Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/S53251/01
Title:	An investigation of the use of tactile displays for visualisation for blind people
Principal Investigator:	Brewster, Professor SA
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	Royal National College for the Blind
Department:	School of Computing Science
Organisation:	University of Glasgow
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 January 2004	Ends:	31 December 2006	Value (£):	230,393
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Human-Computer Interactions
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Creative Industries
Related Grants:
Panel History:	Panel Date Panel Name Outcome 21 May 2003 IT Fellowships Interview Panel 2003 Deferred 25 Apr 2003 IT Fellowships Sift Panel 2003 Deferred
Summary on Grant Application Form
Force- feedback haptic devices allow the sense of touch to be used for the display and manipulation of information and are particularly good at providing access to visualisations such as graphs, tables and bar charts for blind people. Access to these kinds of complex graphical information is difficult without sight, but necessary for progression though school and future careers However, these force-feedback devices have negligible capabilities for cutaneous stimulation, so the user is deprived of a potentially rich source of information via the skin senses. This leads to problems with navigation, exploring small-scale feature of displays and information overload. The innovative aspect of this proposal is to investigate and make use of tactile displays t overcome these problems and provide a richer haptic experience. We will investigate both the addition of tactile information to force-feedback device and the display of tactile information across the body for data presentation. We will also establish the relative contributions of kinaesthetic and cutaneous information in blind peoples' perception of haptic graphs and tables, by emolovine a novel active/passive touch methodology to isolate the effects of the two sensory channels.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.gla.ac.uk