Accessible Text-Entry

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For over 10 years we have investigated nonvisual text input on touchscreens. We have characterized in dept users’ behaviors and contributed with novel interfaces and interaction techniques.

Text-Entry on Mobile Devices

Today’s mainstream touchscreen devices support non-visual text input via the built-in screen readers e.g. VoiceOver and Talkback. They enable users to explore the keyboard with their finger and have the keys read aloud as they touch them. While the visual layout of the QWERTY keyboard is identical to that presented to sighted users, input rates are much slower for visually impaired people.

We have conducted extensive research assessing text-entry performance on touchscreens, and explored multiple alternatives to the current default keyboard. In the research topic Braille IO you will find all our research bringing Braille to the forefront of the digital era. In this topic you will find other works that have relied on the exploration of multiple audio sources and other keyboard layouts and interactions.

Publications

• The Design Space of Nonvisual Word Completion
  Hugo Nicolau, André Rodrigues, André Santos, Tiago Guerreiro, Kyle Montague, João Guerreiro
  In The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 249-261.

• Investigating Laboratory and Everyday Typing Performance of Blind Users
  Hugo Nicolau, Kyle Montague, Tiago Guerreiro, André Rodrigues Vicki L. Hanson
  ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) - Special Issue (Part 2) of Papers from ASSETS 2015

• Effect of target size on non-visual text-entry
  André Rodrigues, Hugo Nicolau, Kyle Montague, Luís Carriço, Tiago Guerreiro
  '16 Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, Pages 47-52, Florence, Italy — September 06 - 09, 2016

• Typing Performance of Blind Users: An Analysis of Touch Behaviors, Learning Effect, and In-Situ Usage
  Hugo Nicolau, Kyle Montague, André Rodrigues, Tiago Guerreiro, Vicki Hanson
  17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. Lisboa, Portugal, October, 2015

• TabLets get physical: non-visual text entry on tablet devices
  João Guerreiro, André Rodrigues, Kyle Montague, Tiago Guerreiro, Hugo Nicolau, Daniel Gonçalves
  ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul, South Korea, April, 2015

• Blind People and Mobile Touch-based Text-Entry: Acknowledging the Need for Different Flavors
  João Oliveira, Tiago Guerreiro, Hugo Nicolau, Daniel Gonçalves, Joaquim Jorge
  In The 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 179-186.

• NavTap: a Long Term Study with Excluded Blind Users
  Tiago Guerreiro, Hugo Nicolau, Joaquim Jorge, Daniel Gonçalves
  In The 11st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. Pittsburgh, USA, October, 2009.