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DESCRIPTION:Abstract\n\nHaptic technologies bring touch-based interactions 
 into computer interfaces\, opening new possibilities for entertainment\, m
 usic and art\, virtual reality\, education\, and accessibility. In many of
  these applications\, haptic interactivity is experienced as part of a mul
 tisensory experience\, often including complementary visual or auditory el
 ements. Such multisensory design\, when done well\, can improve the experi
 ences of users\, for example by providing richer feedback to performing mu
 sicians and creating interactive audio-haptic diagrams for blind and low-v
 ision students. Despite this\, most software for haptic design has limited
  support for other sensory modalities\, requiring ongoing effort from the 
 designer to follow a suitably multisensory approach. It should not be surp
 rising then that haptic effects are often added to an experience after vis
 uals or sounds have been created.\n\nThis thesis explores possibilities fo
 r software to support audio-haptic design throughout the design process\, 
 and studies its impact on the practitioners that use it. Instead\, we take
  the approach of focusing on a particular use case—representing visual med
 ia for blind and visually impaired individuals—but designing the software 
 with extensibility in mind so that it can be adapted to other applications
 . Our work to advance audio-haptic design research and the engineering sta
 te of the art consists of two tracks:\n\nFirst\, the thesis presents a sof
 tware architecture for automatically creating audio-haptic representations
  of visual web content\, and studies its ability to meet the needs of acce
 ssibility practitioners. The results of retrospective interviews with prac
 titioners who used the architecture are presented to aid others in adaptin
 g the system and techniques used therein to their own projects. Our result
 s suggest that the architecture is useful when implementing\, refining\, a
 nd evaluating more mature audio-haptic representations. However\, it does 
 not adequately support practitioners engaged in prototyping possible solut
 ions to a problem.\n\nTo address this limitation\, in the second track we 
 study authoring tools for haptic and audio-haptic design as a means of pro
 totyping. We begin with a systematic review of these tools to identify his
 torical trends likely to be relevant to the users or creators of authoring
  tools. This is discussed through the lens of a novel taxonomy developed t
 hrough interviews with practitioners and the review itself. Building upon 
 work in other domains\, we developed and evaluated a reinforcement learnin
 g computer agent that encourages exploration in haptic and audio-haptic de
 sign activities. This agent only trains on user feedback\, facilitating it
 s integration into other tools. We identify how such agents can be built f
 or audio-haptics using thematic analyses of interviews with participants i
 n these activities.\n\nThrough these efforts\, we develop techniques to cr
 eate software to support audio-haptic design from the brainstorming of new
  ideas to the deployment of experiences to end users. While some practitio
 ners may be able to use the artifacts unchanged\, our results provide usef
 ul guidance to those working outside our particular context.\n
DTSTART:20251120T191500Z
DTEND:20251120T211500Z
LOCATION:Room 603\, McConnell Engineering Building\, CA\, QC\, Montreal\, H
 3A 0E9\, 3480 rue University
SUMMARY:PhD defence of Juliette Regimbal – Authoring tools and infrastructu
 re for accessible audio-haptic representations of visual media
URL:/ece/channels/event/phd-defence-juliette-regimbal-
 authoring-tools-and-infrastructure-accessible-audio-haptic-369084
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