Combining conversational AI with refreshable tactile displays (RTDs) offers significant potential for creating accessible data visualization for people who are blind or have low vision (BLV). To support researchers and developers building accessible data visualizations with RTDs, we present a multimodal data interaction architecture along with an open-source reference implementation. Our system is the first to combine touch input with a conversational agent on an RTD, enabling deictic queries that fuse touch context with spoken language, such as "what is the trend between these points?" The architecture addresses key technical challenges, including touch sensing on RTDs, visual-to-tactile encoding, integrating touch context with conversational AI, and synchronizing multimodal output. Our contributions are twofold: (1) a technical architecture integrating RTD hardware, external touch sensing, and conversational AI to enable multimodal data interaction; and (2) an open-source reference implementation demonstrating its feasibility. This work provides a technical foundation to support future research in multimodal accessible data visualization.
Conversational Tactile Data Interfaces: Co-Designing Accessible Data Experiences with Blind Users Using Refreshable Tactile Displays and Conversational AI
Touching Movement: 3D Tactile Poses for Supporting Blind People in Learning Body Movements
University of Tsukuba(筑波大学);Miraikan – The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation(未来科学馆——国立新兴科学与创新博物馆);IBM Research - Tokyo(IBM 东京研究中心);IBM Research(IBM 研究院)
A Review of Surface Haptics:Enabling Tactile Effects on Touch Surfaces
Koc University(科奇大学);University of Lille(里尔大学);École de Technologie Supérieure(高等技术学院);Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH)(浦项科技大学(POSTECH))
PyTouch: A Machine Learning Library for Touch Processing
Facebook AI Research(脸书人工智能研究院);University of California, Berkeley(加州大学伯克利分校);Shanghai Jiao Tong University(上海交通大学);Massachusetts Institute of Technology(麻省理工学院)
Enable Natural Tactile Interaction for Robot Dog based on Large-format Distributed Flexible Pressure Sensors
Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), Tsinghua University(清华大学人工智能产业研究院(AIR));Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology(麻省理工学院计算机科学与人工智能实验室(CSAIL));School of Informatics, Xiamen University(厦门大学信息学院)
ArrayTac: A Closed-Loop Piezoelectric Tactile Platform for Continuously Tunable Rendering of Shape, Stiffness, and Friction
Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University(清华大学交叉信息研究院);Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute(上海启智研究院);Pokebot Inc.(Pokebot公司);School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology(华中科技大学电子信息与通信学院)