Article

Haptics as an Assistive Technology

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Abstract

While visual and audible cues are used within the majority of educational environments, these can leave people with visual impairments, and especially deaf-blind people, at a severe disadvantage. People with visual disabilities often have a greater reliance on their sense of touch, and while touch-based, or haptic, technologies exist, the application of these within education is limited. This chapter discusses the background to haptic technologies, examines the available haptic technologies and identifies how and where these can be used within an educational context. It concludes by identifying that multimodal devices can go some way towards offering a practical assistive technology, but that further research is required to develop an affordable refreshable haptic graphic display.

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