we present daedalus a cad plugin for designers to generate blind and low vision accessible
aids paired with laser cut components daedalus remains accessibility aware throughout the
editing stage by implementing constraints on component position and symmetrical editing
assembling users can follow the tactile aids generated by daedalus such as entry component
tactile arrows assembly order based on proximity and symmetrical arrangement with daedalus
users can perform more accurately on laser cut assembly tasks laser cut assembly is a
task that usually relies heavily on vision including actions such as distinguishing the
matched edges which form a joint, finding symmetry or observing the nuances of different
joint profiles such actions are less accessible to people with blindness or low vision who
usually rely on the sense of touch for such manual tasks to address these issues we conducted
a formative study with blind and low vision participants where we introduced basic joint
types such as finger slot and mortise and tenon joints by presenting five chair models
we found that blind and low vision users experienced difficulty in finding the first component
to assemble as well as finding which parts of individual components to join
assembly order was also an issue often requiring participants to deconstruct and reconstruct
parts of mid-assembled models without vision it was also difficult to identify and stabilize
parts of mid-assembled models during the assembly task based on these findings we developed
daedalus a design tool that can generate accessible tactile aids to be laser cut along with fusion
360 assemblies the user can import sketches of a laser cut model and create an assembly
with the joint assembly function in fusion 360.
they can choose whether to add support for stabilizing the laser cut model.
daedalus will then automatically capture the footprint of the laser cut model and provide
the support area for it the user can click generate layout and select an entry component
provided by daedalus.
entry components suggestions and ordering were determined based on the design heuristics
distilled from our formative study the user can further edit the generated layout to arrange
laser-cut components within the printable area of the board dataless remains accessibility
aware throughout the editing stage for example the movable range of a component is constrained
to maintain the layered assembly order symmetrical components will also remain mirrored during
editing
given these inputs from the user daedalus can finally generate a colored svg file that
includes both tactile aids and laser-cut components ready to print for laser cutting the blind
or low vision user can find the entry component through a hollowed circle on the bottom right
of the plate
next the user can follow the tactile arrows to find the subsequent components and assemble
them the mid-assembled model can be placed into the ground support to enhance stability
the user then follows the arrows to find the next component and joints to assemble
with the ground support the user can easily assemble the components
the assembly order is specified based on components proximity to the user
if the user loses track of the tactile hints they can put the model back into the plate
to re-access those tactile hints the layout is also arranged symmetrically which allows
the user to find components more easily and finally complete assembling the laser cut.
for more information please refer to our
paper