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Toward accessible self-service kiosks through intelligent user interfaces

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Abstract

Public self-service kiosks provide key services such as ticket sales, airport check-in and general information. Such kiosks must be universally designed to be used by society at large, irrespective of the individual users’ physical and cognitive abilities, level of education and familiarity with the system. The noble goal of universal accessibility is hard to achieve. This study reports experiences with a universally designed kiosk prototype based on a multimodal intelligent user interface that adapts to the user’s physical characteristics. The user interacts with the system via a tall rectangular touch-sensitive display where the interaction area is adjusted to fit the user’s height. A digital camera is used to measure the user’s approximate reading distance from the display such that the text size can be adjusted accordingly. The user’s touch target accuracy is measured, and the target sizes are increased for users with motor difficulties. A Byzantine visualization technique is employed to exploit unused and unreachable screen real estate to provide the user with additional visual cues. The techniques explored in this study have potential for most public self-service kiosks.

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Notes

  1. The term 20/20 vision is used to refer a person with normal vision. It is the visual acuity needed to visually separate 2 points with 1 arc minute distance, or 1/16 of an inch, at 20 feet. The numerator is a subjects’ performance, and the denominator is the norm.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, Oslo University College, P.O. Box 4, St. Olavs plass, 0130, Oslo, Norway

    Simen Hagen & Frode Eika Sandnes

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  1. Simen Hagen
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  2. Frode Eika Sandnes
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Correspondence to Simen Hagen.

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Hagen, S., Sandnes, F.E. Toward accessible self-service kiosks through intelligent user interfaces. Pers Ubiquit Comput 14, 715–721 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-010-0286-8

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