Currently all interactions that occur between ourselves and communications networks involve only two senses (aural and visual). Moreover all these networks, including the Internet, have been designed to carry application information pertaining to these two senses (e.g. telephony, video, graphics, and text). It is clear that by introducing into networks the ability to carry information relating to other senses opens up an enormous potential for new and improved applications. However it is also clear that the network service needed to support other senses such as touch (haptics) will be significantly different from that which currently exists. The effective transmission of the sense of touch (haptics) presents a significant challenge to the current Internet architecture. Haptic information originates from a different human sense; therefore the quality of service (QoS) required to support this type of traffic is significantly different from that used to support conventional real-time traffic such as voice or video. To date there has been no specific provision of QoS parameters for haptic interaction, and each type of network impairment has different (and severe) impacts on the userpsilas haptic experience. This paper describes some of the issues and challenges that are presented whenever remote haptic interactions with virtual environments are considered, and identifies a number of techniques, in the network and in the end applications, that can be used to improve performance of such systems.

Haptic technologies are thought to have the potential to help blind individuals overcome the challenges experienced when accessing the Web. This paper proposes a structured participatory-based approach for developing targeted haptic sensations for purposes of web page exploration, and reports preliminary results showing how HTML elements can be represented through the use of force-feedback. Findings are then compared with mappings from previous studies, demonstrating the need for providing tailored haptic sensations for blind Internet users. This research aims to culminate in a framework, encompassing a vocabulary of haptic sensations with accompanying recommendations for designers to reference when developing inclusive web solutions.

To date, efforts have been made to enable visually impaired people to gain access to graphics on the Internet. However, these studies only offer a solution for a specific type of graphic by using a fixed set of hardware. To address this, a design approach of an adaptive and adaptable architecture is introduced which adapts to different graphical content, input/output devices (including assistive technologies) and user's profile and preferences. This system brings the opportunity to visually impaired people to gain access to graphics via different modalities by providing an adequate accessibility interface and interaction based on their profiles and needs.

Recent trend in the development of mobile devices, wireless communications, sensor technologies, weblogs, and peer-to-peer communications have prompted a new design opportunity for enhancing social interactions. This paper introduces our preliminary experiences in designing a prototype utilizing the aforementioned technologies to share life experience. Users equipped with camera phones coupled with short-range communication technology, such as RFID, can capture life experience and share it as weblogs to other people. However, in reality, this is easier said than done. The success of weblogs relies on the active participation and willingness of people to contribute. To encourage active participations, a ranking system, AgreeRank, is specifically developed to get them motivated.

Virtual environments using haptic devices have proved useful for assembly/disassembly simulation of mechanical components. To date most haptic virtual environments are stand-alone. Collaborative haptic virtual environments (CHVEs) are distributed across a number of users via a network, such as the Internet. These present new challenges to the designer, such as consistency of the virtual environments, user-user haptic interaction, and scalability. The system described in this paper considers the CHVEs to be distributed over a packet-switched network such as the Internet. It gives priority to the validation of interactions between objects grasped by users; guarantees consistency across different users' virtual environments. The paper explains the components used and the consistency-maintenance scheme that guarantees the consistency of the virtual scene in the remote nodes. Consistency and force feedback results are also discussed. Results presented show the system maintains a consistent and satisfactory response when network incurs delay or packet jitter

Recent development and proliferation of mobile devices, wireless communication, and sensor technologies have prompted a new vision of social interactions in the world in which we inhabit. For example, the number of mobile phones that are capable of capturing users' spontaneous life experiences not only in pictures but also in audio and video clips is on the increase. In addition, captured experiences can be sent and shared with others over wireless networks such as WiFi, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, or recently commenced third-generation (3G) protocols. Other technology trends such as weblog and peer-to-peer communication provide a ubiquitous platform and a model of motivating users to share life experiences with other people. The hypothesis is that everyone can be an owner of a weblog which records their experience about place, people, and things that interest them. Initial form of peer-to-peer communication, centralized directory service, can help authors of weblogs attain widespread of popularity and increase the level of participation in this type of interaction. The convergence of these technologies provides new design opportunities for computer-mediated communications. The aim of this paper is to share our experiences in designing and implementing a novel physical prototype which incorporates peer-to-peer communication, weblog, RFID, wireless networking, and mobile phone technologies to enhance social quality of shared life experience.

This paper reports on the quality of service (QoS) requirements and the performance of virtual environment (VE) applications deployed in IP networks. We are interested specifically in systems that support communication with end-user through force feedback devices known as haptic interfaces. Little is known about networked haptic interfaces in VE. Our goal is to understand such application QoS requirements as well as the effect of other traffic when they co-exist in the same network. In this paper, we compare the peer-to-peer model with the client-server model. Our motivation is to deploy distributed haptic VE applications (DHVE) over a network connecting two departments of Queen's University of Belfast. This deployment will be used for educational purposes and for implementing further research in this area, and will be evaluated by end-users; hence, the essential realization of network-based DHVE under realistic network conditions. A set of experiments was conducted to achieve this aim and their results are presented in this paper.

In this paper, we describe a study comparing the strengths of a multimodal Virtual Reality (VR) interface against traditional tactile diagrams in conveying information to visually impaired and blind people. The multimodal VR interface consists of a force feedback device (SensAble PHANTOM), synthesized speech and non-speech audio. Potential advantages of the VR technology are well known however its real usability in comparison with the conventional paper-based medium is seldom investigated. We have addressed this issue in our evaluation. The experimental results show benefits from using the multimodal approach in terms of more accurate information about the graphs obtained by users.

Line graphs stand as an established information visualisation and analysis technique taught at various levels of difficulty according to standard Mathematics curricula. It has been argued that blind individuals cannot use line graphs as a visualisation and analytic tool because they currently primarily exist in the visual medium. The research described in this paper aims at making line graphs accessible to blind students through auditory and haptic media. We describe (1) our design space for representing line graphs, (2) the technology we use to develop our prototypes and (3) the insights from our preliminary work.