ABILITY final user studies – part II

Navigate China map on Haptic tablet and Dotpad device

On January 13., 2026 the ABILITY team, namely the coordinator Dr. Sabrina Paneels from CEA in France, Dr. Kirsten Rassmus-Groehn from the University of Lund in Sweden, Linda Mathé from Siemens Munich and Bianca Hirt, Tobias Schulze-Velmede and Ginger Claassen from Siemens Paderborn met in Marburg, Lahn, Germany in order to prepare the second round of final user studies. In the afternoon the entire hard/software were set up and tested, and the entire team ran through the complete user study protocol in order to make sure that everybody was fit for the upcoming two days.

Again, we had the pleasure to be guests at the Blista, school for the blind and visually impaired, kindly supported by the headmaster Peter Audretsch and organized by Dr. Tobias Mahnke who took up the responsibility to recruit students and hand out the written consent forms in advance.

On Wednesday we started in the morning with two groups comprised in total of 5 blind students and in the afternoon several teachers took the opportunity to meet with the ABILITY team to test the prototypes and discuss how the presented solution could be integrated in the regular curriculum.

In the evening the team, over dinner, reflected on the day and discussed minor changes to the test protocol. This was followed by another morning with two groups of four students in total and a spontaneous visit by another two teachers who had other engagements the previous day.

Currently the questionnaires, videos, notes by the team are translated into English and prepared for the final evaluation report. However, we can already announce that the majority of test candidates were highly enthusiastic about the solution and had no major issues with the new technology. Minor differences in time to complete the various tasks but overall much faster than anticipated!

Now the French team is preparing for the third and final round of user studies.

The entire analysis will be published in a public deliverable which will be posted on the project’s website at the end of February.