[gui-talk] Fwd: Article: Mobile Speak - A Tapping Tour: Introduction to Touchscreens

[Steve Pattison]

 From:    David Truong davidtruong at optusnet.com.au
 To:      vip-l at freelists.org

	I hope you find the following article useful. Please don't shoot
the messenger. I did not write the below. I pass it on in the hope that it
might help!

-----Original Message-----

Hi MSWM users, Code Factory staff and others,
Here's the introductory article on using a touchscreen device. Hope you
find it useful:

A Tapping Tour: Introduction to Touchscreens
Joseph S. Lee
University of California, Riverside

Introduction
Imagine a blind businessman who is browsing a website on his phone at a
coffee shop. A friend of his joins, and they start talking about a tech
seminar they attended in the morning. The topic was touch capabilities on
mobile phones where Mark, the businessman was the speaker.
"So is it true that you are using a touch screen phone?" asked Jim, the
business partner.
"Yep," says Mark the businessman, an owner of a technology company which
specializes in special screen protectors for mobile phones.
"So, can you show me what you can do with it as a blind person?" asked Jim,
who himself was an owner of a medical firm specializing in optical
medicine.
Thus, Mark starts demonstrating how he can play music, listen to a
recording of the tech seminar, type a document and so forth - using his
touch screen alone.
"Wow, I should invest in that later," Jim commented. "How long have you
been using that phone?"
"About a month," Mark answered.
"It would have been a difficult thing for you to learn touchscreen
technology," Jim notes.
"No, I got it all right. The special screen reader program that I use has a
wide array of functions which allows me to use touchscren as though I'm
using a keyboard."

As the above scene notes, using a touch screen as a blind person is no
longer a wall to climb up - now, it is intuitive as communicating with a
friend. Using a touch screen means that a blind person does not have to
rely mostly on physical keyboard for input and navigation, as well as
provide a feel of integration in society by providing a common ground from
where blind and sighted persons can communicate better. Let us examine how
a touch screen works and how it can be used by blind persons to accomplish
common tasks using Mobile Speak.

How does touchscreen work?
A touchscreen is an input/output device that allows a user to "touch" a
screen for interacting with a computer. A special sensor is present on a
screen to detect where a finger or an object (typically a stylus) is placed
on the screen. This signal is interpreted by the software (the display
driver) and, depending on the software involved, performs functions such as
tapping on a screen, opening and closing windows and so forth.
There are several touchscreen technologies. The widespread ones include
resistive (where the sensor detects the location of an object through
change in voltage) and capacitive (where an electronic signal from a
conductor is placed over a screen to let the software know where the cursor
is located), as well as infrared and others.

Definitions of touchscreen terms:
Here are some of the terms used when people describe usage of a
touchscreen:
The phrase "tap" means pressing the touch screen i.e. press a finger or a
stylus over a screen similar to typing a keystroke (a single key) on a
keyboard. The variants "double tap" and "tripple tap' are used to tap the
screen two or three times, respectively.
The phrase "tap and hold" means touching the screen for about a second.
The phrase "slide" means moving a finger or an object over a screen on a
fixed direction e.g. "slide up" means moving the finger up on a screen
along the vertical axis.

