Development and Evaluation of Mobile Touch-Based In-teraction Prototype in the Context of Universal Design

Abstract

Force touch gesture is widely used in desktop and laptop computers, but newly designed 3D touch gesture introduced first time in the mobile interface by Apple with pressure properties, but it has many accessibility issues for vision and fine motor impaired people.To address the need for a universal and accessible mobile touch gesture, we have designed and evaluate universally designed mobile touch screen gestures prototype for the elderly friendly interface. The specification gathers from the Universal Design Principle and newly purposed WCAG 2.1 conformance level for touch interface including pressure properties. We evaluated the acces-sibility of our prototype with an elderly population with mixed kind of impairments due to aging and with no impairments. The proportion of the participants were divided between novice and expert touch screen users and had mixed user experienced for pressure based touch gesture with both positive and negative reactions. This study confirmed the WCAG 2.1 Accessibility conformance level with ATs and extraordinary environments. This research helps to understand the elderly people requirements, concerns, and emotions about the new inter-face. The results show that the participant’s performance was improved in some tasks. Participants suggested that alternative gestures with some improvement can be useful in fu-ture for mobile interactions.