Empath-D: VR-based Empathetic App Design for Accessibility

Abstract

With app-based interaction increasingly permeating all aspects of daily living, it is essential to ensure that apps are designed to be \emph{inclusive} and are usable by a wider audience such as the elderly, with various impairments (e.g., visual, audio and motor). We propose \names, a system that fosters empathetic design, by allowing app designers, \emph{in-situ}, to rapidly evaluate the usability of their apps, from the perspective of impaired users. To provide a truly authentic experience, \name carefully orchestrates the interaction between a smartphone and a VR device, allowing the user to experience simulated impairments in a virtual world while interacting naturally with the app, using a real smartphone. By carefully orchestrating the VR-smartphone interaction, \name tackles challenges such as preserving low-latency app interaction, accurate visualization of hand movement and low-overhead perturbation of I/O streams. Experimental results show that user interaction with \name is comparable (both in accuracy and user perception) to real-world app usage, and that it can simulate impairment effects as effectively as a custom hardware simulator.