Empath-D: Empathetic design for accessibility

• Main Authors: CHOO, Kenny Tsu Wei, BALAN, Rajesh Krishna, TAN, Kiat Wee, MISRA, Archan, LEE, Youngki
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Accessibility; AR; VR; Design; Empathy; Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3634; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4636/viewcontent/hotmobile17_final45.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We describe our vision for Empath-D, our system to enable Empathetic User Interface Design. Our key idea is to leverage Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR / AR) displays to provide an Immersive Reality environment, where developers/designers can emulate impaired interactions by elderly or disabled users while testing the usability of their applications. Our early experiences with the Empath-D prototype show that Empath-D can emulate a cataract vision impairment of the elderly and guide designers to create accessible web pages with less mental workload.