The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of device size on non-visual icon search using a touch interface with voice output. We conducted an experiment in which twelve participants searched for the target icons with four different-sized touchscreen devices. We analyzed the search time, search strategies and subjective evaluations. As a result, mobile devices with a screen size of 4.7 inches had the shortest search time and obtained the highest subjective evaluation among the four devices.

A survey was conducted on the use of ICT by visually impaired people. Among 304 respondents, 81 used smartphones and 44, tablets. Blind people used feature phones at a higher rate and smartphones and tablets at lower rates than people with low vision. The most popular smartphone model was iPhone and the most popular tablet model was iPad. While almost all blind users used the speech output accessibility feature and only a few of them used visual features, low vision users used both visual features such as Zoom, Large text, and Invert colors and speech output at high rates both on smartphones and tablets. The most popular text entry methods were different between smartphones and tablets. For smartphones flick and numeric keypad input were popular among low vision users while voice input was the most popular among blind users. For tablets a software QWERTY keyboard was the most popular among both blind and low vision users. The advantages of smartphones were access to geographical information, quick Web browsing, voice input, and extensibility for both blind and low vision users, object recognition for blind users, and readability for low vision users. Tablets also work as a vision aid for people with low vision. The drawbacks of smartphones and tablets were text entry and touch operation difficulties and inaccessible apps for both blind and low vision users, problems in speech output for blind users, and problems in readability for low vision users. Researchers and makers of operating systems (OS) and apps should assume responsibility for solving these problems.

Many text entry methods are available in the use of touch interface devices when using a screen reader, and blind smartphone users and their supporters are eager to know which one is the easiest to learn and the fastest. Thus, we compared the text entry speeds and error counts for four combinations of software keyboards and character-selecting gestures over a period of five days. The split-tap gesture on the Japanese numeric keypad was found to be the fastest across the five days even though this text entry method produced the most errors. The two entry methods on the QWERTY keyboard were slower than the two entry methods on the numeric keypad. This difference in text entry speed was explained by the differences in key pointing and tapping times and their repitition numbers among different methods.

Braille fonts allow us to easily make braille labels on capsule paper. For legibility, fonts should be printed at optimum sizes. To find the optimum sizes for Japanese braille fonts, we conducted an experiment in which a Japanese braille font was printed at various sizes on capsule paper and read and rated by young braille users. The results show that braille printed at 17 and 18 point sizes were read faster and evaluated higher than those printed at smaller or bigger sizes.

This paper proposes a new non-destructive methodology to estimate physical parameters for LSIs. In order to resolve the estimation accuracy degradation issue for low-k dielectric films, we employ a parallel-plate capacitance measurement and a wire resistance measurement in our non-destructive method. Due to (1) the response surface functions corresponding to the parallel-plate capacitance measurement and the wire resistance measurement and (2) the searching of the physical parameter values using our cost function and simulated annealing, the proposed method attains higher precision than that of the existing method. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by application to our 90 nm SoC process using low-k materials.

We have developed software that uses the R statistics software environment to automatically generate tactile graphs — i.e. graphs that can be read by blind people using their sense of touch. We released this software as a Web application to make it available to anyone, from anywhere. This Web application can automatically generate images for tactile graphs from numerical data in a CSV file. It is currently able to generate four types of graph — scatter plots, line graphs, bar charts and pie charts. This paper describes the Web application's functions, operating procedures and the results of evaluation experiments.

An on-chip, 64-Mb, embedded, DRAM MPEG-2 encoder LSI with a multimedia processor has been developed. To implement this large-scale and high-speed LSI, we have developed the hierarchical skew control of multi-clocks, with timing verification, in which cross-talk noise is considered, and simple measures taken against the IR drop in the power lines through decoupling capacitors. As a result, the target performance of 263 MHz at 1.5 V has been successfully attained and verified, the cross-talk noise has been considered, and, in addition, it has become possible to restrain the IR drop to 166 mV in the 162 MHz operation block.

This paper studies impact of well edge proximity effect on circuit delay, based on model parameters extracted from test structures in an industrial 65 nm wafer process. Experimental results show that up to 10% of delay increase arises by the well edge proximity effect in the 65 nm technology, and it depends on interconnect length. Furthermore, due to asymmetric increase in pMOS and nMOS threshold voltages, delay may decrease in spite of the threshold voltage increase. From these results, we conclude that considering WPE is indispensable to cell characterization in the 65 nm technology.