Touchscreen Screen Reader Motion Direction Content Selection
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing assistive reading interfaces for computing devices, particularly on touchscreens, require complex keystroke combinations or gestures, leading to ambiguous commands and inconsistent user experiences, especially for visually impaired users who need to navigate and read content efficiently.
Innovation Solution
An improved assistive reading interface that allows users to designate content for verbal rendering by controlling the amount of content with the direction of motion of a pointing device, such as a finger, eliminating the need for complex gestures and allowing for intuitive and precise navigation of text and graphical content.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If complex keystroke combinations or gestures are used to indicate content location, then the screen reader can render verbally, but the ease of operation deteriorates and ambiguous commands occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the content location indication function from complex keystroke combinations and gestures, isolating it as a separate touch interaction mode. By using touch to directly indicate content location, the system eliminates the ambiguity and complexity of multi-key combinations while maintaining reliable verbal rendering capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the input methods into distinct categories: touch for location indication and keyboard gestures for content selection. This segmentation allows each method to be optimized independently, with touch providing simple location selection and keyboard providing precise control, thereby improving overall ease of operation without sacrificing reliability.
2Measurement precision
If keyboard commands are used to select content location, then precise control is achieved, but the ease of operation deteriorates due to complex combinations required
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces touch as an intermediary between the user and content location selection. Instead of requiring users to remember and press complex keyboard combinations, touch serves as a direct intermediary that maps naturally to screen locations, providing both precise control and simple operation simultaneously.
3Ease of operation
If touch gestures are used to indicate content location, then ease of operation improves, but ambiguous commands occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by making different regions of the touchscreen have different functional properties. Content area touches trigger location indication, while specific gesture patterns (such as swipe directions) trigger content selection. This localized functional differentiation eliminates ambiguity while maintaining ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces dynamic behavior where the system adapts its response based on the touch gesture characteristics. By analyzing the direction, duration, and intensity of touch gestures, the system dynamically determines whether the user intends location indication or content selection, eliminating ambiguity while preserving simplicity.
Data Source
AI summary
A screen reader for a computing device with a touch sensitive user interface. The screen reader operates in an investigatory mode in which touch inputs detected through the user interface are interpreted as inputs designating content on the display to verbally render. Each selection may be interpreted as designating a unit of content at the designated location. The size of the unit may be determined based on a direction of motion of pointing device arriving at the location on the display where the unit of content is designated. In this way, a user may, through simple and intuitively learned commands, designate content in units of different sizes such as characters, words, lines or paragraphs, when the content is text, and/or individual user interface elements when the displayed content being selected includes graphical elements.