Effects of Haptization on Disabled People

Terminal equipment like personal computers (PCs) and mobile phones are mainstream devices in the Information Society. Most means for stimulating active communications depend on visual information. To classify human sensations, the phrase of "five senses" consisting of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, has been used from olden days. This classification is triggered by the ancient Greeks. However, there are at least nine types or over twenty types of human sensory channels if the classification is considered from a practical standpoint. In the case of touch sensation, it tells the brain not only simple skin sensations, pain, and temperature, but also a variety of sensations such as pressure and vibration. As you can easily experience when you browse web pages on the Internet, the current web technology enables the visualization of their contents, it does not provide any means to convey other sensory information. Consequently, we focus on the tactile information as a way for enabling multisensory communication and we are conducting a research project for designing and developing a ¿haptization¿ based communication framework and its application systems. It is not just a vision targeted at people with disabilities, and we would like to eye pregnant, elderly, and the weak in information technology who called ¿digital divide¿. Such people ordinarily have difficulties for obtaining information as various reasons. We report our past activities and a questionnaire survey for exploring problems such as what is the impact of haptization to use as a communication mean, and what are technical issues for implementing a good solution.