Measuring Pointing Times of a Non-visual Haptic Interface

An experiment was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of using haptics (force feedback of a manual joystick) in a non-visual computing environment. Sight impaired people could use haptic interfaces to facilitate the navigation of human computer interfaces which are, by their nature, graphically intensive. Subjects manipulated a force feedback joystick a random distance until over a vibrating target of random width. An inwards/outwards and right/left directional test was administrated. Movement times were found to be a linear function of the level of task difficulty as defined by Shannon's formation of Fitts law, log₂ (D/W + 1). Two linear relationships were found. The first when the joystick traveled the smallest distance and the other with all other distances. Results indicate that haptics could be used to navigate graphical interfaces.