English

Examining Augmented Virtuality Impairment Simulation for Mobile App Accessibility Design

Human-Computer Interaction 2025-03-18 v1

Abstract

With mobile apps rapidly permeating all aspects of daily living with use by all segments of the population, it is crucial to support the evaluation of app usability for specific impaired users to improve app accessibility. In this work, we examine the effects of using our \textit{augmented virtuality} impairment simulation system--\textit{Empath-D}--to support experienced designer-developers to redesign a mockup of commonly used mobile application for cataract-impaired users, comparing this with existing tools that aid designing for accessibility. We show that the use of augmented virtuality for assessing usability supports enhanced usability challenge identification, finding more defects and doing so more accurately than with existing methods. Through our user interviews, we also show that augmented virtuality impairment simulation supports realistic interaction and evaluation to provide a concrete understanding over the usability challenges that impaired users face, and complements the existing guidelines-based approaches meant for general accessibility.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.12851,
  title  = {Examining Augmented Virtuality Impairment Simulation for Mobile App Accessibility Design},
  author = {Kenny Tsu Wei Choo and Rajesh Krishna Balan and Youngki Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.12851},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

11 pages, published in CHI 2019

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:23:06.616Z