Hapstick-Figure: Investigating the Design of a Haptic Representation of Human Gestures from Theater Performances for Blind and Visually-Impaired People

Theaters serve as platforms that transport audiences into diverse worlds, offering a collective enjoyment of live performances and a shared cultural experience. However, theater performances have strong visual components, such as physical props and actors’ movements and gestures, which are inaccessible to visually impaired and blind audience members and thus can exclude them from such shared social experiences. We conducted formative interviews with eight blind and visually impaired people about their experiences with barriers to theater performance gestures. We then present Hapstick-Figure, a prototype design to represent and communicate human gestures via a 3D-printed tactile surface. Next, we used Hapstick-Figure as a technology probe in a qualitative evaluation with six of our BVI participants to explore non-visual interpretation and engagement with this prototype. We outline insights into the haptic representation of theater performance gestures and reflections on designing for accessibility in this context.