Yak Bak Sound App
WHAT IS THE YAK BAK APP?
Children who are blind without additional disabilities grow up to be very vocal and enjoy talking and listening to sounds and stories and music. Yak Bak is a simple app that provides an exciting new way of interacting with sound.
By repeatedly playing with this App the child gets a good mental model of how gestures work on a smartphone. The above gestures are also some of the most widely used gestures. We are conducting a study among adults with vision impairments who are experienced smartphone users to decide on the right set of gestures to use for this application as well as the subsequent Apps for children. Users who are blind utilize Screen Readers (TalkBack in Android and VoiceOver in iOS) to navigate through the complex visual layouts found in smartphones. They use a combination of touch screen gestures to perform this navigation and hence identifying the most useful gestures and introducing them to children will enable the children to progress towards everyday use of smartphones.
HOW DOES THE APP WORK?
At the first level YakBak has three commands that require three simple gestures
Tap once: Starts Recording (with an audio prompt "start recording") if it is not in recording mode already. Else, stops recording (with "recording stopped")
Swipe right: plays the last recorded clip once
Swipe left: Plays the last recorded clip in reverse (if any spoken words, will be played back as gibberish!)
That is it. The app is so installed that the phone becomes a single App device. No home screens, no access to any other apps. As for as the child, it is device which can be used to record whatever she wants and played back straight or in a funny way. And repeat this as many times as the child wants and to play back the sounds to friends and adults or just for themselves.
As the child becomes comfortable with the basic use of YakBak, a second level of the App will be enabled which allows for multiple recordings and playback.