HABOS: an exploratory study of haptic-audio based online shopping for the visually impaired

The rapid expansion of the Internet and electronic commerce has encouraged many consumers to buy a variety of products online. However, due to the poor accessibility of online Web sites, visually impaired do not shop online or if they do, they often request help from sighted people. An online store prototype which has shopping features such as product catalogue, shopping cart and payment system was developed for this study. The system also includes a hapticaudio enabled browser to enable the visually impaired to receive force feedback via a haptic device for product evaluation and utilize voice command to interact with the system. This paper examined and reported results on the feasibility of a design suitable for the visually impaired to navigate, interact and access web content; a multimodal product presentation; and a haptic-audio interface for product evaluation. Some of our qualitative analysis suggests that a three-section product catalogue design with directed dialogue, directional cues, audio information and a haptic-audio enabled browser is feasible for the visually impaired to browse, interact, select and haptically evaluate online products.