Comparing Two Haptic Interfaces for Multimodal Graph Rendering

This paper describes the evaluation of two multimodal interfaces designed to provide visually impaired people with access to various types of graphs. The interfaces consist of audio and haptics which is rendered on commercially available force feedback devices. Usability of force feedback devices in real applications is seldom investigated and compared. Therefore this study is aimed at comparing the usability of two force feedback devices: the SensAble PHANToM and the Logitech WingMan force feedback mouse in representing graphical data. The type of graph used in the experiment is the bar chart under two experimental conditions: single mode and multimodal. The results show that PHANToM provides better performance in the haptic only condition. However, no significant difference has been found between two devices in the multimodal condition. This has confirmed the advantages of using multimodal approach in our research and that low-cost haptic devices can be successful. This paper introduces our evaluation approach and discusses the findings of the experiment.