How does Mobile Speak treats touchscreen?
In regular operation, Mobile Speak divides the touchscreen into four
equally-sized "quadrants", as in the windowpane. These four quadrants,
numbered 1 through 4 labeled clockwise from the top left, serves as the
command layer keys and for carrying out shortcuts. On other circumstances,
the screen is divided into "virtual" number pad or three-by-three "cubes,"
designed to simulate phone keypad and joystick mode, respectively. An
overview of different touchscreen mode is covered below.
* Gestures: This is the default mode when Mobile Speak is first installed.
The screen is divided into four "virtual keys." They are 1 (top left), 2
(top right), 3 (bottom right) and 4 (bottom left). When pressed (or tapped)
by themselves, these provide command layer, such as Go To (tap 1), Settings
(Tap 2) and so forth. Tap and holding it provides useful shortcuts, such as
Start menu (tap and hold key 1), closing a Á֝é (tap and hold 2) and so
forth. Double tapping anywhere simulates ENTER key, and triple tapping
anywhere exits command layer (as in virtual ESC key).
* Joystick: The screen is divided into three-by-three "cubes", simulating
the navigation mode on numpads found on computer keyboards. For simplicity,
let us label these keys as 1 on the top and 9 on the bottom - similar to a
phone keypad. The "virtual 2" is UP ARROW, the "virtual 4" key is LEFT
ARROW, the "virtual 5" key is ENTER (or joystick in), the "virtual 6" key
is RIGHT ARROW and "virtual 8" key is DOWN ARRoW. The "virtual 7 and 9"
keys are soft keys - left soft and right soft, respectively.
* Braille; similar to typing Braille letters. Unlike traditional Braille
dots, the keys are 7, 3, 2, 1 on the left side of the screen while the
right side is 8, 6, 5, and 4.
* Numeric: The screen is divided into three-by-four grid, similar in
appearance to a traditional telephone keypad. In this mode, the command
structure is pressing the Command key (mostly long press of EnTER) followed
by pressing the "virtual phone key" associated with the command e.g.
pressing Command with "virtual phone key 5" would switch command layouts.
The command structure is same as Gestures layout except it must be
preceeded by Command key.
To switch between these modes, press the Command key followed by volume
up/down keys. Now let's walk through some of the basics of using
touchscreen by trying out various common commands available.

Obtaining date and time information
To obtain date and time information, first switch to Gestures Mode by press
Command key followed by volume up or down key until Mobile Speak says,
"gestures." From here, tap (or press) the bottom left corner of the screen
(the virtual key 4). Mobile Speak gives a sound feedback and says, "Speak."
We are now in Speak commands layer where we can obtain status messages,
time information and soft key assignments. To find out what time or date it
is, tap the top right corner. After a sound feedback, Mobile Speak says the
current date and time.

Moving between Today/Home screen items
To move from one item to the next in Today screen, slide your finger or a
stylus downward along the screen for about a second. Mobile Speak announces
the next item on focus. To move up, slide your finger up along the screen,
and the Mobile Speak announces the previous item on focus.

Finding out and activating soft keys
Many Windows Mobile programs interact with users via "soft keys' - a
virtual key or a description for commonly used functions, such as creating
a new contact or accessing menus within an application. To obtain the soft
key assignment information, tap the lower left corner (key 4), then tap the
top left corner (key 1). Mobile Speak announces the soft key information.
To activate soft keys, tap the lower left or lower right region of the
touchscreen within five seconds after mobile Speak announces soft key
information. Alternatively, if you know what the given soft key does, press
the top left (key 1), then press bottom left or bottom right region for
left or right soft keys, respectively.

Changing speech volume and speed
To change speech volume and speed, tap the upper right region of the screen
(key 2), then:
* Slide up along the screen to increase speech volume.
* Slide down to decrease speech volume.
* slide left to decrease speed.
* Slide right to increase speed.

Accessing and exiting Start menu
The Start Menu is normally located on the top left corner of the screen. To
activate it, tap and hold the top left portion of the screen (press and
hold key 1) for about a second. The Start menu appears. To exit, tap and
hold the top right portion (key 2). The focus returns to wherever you were
before invoking Start Menu.

The above exercises were meant to introduce the reader to basics of
touchscreen interaction such as tapping, tap and hold and sliding. There
are other commands available with the touchscreen interface, but due to
space limitations, I the author decided to include only basic commands and
an introductory note and touchscreen technology. For more information on
how touchscreen works, I encourage readers to read online articles which
describes how this technology works. For more information on using Mobile
Speak with a touchscreen device, I encourage readers to consult the Mobile
Speak user guide.

Contact Information
To contact the author, send an email to either joseph.lee22590 at gmail.com or
joseph_lee22590 at yahoo.com. You can also use my student email address, which
is jlee181 at student.ucr.edu. You can also visit my blog at
joslee22590.blogspot.com. For more info on Mobile Speak, visit Code Factory
at www.codefactory.es.

Hope this helps...
Sincerely,
Joseph S. Lee
University of California, Riverside

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963
Twitter:  steve9782