Date: June 2022

On this occasion we have had the help of the Red Cross volunteer, Andrés Oteo, to assess the operation of the Braille Keyboard offered by Talckback.

 Andrés is a blind person with whom we like to collaborate at TECSOS to analyze and validate products for people with reduced or no vision. The tests of the Braille Keyboard have consisted of carrying out the process that a person would have to do to activate it and checking its operation.

The telephone that has been used during this evaluation has been a Mi Note 10, which, as will be seen later, has a series of design aspects that will have to be considered when the Braille Keyboard is going to be used.

First, comment on the process of activating the keyboard. No notable problems arose, although navigating through the menus and checking that everything is configured correctly can be a bit tedious. The only negative point that Andrés pointed out was in relation to the keyboard change button, since it could be somewhat small and unintuitive.

The next aspect to cover is the tutorial that it offers when activating the keyboard for the first time. During the tests, Andrés did not complete it and preferred that we teach him how it works. This is because the explanations given were too artificial and the amount of information transmitted may be excessive for the first time.

Regarding the operation of the keyboard, the different evaluations that the volunteer gave of each mode during the tests will be given.

• Remote screen mode: Andrés considers that this mode is not very practical mainly because of how you have to place your hands. The reasons that he argued were that it is uncomfortable to use the phone in that way and that if you also have small hands the difficulty increases a lot. These evaluations could have been different if a mobile with a smaller screen had been used, however, this does not take away from the fact that, for Andrés, the design of the mode is not very ergonomic.
  In addition, he commented that he did not like the layout of the buttons since it differed a lot from the conventional braille display and it was as if he were writing in reverse.
• table mode: This is the mode that he liked the most and he thought that it fulfilled its mission correctly.

In his opinion, the ideal would be to have only one keyboard mode activated so as not to worry about what position the mobile is in. In addition, he believes that the investment of the points would have to be done individually for each mode. With how the keyboard is programmed, only one of the modes has the button layout according to the conventional braille display, so when you invert the dots, the mode that had the wrong position of the dots becomes correct, but the one that already it was correctly, it ceases to be.

On the other hand, during the tests there were moments of confusion because Talkback indicated that random letters were being erased when typing and it was because the search autocomplete was activated. This type of problem arises in other applications in which text auto-completion can also be activated, such as instant messaging applications.

Finally, we must highlight some thoughts of Andrés related to the design of the keyboard and the mobile. Andrés commented that when using a phone with curved edges, the sensitivity of the screen on the sides is too great, being able to make wrong keystrokes very easily when moving the hands. Another aspect that he highlighted was that there were times when it was difficult for him to differentiate when he moved from one button to another. It is for all this that he recommends using a phone with a case, not only does it allow the curvature to be covered, but the case also provides a mobile phone, regardless of its design, with physical references to the screen and position of the fingers

In general terms, Andrés considers that the braille keyboard offered by Talkback does its job correctly but that he needs to correct the different effects that he has told us about.