Toward haptic/aural touchscreen display of graphical mathematics for the education of blind students

We propose the use of a haptic touchscreen to convey graphical and mathematical concepts through aural and/or vibratory tactile feedback. We hypothesize that an important application of such a display will be in teaching visually impaired students concepts that are traditionally learned almost entirely visually. This paper describes initial feasibility studies using a commercially available haptic touchscreen to display grids, points, lines, and shapes - some of the first visual graphical entities students encounter in K-12 mathematics education, and from which more complex lessons can be constructed. We conducted user studies designed to evaluate perception of these objects through haptic feedback alone, auditory feedback alone, and combinations of the two. Our results indicate that both sensory channels can be valuable in user perception.