On May 18, the 12th “Global Accessibility Awareness Day”, Tencent announced that it would open four haptic feedback accessibility patents for free to the society, through opening patent licensing, to lower the usage threshold and provide more reliable intellectual property protection, and to promote the wider application of cutting-edge technology in the field of accessibility.

Developed by Tencent Game MTGPA (Terminal Technology Optimization Project) team, the haptic feedback technology uses different combinations of vibration duration, frequency and intensity of terminal devices such as mobile phones and tablets, to deliver differentiated information, and improve the perception and interaction ability of visually impaired users, as well as completing information acquisition, facilitating device interaction, protecting personal privacy and so on.

Application of such technologies allows visually impaired users to get tips on their geographical location in the process of moving through different haptic vibrations. When browsing information involving curves that cannot be identified and read, vibration effects with curve trends will help visually impaired users better understand the whole picture of information. When answering calls, different vibrations represent different categories of callers, avoiding privacy leakage caused by voice reading in public places. In device interaction, the diverse vibration design will enable visually impaired users to identify virtual buttons on the application interface without relying entirely on voice prompt.

Tencent initially applied haptic feedback technology to its game development, providing vibration effects for more than 200 specific scenarios in game to enhance immersive experience. As its application grows mature, MTGPA team drew up a complete solution encompassing standard vibration file format, software and hardware interaction interface protocol, vibration effect evaluation and so on, and promoted it to become the first domestic industry standard and international standard. This improved the generality of haptic feedback technology and made it possible to apply it to information accessibility and other fields.

Nowadays haptic feedback technology can be seen applied to accessibility scenarios, including Tencent Maps, which launched a simple and intuitive vibration reminder function to help visually impaired users quickly confirm directions and arrival information, and Tencent-Sogou Input Method, which combined haptic feedback with anchor characters on the keyboard, added special vibration effects, and facilitated visually impaired users to quickly identify the touched character content without relying entirely on voice reading in noisy environments.

Statistics tells of over 110 million people with physical disabilities now living in China, plus 150 million elderly people over 65 years old. Haptic feedback technology can not only be applied to accessibility scenarios for visually impaired users, but also has a broad application prospect in more fields such as rehabilitation equipment and education accessibility. The participation of multiple parties in the industry in the application innovation of this technology is expected to serve a larger group of people with disabilities.