Investigation on human characteristics of Japanese katakana recognition by active touch

Braille is one of the few reading systems where tactile perception is used. However, one important issue of Braille is that that is difficult to learn, especially for elderly. Thus, there is a need to develop a new reading system which presents letters directly for blind people. The aim of present study is to investigate the human characteristics of katakana recognition by active touch for tactile reading system development. In present experiment, ten healthy young subjects were asked to recognize 46 Japanese katakana by active touch. The raised-Japanese katakana characters were made of Duralumin, and the height of these stimuli were 10mm. Subjects were instructed to touch the katakana stimuli with their right index finger without large submovement. The mean accuracy of all young subjects was over 80%, and the mean reaction time was about 27.3 s. Our results indicated that the mean accuracy was decreased with similarity increased. However, several differences with regard to high accuracy under high similarity pair conditions need to be considered.