Keywords

1 Introduction

In the year 2018, World Health Organization (WHO) measured that there are approximately 285 million visually impaired people worldwide. From which 39 million people are blind and 246 million have low vision called visually impaired. In developing countries, there are about 65% of people have suffered from visual impairment over the age of 50 years. The main reason for visual imparity is refractive errors, cataracts, and glaucoma [1]. A research shows that the prevalence of nearsightedness will increase to around half the population of the world in 2050 [2]. Visual impairment has a great impact on the quality of life, including to develop a personal relationship and their ability to work. There are almost 48% of people cut off moderately or completely from the things and people around them due to visual impairment. The UCD of mobile application helps the visually impaired people to reduce those problems, that they faced in their daily life.

1.1 User-Centered Design (UCD)

It is a very complex task that selecting the user requirements, in which a huge number of errors are disposed of. In Information System (IS) literature it has been documented widely [3, 4]. UCD is a policy that highlights the role of user requirements and analysis and their exact gathering. In the year 2004, a methodology for designing a product in which the final outlook of that product is according to the end-user is described [5]. According to the researcher, this methodology is called UCD, which is one of the main perceptions that appeared from the early researches of HCI. In the last era of the 1980s after the introduction of UCD, a vast number of researchers have to take part in the construction of this preliminary theory idea and accept that UCD is one of guiding ideologies [3, 6]. In the year 2011, UCD is one of guiding ideologies that described in this era for designing the useable technologies [7]. The iterative stages of UCD are (1) theoretical, (2) requirements analysis, (3) consolidation, design and validation, and (4) evaluation.

1.2 Mobile Device

Mobile phones are the devices that used as a part of daily life, but sometimes the usage is so much tricky. If take a simple view of the previous era, featured mobile phone was introduced at the end of the 90s. They had many new features like mobile games, wallpaper, ringtones that are the customizable and mobile camera. In the year 2002, the era of smartphones started. They included all the previous era phones features. The only changes was having a bigger screen size. In the year 2007, the most recent era starts when the iPhone launched by Apple [8, 9]. The multitouch simple display was introduced with mobile interaction. The Android operating system was introduced as a competitor to iPhone a couple of years later. These mobile phones have many cost-effective technologies for visually impaired people. These mobile phones were used frequently for visually impaired people and suitable software is needed for them.

1.3 Categories of Visual Impairment

There are many types of visual imparities, such as diabetic retinopathy, Age-related Muscular Degeneration (AMD), cataract and glaucoma [1]. It is very difficult to describe their vision for the people having a visual impairment. It is also difficult for someone to describe their vision spot. There is a tool called mock-optics that can be used to some understanding of how visual impairments can be felt. The tool mock-optics describes five different types of visual impairments that are shown in Fig. 1. The first picture mark with 0 is the original picture. The second picture mark with 1 demonstrates the diabetic retinopathy visual imparities which can be described with as blurry vision. The third picture mark with 2 demonstrates cataract, which involves the lens became cloudy. It is quite similar to the diabetic retinopathy but these are two different diseases. The fourth picture mark with 3 demonstrates age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which causes central vision loss. This is the common type in old age and it is identifying that 25% of all people over age 75 [1]. The fifth picture mark with 4 demonstrates a narrow vision filed which can be the result of many different diseases, but glaucoma is most common. An occurrence of this disease is 4% at the age of 75 years. The last picture mark with 5 demonstrates vision impairments result in light only, this type of visual imparities is called blindness.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Vision impairments simulated with mock optics. 0 - Full vision. 1 - Diabetic retinopathy. 2 - Cataract. 3 - Age-related macular degeneration (AMD). 4 - Narrow field of view i.e. retinitis pigmentosa (RP). 5 - Only light vision

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The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 explains the SLR research method. Section 3 discusses the results of the research questions, regarding the problem facing by visually impaired people when using the mobile applications, possible solution to resolve their problems and problem in UCD interface of mobile application manufacturing. Section 4 concludes this work with the remarks on the research direction.

