Project TapTap: A Longitudinal Study Exploring Non-Verbal Communication through Vibration Signals Between Teachers and Blind or Low Vision Music Learners

While wearable haptics hold promise for making non-verbal cues like gestures and facial expressions accessible to blind or low-vision musicians, our understanding of how vibration signals can be interpreted and applied in real-world learning environments remains limited. We invited five music teachers and their seven students to participate in a ten-week longitudinal study involving observations, weekly catch-ups, group discussions, and interviews. We explored how wearable haptics could facilitate communication between sighted teachers and BLV students during one-on-one music lessons. We found that students and teachers derived particular meanings from vibration signals, including time-coded meaning, mutually agreed and intuitive meaning, and haptic metaphors. Additionally, wearable haptics significantly improved the experience of learning music for both sighted teachers and BLV students. We conclude by highlighting key design implications and outlining future research directions to create wearable haptics that significantly improve the music learning experience of BLV people.