Hello Everyone, my name is Ruei-Che Chang. I am very pleased and honored
today to talk about my master thesis work at Dartmouth College.
The title of my talk is AccessibleCircuits,
Adaptive Add-on circuit components for people with blindness or low vision .
I would like to specially thank Xing-Dong Yang and Bing-Yu Chen for guiding me through the project.
I would also like to thank my colleagues Wen-Ping,
Te-Yen, Zheer, Chi-Huan and Justin for their hard work.
Let’s see how AccessibleCircuits works.
The breadboard extension works with commercial smartphone, and has tactile labels
that mark the odd columns of the breadboard. Users can locate specific columns using them.
The labels and breadboard components are conductive, so the smartphone can register
the physical contact from them and give audio feedback when a component is inserted.
There is also vibration feedback from smartphone when a wire is inserted.
To understand the accessibility barriers, we began by a formative study with 10 blind participants
We tested some of the commonly-used components and tools as shown in this figure, which includes
several basic electronics, breadboard and the tools, like probes and wire stripper
During our study, we asked our participants to identify the tested components
And insert the components to the breadboard and connect them using wires
And also understand a finished circuit on the breadboard.
We also tested how well the participants could strip wires with different sizes
and probe component pins. We found participants could
identify the tested components through their shape, number of pins,
and how they can be manipulated. However, inserting the components to the
breadboard at the correct location is very hard. This is because the breadboard holes are small
and hard to be perceived by touch. Another reason is that component
pins are too soft to stand the push against the breadboard , making them hard to be inserted.
More accessibility issues were illustrated in our paper.
To address them, we designed and developed AccessibleCircuits,
We created an haptic audio interface that we mentioned earlier.
We also created the adaptations with stronger pins that are hard to bend.
The proxies are conductive and electrically connected to its corresponding pin,
allowing for audio based interactions through touch.
Another useful feature on the component add-on is the wire slots on the side
that align with the component pins.
This can help the user to count the pins, easily connect a wire and probe component pins.
For the components that have a value like the resistor shown here, we have Braille on the side
of the add-on to haptically show their value. Lastly, for the components with polarity,
like an IC, we use a raised dot on the add-on to indicate their polarity.
Please read our paper to find out more adaptations,
including the ones for a wire stripper and Arduino UNO.
To evaluate AccessibleCircuits, we ran another study with the same 10 participants
During the study, we asked our participants to identify the components with our adaptations
And construct breadboard circuits of two levels of complexity,
which is determined by the number of components and wires.
As shown in this figure, the top one is a simple circuit while the bottom one is a complex circuit.
Participants were also asked to strip wires and probe component pins using our adaptations.
We found that users could still identify the components in a success rate of 93%.
They were also able to insert wires and components correctly
using the tactile and audio feedback provided by our system.
we observed an success rate of 86% for the simple circuit,
and eighty three percent success rate for the complex circuit.
Our participants were able to correctly probe component pins with 90% of the trials
and stripe wires about 83%
of the times, which is a significant improvement compared to our first study.
In conclusion, in this work, we investigated the accessibility barriers in current
circuit prototyping environment for people who are blind or low vision.
Second, We designed and developed AccessibleCircuits to address the
identified accessibility issues. Finally, We demonstrated our
approach could effectively lower the identified accessibility barriers.
our solution is based on technologies that are available to the blind community,
such as smartphones and 3D printing. Thank you for listening.