Mobile and VoIP Telephony: a Case Study of the Touchscreen Facilitation for Heavily Motor Impaired Users

Abstract

Nowadays, touchscreens are used everywhere and every time. However, numerous of the applications using a touchscreen are not accessible for heavily motor impaired users. This thesis provides a mobile and VoIP telephony solution designed to facilitate the touchscreen use for this kind of user. In order to do that, a VoIP application was implemented and validated by disabled user and experts. First, this thesis provides a description of this application
and of the evaluations made. Then, a review of the scientific literature concerning the touchscreen use by motor impaired users was made and a summary of the observations was provided. Another review was conducted to highlight error rate reducing solution for disabled users. A third review was made, concerning the existing telephony touchscreen
application for heavily motor impaired users. After that, some improvements of the application created were proposed in regard with the state of the art.
The proposed solution seems to be the first providing a mobile and VoIP telephony application designed to facilitate the use of the touchscreen by heavily motor impaired users.
Keywords: Touchscreen, heavy motor impairments, accessibility, mobile telephony, VoIP telephony, smartphone, tablet.

Date of Award	6 Sept 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Supervisor	Pierre Yves Schobbens (President) & Bruno Dumas (Supervisor)