2 Systematic Literature Review

A SLR conducted using detailed search approaches, in order to overcome such problems during combination and classification phase in our study. In this study, the focus is to identify current problems facing by visually impaired people, summarize the possible solutions to resolve the problems facing by visually impaired people when using the mobile applications and find the problem in UCD interface of mobile application manufacturing. The evaluating and understanding all available research relevant to spectacle of interest, topic, to a particular research question is called SLR [10]. SLR has been conducted to follow the different guidelines. These guidelines are mainly from Charters and Kitchenham in 2007. The three main points included in the SLR are (i) an initial list of studies (ii) judgment relevance and (iii) data exploring. In the account of data resource and search approaches only English written and online available paper are searched. In the policy of search, there is the inclusion of different surveys, electronic databases, and conference proceedings. Following are the electronic databases that have been used.

  1. 1.

    Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com.pk/)

  2. 2.

    IEEE Xplore (www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/)

  3. 3.

    Springer Link (www.springerlink.com/)

  4. 4.

    ACM Digital library (www.portal.acm.org/dl.cfm)

  5. 5.

    Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com/)

  6. 6.

    Elsevier Science Direct (www.sceincedirect.com/)

According to research title ‘user-centered design of a mobile application for visually impaired people,’ the papers searched in different conference proceedings, editorials, features, and seminars. At each database searched out the following keywords, from that search the result will get the article that contains the words ‘mobile application’ and ‘disabilities’. In order to find the complete text of conference proceedings and journal articles, these logical queries were used. There are many queries intelligence that was able to manage the distinction of many words such as ‘disability’ and ‘disabilities’, ‘impaired’ and ‘impairment’ (like, ‘disability’ or ‘visual impair’, and ‘User-Centered Densing of Mobile application’ or ‘Mobile applications’, or ‘UCD application design’ or ‘Mobile application for Visually Impaired people’). After that, wisely separated the title, keywords, full text, and abstract. Around 505073 papers were found on disabilities from these search queries but there were only 4906 papers found on UCD mobile application, visually impaired, mobile application interface on visually impaired. Total 1331 paper were found on the impact of the UCD interface of a mobile application for visually impaired people. Then from the primary list, relevant papers were selected manually, irrelevant papers are removed after reading the titles, keywords, abstract and full text. The following are the elimination standards used to remove the papers from the primary list.

  1. 1.

    UCD did not focus on these articles.

  2. 2.

    The papers were not related to the visually impaired community.

  3. 3.

    Duplication was found in some papers.

  4. 4.

    Insertion conditions were not fulfilled by papers.

  5. 5.

    Experimental evidence did not prove by the papers.

  6. 6.

    Insertion of Non-English papers was not approved.

  7. 7.

    Consequences of papers were not according to mobile applications for visually impaired people.

  8. 8.

    Paper published before 2010.

  9. 9.

    Paper’s full text was not available.

  10. 10.

    The objective of our criteria did not complete by the papers.

3 Result

Dyba and Dingsoyr’s citation management procedure is followed in this study [11]. Firstly, q refer to total number of paper, (q = 1331) are stored using endnotes. A spreadsheet was used to import all these citations. In this spreadsheet recorded all the sources of each citation and decision of consequent insertion or extraction. In order to determine the relevance of studies with SLR, the title of all 1331 papers has been analyzed in the second step. Secondly, 500 relevant papers were identified and all nonrelevant or out of scope papers were discarded. Nevertheless, the title of a paper can not always represent paper content. Thirdly, the 179 paper’s abstract was included and promising in the visually impaired people’s domain. These papers were extracted from reviewing the 500 papers. At the end of third step, only 50 papers remained for the selection process in the final step. In data removal and combination only 27 papers were selected shown in Fig. 2. For more identification and analysis 27 papers were selected.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

The steps in the screening criteria of papers.

