Time to go Tactile

It's no secret that I've often lamented the loss of tactile interaction caused by the use and continuing popularity of Touch Screens.  Touch screens have of course proven useful and particularly versatile as they have the ability to modify your interaction technique depending on what's displayed. But this versatility came with the trade-off that you had no way to physically provide a response to the user that a button had been pressed or a knob was turned common occurences when we interact with the day-to-day environment of our world.

This challenge has long been a "dream goal" of many hardware and software developers and generally speaking, the domain of Science Fiction. But not anymore, the ability to actively permeate a surface has arrived and no longer just in development (it's been actively under development from many fronts since some of the first touch screens became commercially used).

Tactus Technology has now introduced its new Phorm cover for the iPad mini. Granted, it's not the end product or even an integrated solution but it's a very promising start. No longer will you need to fumble around and actively seek keys with your vision (a common issue with most current touch screen interfaces that often require a "Search and peck" approach to typing).

Going Silent

So you've acquired yourself a Smartphone....

For most people who are Deaf and Deafblind, the most likely reason you bought one is to do your Text or SMS messaging on in some accessible way (at least more so than a standard cheap phone).  So you have magnification, text-to=seech and if you're lucky, even Voice Recognition that understands what you say but what about your ring tones?

But why do I need a Ring tone?

Well you don't actually....
Until you put your phone on Vibrate, chuck it in your pocket or bag and realise you can't really feel it when it vibrates (especially true if you've got it in your hand bag).  While in silent mode your average mobile will still make a continuous "ring" when a new voice call comes in but your average text message notification makes a weak buzz.  You can't change the intensity or duration either directly or by assigning a different ring tone (IOS will let you set it to repeat up to 10 times).

Which might leave you missing your messages left, right and centre.....

It's a shame so much flexibility in ring tone is available to people who can hear them but how about a bit of vibratory adjustment?

The Form Factor

Not so long ago, if you bought yourself a phone you were pretty much guaranteed that it had a number keypad on it.  This was due to a design mentality known as Form equals Function.  While this still exists in many devices, the introduction of multi-touch screens and smart devices has seen a shift away from the concepts.  Need to press a button, well we just render it on the screen for you and an App translates what you want by pressing it.

While this gives us a lot of power (the one device can do many things) we lose out in terms of Accessibility and even in Human-Computer Interface terms.

Eventually this will have accessibility benifits (for example you will put your Milk container in a special slot in your fridge which will automatically read the Use By Date and advise you when to throw it out or purchase more) but for the moment, the popularity of integrating Touch-Screens into our everyday devices is causing an accessibility problem.

This is where Haptics comes into play.

Haptics deals with any technology relating to the sense of touch.  A lot of focus at this point in time is on developing technology to appropriately reproduce the tactile feedback we were used to with physical contact (like pushing a button and it remaining depressed to indicate it was On) and representing that in a virtual sense.  Hopefully this will allow us to connect more physically to our virtual world than the flat representation we are becoming accustomed to.