School of Informatics and Computing
Lowering Barriers for the Blind: Davide Bolchini
SDG 4: Ensure quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
SDG 16: Promote just, peaceful and egalitarian societies
SDG 17: Building Strong Partnerships
There are over 7 million blind people in the United States and Davide Bolchini, who chairs the IU Indianapolis Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Department of Human-Centered Computing, is actively exploring novel solutions that could make surfing the Web easier for them both on mobile and laptop devices. “The blind user experience with the web is still very far from enjoyable”, says Dr. Bolchini. “There is so much more that we can do to make it, not just slightly better, but considerably more natural and desirable. Together with our stellar graduate students, we will explore strategies to help blind users understand where they are on a complex website, where they can go next from a page, or what to do to know more about a topic. This can make a significant difference in daily web navigation tasks”.
Bolchini has received a major grant from the National Science Foundation’s Cyber-Human System program and a Google Faculty Research award to explore the use of wearable and sound-based technologies to increase web-accessibility for people who are blind or visually impaired. Building on over a decade of research to understand how people who are blind may aurally navigate the web, Bolchini says that we take for granted that visual displays are the only medium for experiencing information-rich, interactive applications. But he says that this paradigm is very limiting.
“Typing… is an activity that relies upon on-screen keyboards that still display characters visually. This presents a barrier for people who are blind.”
Bolchini’s research investigates how to free ourselves from screens and keypads. “A major unsolved challenge is how to manipulate text aurally and silently, in situations when voice input fails or breaks privacy boundaries,” he says. “This will allow us to unbind users from a visual display.” When people who are blind or visually impaired navigate the mobile web, for example, they have to hold a phone in their hands at all times. Such continuous, two-handed interaction on a small screen hampers the user's ability to keep hands free to control aiding devices (e.g., cane) or touch objects nearby, especially on-the-go. It also increases the chances for their device to fall or be stolen.
Community partnership is an important part of human-centered computing research. Bolchini’s research engages people who are blind and visually impaired from the Indiana School for the Blind, Bosma Enterprises, and Easterseals Crossroads as well as IU students from underrepresented groups.
Bolchini’s work build upon the research on ‘aural informatics’ by professor Steve Mannheimer and Dr. Mathew Palakal in the Human-Centered Computing Department, which already counts a prior Google Research Award and two NSF-funded projects on web accessibility, non-speech sounds, and aural navigation.
Listen to Prof. Bochini speak about his research in this 8 minute YouTube video
This research is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant IIS #1909845. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NSF.
