Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/S86150/01
Title:	MultiVis II: Multimodal Tools to Allow Blind People to Create and Manipulate Visualisations
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 October 2004	Ends:	30 September 2007	Value (£):	254,543
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Human-Computer Interactions Vision & Senses - ICT appl.
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Creative Industries
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
Understanding and manipulating information using visualisations such as graphs, tables and 3D plots is very common for sighted people. The skills needed are learned early in school and then used throughout life, for example, in analysing information, creating presentations to show it to others, or just managing home finances. These basic skills are needed for all parts of education and employment. Blind people have very restricted access to information presented in these visual ways. The innovative aspect of MultiVis II is to use multimodal techniques to allow blind users themselves to create and manipulate visualisations interactively using haptic and audio tools, adding and removing points and interacting with the visualisation as they go. We will develop new ways to overcome the confusion and navigation problems often experienced by allowing two-handed interaction and augmenting existing paper-based technologies with haptics and audio to maximise their usefulness. We will also investigate 3D sound to provide external memory (a fundamental problem for blind people) to mark interesting points, or to easily return to items to facilitate comparisons with other data points. Finally, we will look at the collaborative use of visualisations by blind people to allow users to work together on their data.Understanding and manipulating information using visualisations such as graphs, tables and 3D plots is very common for sighted people. The skills needed are learned early in school and then used throughout life, for example, in analysing information, creating presentations to show it to others, or just managing home finances. These basic skills are needed for all parts of education and employment. Blind people have very restricted access to information presented in these visual ways. The innovative aspect of MultiVis II is to use multimodal techniques to allow blind users themselves to create and manipulate visualisations interactively using haptic and audio tools, adding and removing points and interacting with the visualisation as they go. We will develop new ways to overcome the confusion and navigation problems often experienced by allowing two-handed interaction and augmenting existing paper-based technologies with haptics and audio to maximise their usefulness. We will also investigate 3D sound to provide external memory (a fundamental problem for blind people) to mark interesting points, or to easily return to items to facilitate comparisons with other data points. Finally, we will look at the collaborative use of visualisations by blind people to allow users to work together on their data.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
Description This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk Summary Date Materialised
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Organisation Website:	http://www.gla.ac.uk