Touchable Colors - Research on interactive product service system based on tactile experience of visually impaired people

The touchscreen technology has revolutionized ways of modern social interaction, with a wider use of gesture-based user interfaces. However, this technology is still hardly accessible as far as the visually impaired are concerned, who often have difficulty navigating interfaces via visual cues. Considering the physiological characteristics of the visually impaired children, and their psychological impact, this paper, in the light of multimodal perceptual substitution and multisensory interaction, proposes a design of mapping color cues to temperature which aims to enable the visually impaired to perceive color changes through tactile feedback and to participate in such digital activities as artistic creation like painting. The sensory substitution device TouchableColors, designed to convert tactile information into visual one, is expected To help visually impaired children express emotions through color-based artistic creation and thus promote the independence of and social inclusion for the visually impaired children. This kind of more inclusive digital and physical device can potentially make up the visual cues for them and at the same time have a positive impact on their feelings, self-realization, and quality of life.