI), Double Digit FDI for digital text entry, and Finger-Text Input (FTI) for normal text entry. All the proposed models were implemented with voice feedback while enabling touch as the input gesture. The models were evaluated with 7 blind participants with Samsung Galaxy S2 apparatus. The results show that Single Digit FDI is substantially faster and more accurate than Double Digit FDI and iPhone voice-over. FTI also looks promising for text entry. Our study also reveals 11 accessible regions to place widgets for quick access by blind users in flat touch screen based smartphones. Identification of these accessible regions will promote dynamic interactions for blind users and serve as a usability design framework for touch screen applications.

Securing the Blind User Visualization and Interaction in Touch Screen

Blind users cannot use visual CAPTCHA and review of literature suggest that the existing audio CAPTCHAs have task success rate below 50 % for blind users. In this paper, we describe how blind student’s views external system (images) for academic purposes using an image map as a case study has been described. We proposed two interaction techniques which allow blind students to discover different parts of the system by interacting with a touch screen interface. An evaluation of our techniques reveals that (1) building an internal visualization, interaction technique and metadata of the external structure plays a vital role (2) blind students prefer the system to be designed based upon their behavioral model to easily access and build the visualization by their own and (3) to be an exact replica of visualization, the metadata of the internal visualization is to be provided either through audio cue or domain expert (educator). Participants who used touch screen are novice users, but they have enough experience on desktop computers using screen readers. The implications of this study to answer the research questions are discussed.

Finger Based Technique (FBT): An Innovative System for Improved Usability for the Blind Users' Dynamic Interaction with Mobile Touch Screen Devices

This paper presents Finger Based Technique (FBT) prototypes, a novel interaction system for blind users, which is especially designed and developed for non-visual touch screen devices and their applications. The FBT prototypes were developed with virtual keys to be identified based on finger holding positions. Two different models namely the single digit FBT and double digit FBT were propounded. FBT technique were applied using two different phone dialer applications: a single digit virtual key for the single digit FBT model and a double digit virtual key with audio feedback enabling touch as input gesture for the later one. An evaluation with 7 blind participants showed that single digit FBT was significantly faster and more accurate than double digit FBT. In addition to that, single digit FBT was found to be much faster than iPhone VoiceOver entry speeds in performing similar tasks. Furthermore, our research also suggests 11 accessible regions for quick access or navigation in flat touch screen based smart phones for blind users. These accessible regions will serve as a usability design framework and facilitate the developers to place the widget for the blind user for dynamic interaction with the touch screen devices. As far as is known to the authors, this is a novel suggestion.