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The research topic is addressed by using the following standards after the screening criteria.

  1. 1.

    What are the current problems facing by visually impaired people when using the mobile applications?

  2. 2.

    What are the possible solutions to resolve the problems facing by visually impaired people when using the mobile applications?

  3. 3.

    Does a paper describe any challenges handled by this user center mobile interface of the mobile application?

3.1 What Are the Current Problems Facing by Visually Impaired People During Using the Mobile Applications?

Visually impaired people are facing the problems in using the mobile application. Different mobile applications are focused according to the new era. These mobile applications are Globonews, WhatsApp, Facebook and mobile phone embedded application. In Globonews application, visually impaired people had some difficulties in identifying the item, due to unclearly show the labels of descriptions. Components were not identified properly, some of them are ‘Button A’ and ‘Button B’ [16]. The screen orientation changes and numbering order of saved playlist did not warn by the application. Hence, the idea of the interface to their users was not provided by the application. Visually impaired users required to count the screens to accessing their required tasks. Another problem faced by the user in this application was the HOME button or link is not provided by the application. In order to perform this step, firstly close all the applications then reached home [16]. The second application that was discussed here is WhatsApp. The first problem in this application is to find out a new contact. Due to the delay in updating the new contact and this delay does not warn the user. Picture sending in this application was another problem, the picture’s sending label on button did not present. The confirmation of image capture is also affected due to the lack of sound and tactile [17]. Facebook application, there was one problem that the characters were not entered in the text field and the application did not warn about this problem [18].

3.2 What Are the Possible Solutions of Problems Facing by Visually Impaired People During Using the Mobile Applications?

When a character is entered by the user then it must be heard to the user. The chosen item and images names must be heard to the user, because of they are touched. It is necessary that in the response of all interactions a clear voice or event sound must be provided and screen reader must be a presence. A home button must be provided by a system. On the control pad, the identification of this button can be very quickly and easily. That’s why the user itself able to work in the interface. In order to start the mobile operations that home key could be used as an initial command. A specific position of this key is represented on the touch screen mobile devices and it is used some kind of actions in the mobile interface [12]. In order to reduce the mistakes, the mobile screen must offer the documented equivalence when text is read from the mobile. The media must be translated into a text form that produces a similar idea if other media like photo, buttons, movie, maps, and sounds are being used. The information alerts should be provided by the system, that is used from other communication channels instead of visual.

3.3 Why UCD Interface Is Necessary for Manufacturing the Mobile Application for Visually-Impaired People?

Visually impaired people have unique interactive experiences while using smartphones. This uniqueness consequently causes a gap between the ideas of designers of mobile application technology and the needs of visually impaired people [13]. During the design process, there is a ‘lack of thoughts’ about user needs, it becomes a cause of the gap between ideas of mobile application and requirements of visually impaired people. In the development of new mobile applications, this gap is a challenge. In developing the mobile phone applications for visually impaired people, there is a need to evaluate the application according to UCD requirements [14]. The enhancement in the needs of visually impaired people’s in the area of mobile application development is truly required. The position of UCD is supported by visually impaired people saying that ‘I know what is better for me’ [15]. The true potential of a mobile application for visually impaired people can be used more effectively with the help of UCD methods.

4 Conclusion and Future Work

This SLR directed to recognize and categorize different demanding components that describe the problems of visually impaired people when using mobile applications, the proposed solution of problems and the problems in UCD interface of mobile application manufacturing. Finding are described in two stages: in the preliminary stage, quantitative classification about the number of publication published in every year from 2010 till 2019. In the secondary stage, explore the answer to research topics that were addressed by using the screening criteria.

An empirical study will be needed to strengthen the findings of SLR, that explore the current implementation of UCD model of a mobile application for visually impaired people in order to verify the findings of the SLR. This empirical study aims to describe, explore, and evaluate the difficulties of visually impaired people in using mobile applications.