Boardtalker: Initial experiences and open problems in prototyping a talking digital whiteboard to assist visually impaired students

Abstract

BoardTalker is an assistive technology system that is designed to help visually impaired students by allowing them to hear material that is written extemporaneously on a whiteboard during class. The system uses a touch-sensitive electronic whiteboard that the teacher can write on with his or her finger. Material written by the teacher is converted to ASCII text and displayed on the surface of the board where it can be read by the fully-sighted students in the class. The visually impaired student can press a button that causes the current contents of the board to be spoken into an earpiece or small speaker. Several prototypical systems were developed by students in the author's Human Computer Interaction class; common themes, lessons learned and open problems are presented based on these prototypes.