A Customisable App for Self-Management of Diabetes for Visual Impaired Patients

Abstract

The extensive use of smart phones has somewhat changed the human lifestyle. The astonishing growth of smart phone users depicts the human dependency on these small yet powerful gadgets. The mobile technology has impacted almost all the aspects of life and revolutionized the health domain, as well. Since, it has been established that a major percentage of the diabetics raise issues relating to vision at some stage, therefore, it is inevitable to ignore the importance of accessible diabetes monitoring applications. For this purpose, the current research proposes an accessible design for an android based diabetes monitoring application concerning the visually impaired users. Since none of the existing applications focused on developing an accessible design for the visually impaired, therefore, design requirements were specified based on the extensive review of the accessibility and usability guidelines recommended in literature. The primary goal of the work was to develop an accessible and user-friendly design for the visually impaired, therefore, only general diabetes monitoring features were implemented and complex features like calorie calculations and intelligent diet recommender were not focused. In terms of the accessibility features, gesture-based input and voice over based output scheme were implemented for the legally blind. Customisable colour scheme feature helped the colour blind and magnification along with text resize features were useful for the users with low vision.