Haptic Glove TV Device for People with Visual Impairment

Immersive video is changing the way we enjoy TV. It is no longer just about receiving sequential images with audio, but also playing with other human senses through smells, vibrations of movement, 3D audio, feeling water, wind, heat, and other emotions that can be experienced through all human senses. This work aims to validate the usefulness of an immersive and interactive solution for people with severe visual impairment by developing a haptic glove that allows receiving signals and generating vibrations in hand, informing about what happens in a scene. The study case presented here shows how the haptic device can take the information about the ball’s location in the playing field, synchronized with the video reception, and deliver it to the user in the form of vibrations during the re-transmission of a soccer match. In this way, we take visually impaired people to live a new sensory experience, allowing digital and social inclusion and accessibility to audiovisual technologies that they could not enjoy before. This work shows the methodology used for the design, implementation, and results evaluation. Usability tests were carried out with fifteen visually impaired people who used the haptic device to attend a soccer match synchronized with the glove’s vibrations.