An Enhanced Mobile Phone Dialler Application for Blind and Visually Impaired People

  • Authors

    • Rana Mohammad Yousef Assistant Professor at the Computer Information Systems department, KASIT The University of Jordan, Amman-Jordan
    • Omar Adwan Assistant Professor at the Computer Information Systems department, KASIT The University of Jordan, Amman-Jordan
    • Murad Abu-Leil
    https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v2i4.1101

    Received date: July 6, 2013

    Accepted date: July 23, 2013

    Published date: November 14, 2013

  • Abstract

    This paper presents the development of a new mobile phone dialler application which is designed to help blind and visually impaired people make phone calls. The new mobile phone dialler application is developed as a windows phone application to facilitate entering information to touch screen mobile phones by blind people. This application is advantageous through its innovative concept, its simplicity and its availability at an affordable cost. Feedback from users showed that this new application is easy to use and solves many problems of voice recognition applications such as inaccuracy, slowness and interpretation of unusual voices. In addition, this application has increased the users’ ability to dial phone numbers more independently and less stressfully.

  • References

    1. American Foundation for the Blind. Cell Phone Accessibility. http://www.afb.org/section.aspx?FolderID=2&SectionID=4&TopicID=327, 2012. Accessed October 2012.
    2. S. Kane, J. Bigham and J. Wobbrock. “Fully Accessible Touch Screens For The Blind And Visually Impaired”, 2011.
    3. K.A. Li, P. Baudisch, and K. Hinckley, BlindSight: Eyes-Free Access to Mobile Phones. Computer Human Interaction - CHI, 2008. 1389-1398.
    4. Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio, 2012. Accessed October 2012.
    5. Microsoft. Windows PhonePage, http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/default.aspx, 2012. Accessed October 2012.
    6. P. Narasimhan, R. Gandhi, and D. Rossi, Smartphone-based assistive technologies for the blind. Proc. CASES. New York: ACM Press, 2009, 223-232.
    7. J. Oliveira, T. Guerreiro, H. Nicolau, J. Jorge and D. Goncalves, Blind People and Mobile Touch-based Text-Entry: Acknowledging the Need for Different Flavors. ASSETS’11, Dundee, Scotland, UK, 2011.
    8. J. Sánchez and J. de Togores, Designing Mobile Apps for Visually Impaired and Blind Users-Using touch screen based mobile devices: iPhone/iPad. The Fifth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, 2012.
    9. B. Sandeep and N. Cholli, Application Development on Windows Phone 7, International Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 31(2), 2012.
    10. I. Somerville. Software engineering. 9th ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2010.
    11. United Nations. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml, 2006. Accessed October 2012.
    12. J. O. Wobbrock, D. H. Chau, and B. A. Myers, An alternative to push, press, and tap-tap-tap: gesturing on an isometric joystick for mobile phone text entry. Proc.CHI’07, 2007, 667–676
    13. J.O. Wobbrock, B.A. Myers, and J.A. Kembel, Edge-Write: a stylus-based text entry method designed for high accuracy and stability of motion. Proc. UIST’03, 2003, 61–70.
    14. S. Zhao, P. Dragicevic, M. Chignell, R. Balakrishnan, and P. Baudisch, Earpod: eyes-free menu selection using touch input and reactive audio feedback. Proc. CHI’07, 2007, 1395–1404.

  • Downloads

  • How to Cite

    Yousef, R. M., Adwan, O., & Abu-Leil, M. (2013). An Enhanced Mobile Phone Dialler Application for Blind and Visually Impaired People. International Journal of Engineering and Technology, 2(4), 270-280. https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v2i4.1101