Interactive Technology for People with Colour Vision Deficiency – Translating Colours into Haptic Feedback

Abstract: Ten percent of all males live with a colour vision deficiency, meaning their visual perception of colour is limited or absent, causing challenges in their daily lives. To find out how, and to which extent, haptic feedback can be utilised to communicate information about colour variations while achieving a high accuracy, an iterative interaction design cycle was applied, a functional physical prototype was developed further, five interviews and three user studies were conducted. Translating colours into haptic feedback, the wearable, a wristband, can automatically present a colour’s hue and saturation to the user. An evaluation with eight colour-vision deficient users found that for some users both hue and saturation are relevant, while for others oneparameter is sufficient. Hence, the user should be given the option to switch between different settings.