Multi-modal Interfaces for Visually Impaired People to Access the Internet.

This paper describes collaborative research being conducted by two research centres at the Queens University of Belfast (QUB). Researchers at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) and Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) are developing multimodal interfaces that allow blind and visually impaired people enhanced access to the Internet. By using these multimodal interfaces users will not only hear the information and structure on a Web site but also be able to feel the layout and the associated features such as links and images. To facilitate the multimodal interfaces, tightly-coupled audio and haptic feedback are used to emphasize user interactions.