TypeInBraille: Quick Eyes-Free Typing on Smartphones

In recent years, smartphones (e.g., Apple iPhone) are getting more and more widespread among visually impaired people. Indeed, thanks to natively available screen readers (e.g., VoiceOver) visually impaired persons can access most of the smartphone functionalities and applications. Nonetheless, there are still some operations that require long time or high mental workload to be completed by a visually impaired person. In particular, typing on the on-screen QWERTY keyboard turns out to be challenging in many typical contexts of use of mobile devices (e.g., while moving on a tramcar). In this paper we present the results of an experimental evaluation conducted with visually impaired people to compare the native iPhone on-screen QWERTY keyboard with TypeInBraille, a recently proposed typing technique based on Braille. The experimental evaluation, conducted in different contexts of use, highlights that TypeInBraille significantly improves typing efficiency and accuracy.