Vincent Lévesque

Journal

Display of Virtual Braille Dots by Lateral Skin Deformation: Feasibility Study

Vincent Lévesque, Jerome Pasquero, Vincent Hayward, Maryse Legault

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 2(2), pp 132-149, 2005.

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Abstract

When a progressive wave of localized deformations occurs tangentially on the fingerpad skin, one typically experiences the illusion of a small object sliding on it. This effect was investigated because of its potential application to the display of Braille. A device was constructed that could produce such deformation patterns along a line. Blind subjects' ability to read truncated Braille characters ('lowered lowered', 'lowered raised', 'raised lowered', and 'raised raised') using the device was experimentally tested and compared to their performance with a conventional Braille medium. While subjects could identify two-character strings with a high rate of success, several factors need to be addressed before a display based on this principle can become practical.