Help-Seeking Situations Related to Visual Interactions on Mobile Platforms and Recommended Designs for Blind and...

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Digital Libraries
• Accessibility Research

Background:

• Mobile device usage is common among blind and visually impaired (BVI) users for information seeking.
• Limited research exists on the specific accessibility challenges BVI users encounter with digital libraries (DLs) on mobile platforms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively investigate the accessibility issues faced by BVI users during information retrieval in digital libraries on mobile devices.
• To identify and categorize specific help-seeking situations encountered by BVI users.
• To propose design recommendations for enhancing the accessibility of digital libraries for BVI users.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 120 BVI users to interact with six digital libraries across four mobile device types (iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Android tablet).
• Employed multiple data collection methods including questionnaires, think-aloud protocols, transaction logs, and interviews.
• Focused on seven types of visually-oriented help-seeking situations.

Main Results:

• Identified seven key accessibility challenges for BVI users: finding search features, understanding video, navigating pagination, distinguishing labels, recognizing image/graph content, and interacting with windows.
• Documented specific difficulties related to visual interactions on mobile platforms.
• Categorized help-seeking situations encountered during DL searches.

Conclusions:

• Proposed design recommendations include clear labeling, intuitive video descriptions, structured pagination, distinct visual elements, AI for image/graph recognition, and optimized screen reader interactions.
• Highlighted the need for improved accessibility in digital library design for BVI users.
• Acknowledged study limitations and suggested directions for future research.