Abstract:

Since the United States federal law Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002, it is widely recognized that all Americans should have equal access to vote with privacy and security, but current electric voting technologies have failed to provide a barrier free access system for visually disabled and impaired population to write and check their desired candidates? names without assistance. Attempts have been made to create audio voting systems that read letters to visually impaired voters for picking, but with lack of checking and correcting features for users? typing. This paper will describe a new technology that allows users to navigate a virtual keyboard to type, check and modify their desired candidates? names using mouse movement and clicking. This new voting system was recently tested at Clemson University, South Carolina on 16 subjects who were blindfolded to simulate the experience of visually impaired voters. The result shows that blindfolded users have difficulty to find keys they want on a virtual keyboard using mouse, no matter how the keys are sorted. This research is expected to reveal the difference between human muscle memory and spatial memory, and to provide a new reference for human-computer interaction research in the future.