- Title
- Haptic feedback as a means to improve accessibility and usability for blind and partially sighted digital music and sound creators
- Creator
- Hurley, James
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Digital multimodal interaction has enabled powerful innovations in sound and music creative practice, combining multiple creative-technological processes in systems known as digital audio workstations (DAWs). However, this visual-auditory interaction model presents accessibility and usability barriers to people who are unable to access the visual interfaces. Current assistive technologies for blind and partially sighted (BPS) sound creators have been adapted from standard computer access technologies for BSP people. These mostly utilise the sole interaction modality of speech feedback, which is problematic when the auditory perceptual channel is already fully engaged with creative content. Haptic interaction offers an additional interaction modality that could enable greater inclusion and support for BPS sound creators; the sense of touch is unique among the senses in its ability to facilitate both input and output (feedback) functions, and so reduce the load on the auditory perceptual channel. This research firstly investigated the unmet needs of BSP sound creators in accessing DAW visual interfaces through interview, contextual inquiry, qualitative descriptive, and thematic analysis research methods, and then adapted participatory design methods to use non-visual techniques, in order to involve BPS sound creators in the co-design of potential solutions that are able to address these barriers. The research was constructed to iteratively understand the ‘tacit knowledge’ of BPS sound creators and their needs, and cyclically inform the design, development, and evaluation of prototype technologies in order to communicate and display visual information from the DAW graphical user interface (GUI) and translate this information to the haptic domain. In addition to the PhD dissertation, participatory design and evaluation with BPS sound creators produced creative non-traditional research outputs; namely, the design and realisation of two novel prototype haptic DAW interface technologies. These research outputs contribute to a growing body of knowledge on the use of the haptic modality for accessibility and digital music and sound creation, as well as outlining directions for further research and development with the target population.
- Subject
- haptic feedback; digital audio workstations; assistive technologies for blind and partially sighted; digital music and sound creation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1512837
- Identifier
- uon:56672
- Rights
- This thesis is currently under embargo and will be available from 10.10.2025. Copyright 2024 James Hurley
- Language
- eng
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