I-Scratch: Independent Slide Creation With Auditory Comment and Haptic Interface for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Presentation software still holds barriers to independent creation for blind and visually impaired users (BVIs) due to its visual-centric interface. To address this gap, we introduce I-Scratch, a multimodal system which empowers BVIs to independently create, explore, and edit PowerPoint slides. We initially designed I-Scratch to tackle the practical challenges faced by BVIs and refined I-Scratch to improve its usability and accessibility through iterative participatory sessions involving a blind user. I-Scratch integrates a graphical tactile display with auditory guidance for multimodal feedback, simplifies the user interface, and leverages AI technologies for visual assistance in image generation and content interpretation. A user study with ten BVIs demonstrated that I-Scratch enables them to produce visually coherent and aesthetically pleasing slides independently, achieving 91.25% of full and partial successes with a CSI score of 85.07. We present five guidelines and future directions to support the creative work of BVIs using presentation software.