Thermal Interaction for Improving Tactile Artwork Depth and Color-Depth Appreciation for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Visually impaired people can take advantage of multimodal systems in which visual information is communicated through different modes of interaction and types of feedback. Among the possible interaction modes, thermal interaction in the context of assistive devices for visually impaired people lacks research in spite of its potential. In this paper, we propose a temperature-depth mapping algorithm and a thermal display system to convey depth and depth-color of artworks’ features in the context of tactile exploration by visually impaired people. Tests with a total of 18 sighted users and six visually impaired users were performed both during the mapping algorithm design and after developing a tactile temperature prototype artwork model to assess the potentials of thermal interaction for recognizing depth and color-depth in tactile art appreciation. These tests showed both an existing correlation between depth and temperature and that the mapping based on that correlation is appropriate for conveying depth during artwork tactile exploration.