The purpose of this study is to explore human visual attention when observing artworks to create audio descriptions that will guide tactile exploration via a force feedback tablet F2T. To find the semantically important elements, we tested with an Eye-tracker people's behaviour when observing scenes with and without audio description. The collected data and the small dataset constituted from images of the Bayeux Tapestry will be used to train a deep learning model. This model aims to predict saliency on other images. We use three models to predict images of Bayeux Tapestry: Resnet50, TransalNet, SAM-LSTM-Resnet. We can see that after the training phase on our dataset, the predictions of chosen model (SAM-LSTM-Resnet) are closer to the ground truth and have better correlation, which is a significant improvement over the same model learnt with only the original dataset.

A major issue for blind and partially blind museum visitors is artwork accessibility. To that extent, tactile graphic techniques and supports have been developed to allow haptic exploration of bi-dimensional artworks, which is not always available in museums. Focusing on the Apocalypse Tapestry located in the Castle of Angers, France, this study aims to compare different technologies. To evaluate their impact on the museum visitors’ experience, we seek to establish the benefits and drawbacks and look for further improvements. Several tactile supports have been used in this experiment: a tactile book with embossed paper, a swell paper representation, a 3D printed puzzle, and a haptic device, named F2T (Force Feedback Tablet). Blind, partially blind, and sighted participants were tasked to explore these supports accompanied by audio descriptions. Participants were presented with several Likert scale and open-ended questions to rate their general feeling. Overall, all the conditions received good ratings from the participants. However, more nuanced comments were gathered on each condition. Through users’ feedback, new ways to improve the technologies have been proposed

Can tangible computer music interfaces inspire creativity and enhance artistic stage performances for visually impaired and blind musicians? And what are the benefits of engaging with tangible music interfaces in the context of computer music? This paper presents the research results of an in-depth exploration of inclusive and interactive digital music practice with regard to accessibility barriers in the field of computer music software and hardware. Based on the collaboration of visually impaired, blind and sighted musicians and researchers new concepts were developed for tangible computer interaction, focusing on interfaces that are both accessible and enable professional artistic expression. Derived from an artistic research approach, three tangible music interfaces will be proposed, each addressing the physical representation of individual sonic features commonly found in computer music. The practical work is summarized, including the development of accessible music software, the development of the hardware interfaces and their discussion during presentations and workshops with visually impaired and blind experts, and finally their use as part of artistic practice on stage. The resulting expert feedback acquired during workshops, presentations and live performances is grouped into four key topics and is interpreted with regard to the aforementioned research questions.

Technical solutions for tracking the fingers of people reading braille usually require specific laboratory settings that do not resemble braille reading in real-life. This paper reports on part 2 of a study that analyzes the potential of a virtual reality hand tracking system from Ultraleap to be used for braille finger tracking with a minimum of such inconveniences. This part of the study focuses on whether the system is accurate enough to reliably detect the braille cell that is currently the focus of the reader’s tactile perception.

The Ultraleap camera was mounted 14 cm above a refreshable braille display with 20 six-dot cells. To measure the accuracy of finger detection, a software was developed to log the coordinates of the detected index fingers’ fingertips.

The measured distance between neighboring cells reached values from 0.005 to 0.01 Ultraleap units (about 0.5 to 1 cm in real life), and the x-coordinates measured for single cells varied by 0.01 Ultraleap units in the worst case, which is evidence that the accuracy is not sufficient to reliably detect the single braille cell that is currently supposed to be the center of the user’s tactile perception. However, the small amount of overlap (only one cell off in the worst case) suggests that the system can still be utilized for use cases like audio output of the current word.

Remote work settings became increasingly important in recent years, which often inherently requires collaboration at a distance. Hereby, especially in mixed-ability teams, different individuals might face different challenges. In this paper, we thus aim to analyze remote collaborative interaction between sighted and non-sighted users based on a qualitative study with twelve participants (six non-sighted) in three mixed-ability teams, who worked together on a problem solving task.
Our analysis considers a variety of aspects related to the perception and closeness of collaboration, assistance and communication among team members, disruptive elements, workspace awareness, territoriality, or triggers for problematic situations, and indicates both, challenges but also potentials of collaboration within mixed-ability teams.