research-article

Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges with Exercise Technologies for People who are Blind or Low-Vision

Authors:

Richard E. Ladner,

Batya Friedman,

Julie A. KientzAuthors Info & Claims

ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

Pages 203 - 214

https://doi.org/10.1145/2700648.2809846

Published: 26 October 2015 Publication History

Abstract

People who are blind or low-vision may have a harder time participating in exercise due to inaccessibility or lack of experience. We employed Value Sensitive Design (VSD) to explore the potential of technology to enhance exercise for people who are blind or low-vision. We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews about exercise and technology with 10 people who are blind or low-vision and 10 people who facilitate fitness for people who are blind or low-vision. We also conducted a survey with 76 people to learn about outsider perceptions of hypothetical exercise with people who are blind or low-vision. Based on our interviews and survey, we found opportunities for technology development in four areas: 1) mainstream exercise classes, 2) exercise with sighted guides, 3) rigorous outdoors activity, and 4) navigation of exercise spaces. Design considerations should include when and how to deliver auditory or haptic information based on exercise and context, and whether it is acceptable to develop less mainstream technologies if they enhance mainstream exercise. The findings of this work seek to inform the design of accessible exercise technologies.

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Index Terms

Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges with Exercise Technologies for People who are Blind or Low-Vision
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Assistive technologies
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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cover image ACM Conferences

ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

October 2015

466 pages

ISBN:9781450334006

DOI:10.1145/2700648

General Chair:
Yeliz Yesilada
Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus
,
Program Chair:
Jeffrey P. Bigham
Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 26 October 2015

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National Science Foundation

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ASSETS '15

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SIGACCESS

ASSETS '15: The 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 26 - 28, 2015

Lisbon, Portugal

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ASSETS '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 30 of 127 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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