An Off-Screen Model for Tactile Graphical User Interfaces

Screen readers enable visually impaired people to access information provided by computer systems. They gather data from operation system and applications, govern the data in an internal data structure (off-screen model), and provide the information in an appropriate format to output devices. However, current approaches for the construction of off-screen models are not appropriate for tactile graphical displays. Within this paper we therefore describe the composition of an alternative off-screen model appropriate for storing and administrating information necessary for tactile graphical displays.