Making ATIS Accessible for Pilots who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Anke M. Brock

1 a

, C

eline Classe

, Laura Duphil

, Florent Fabas

, Liam Guigo

, Thomas Holstein

Christophe Lounis

2 b

, Ilyes Reguig

and Caroline Senaux

ENAC, Universit

e Toulouse, Toulouse, France

SII, Toulouse, France

Keywords:

Aeronautics, General Aviation, Accessibility, Auditory Impairments.

Abstract:

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) pilots can easily ﬂy in an uncontrolled space, where radio use is not required

to communicate with air trafﬁc control. However, DHH pilots generally cannot ﬂy without any assistance in

controlled airspace, where radio use is required. An important service for pilots in general aviation is ATIS

(Automatic Terminal Information Service), a vocal message containing essential information, such as weather

data, active runways, available approaches, and any other information needed by pilots. Pilots usually listen

to ATIS before contacting control, which reduces controller workload and decreases frequency occupancy.

However, since this is an audio-based service it is currently not accessible to DHH pilots. The FANS4all asso-

ciation (Future Air Navigation System for All) aims at making it possible for DHH pilots to ﬂy in controlled

airspaces. In this paper, we present the user-centered design process of an accessible mobile ATIS application.

A resulting functional prototype has been evaluated in a pilot study with four pilots, including one DHH pilot.

1 INTRODUCTION

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) pilots can eas-

ily ﬂy in an uncontrolled space, where radio use is

not required to communicate with air trafﬁc control

(ATCO). However, DHH pilots generally cannot ﬂy

without any assistance in controlled airspace, where

radio use is required. An important service for pi-

lots in general aviation is ATIS (Automatic Terminal

Information Service), a vocal message containing es-

sential information, such as weather data, active run-

ways, available approaches and any other information

needed by pilots. Pilots usually listen to ATIS before

contacting control, which reduces controller work-

load and decreases frequency occupancy. However,

since this is an audio-based service it is currently not

accessible to DHH pilots. D-ATIS (datalink) allows

transmitting written information, but it is currently

only used by large airports. As a result, alternative

communication methods between DHH pilots and air

trafﬁc controllers have been developed. Current com-

munication methods that DHH pilots use are light gun

signals, a tool used by ATCO to communicate with

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0017-396X

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5804-6170

aircraft during communications malfunctions. These

lights emit different colored beams and can be ﬂashed

or steady with different meanings for aircraft in ﬂight

or on the ground. A second method depends on a

hearing copilot (radio copilot) onboard to communi-

cate with ATCO (Major et al., 2018) or listen to ATIS,

who then transmits the audio information to the ﬂy-

ing pilot by writing on a whiteboard. These methods

are not always possible in the controlled airspace of

a large, crowded airport and thus present the primary

barrier for DHH pilots in pursing an Airline Transport

Pilot job or a non-commercial activity (Tinio, 2018).

The FANS4all association (Future Air Navigation

System for All, https://fans4all.org/) aims at making it

possible for DHH pilots to ﬂy in controlled airspaces.

One challenge is the accessibility of ATIS for DHH

pilots. In this paper, we focus on the work conducted

to make ATIS more accessible on the side of the user

interface (i.e. the information presented to the DHH

pilot).

Brock, A., Classe, C., Duphil, L., Fabas, F., Guigo, L., Holstein, T., Lounis, C., Reguig, I. and Senaux, C.

Making ATIS Accessible for Pilots who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.

DOI: 10.5220/0011958300003622

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Cognitive Aircraft Systems (ICCAS 2022), pages 52-56

ISBN: 978-989-758-657-6

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

2 RELATED WORK

2.1 Technology to Support

Communication of DHH People

(Outside Aeronautics)

DHH people are largely excluded from communica-

tion with hearing peers. In the area of Assistive Tech-

nology, many researchers have investigated how to

support the communication of DHH users through

technology. Deaf people largely rely on the use of

sign language. One way to support this through tech-

nology is using sign language datasets (Bragg et al.,

2021). An alternative is the generation of sign lan-

guage avatars (Brock et al., 2020). Moreover, interac-

tive systems allow presenting environmental sounds

to DHH users through visual or tactile modalities of-

ten on mobile devices (Jain et al., 2020). For our work

we conclude that the tactile sens can easily be used for

alarms, but it is more convenient to provide detailed

information (such as names, or numbers) using the

visual modality as text or symbols. Moreover, mobile

and wearable solutions have proven to be interesting

for DHH users.

2.2 Making Aeronautics More Inclusive

In aeronautics, some studies have investigated the

possibility of using technology to allow sensory im-

paired people to ﬂy (Val

ery et al., 2015). Blind pilots

currently use a soniﬁcation system, the sound-ﬂyer,

which soniﬁes two dimensions of the aircraft attitude,

i.e. pitch and bank angles. The sound-ﬂyer soniﬁ-

cation consists in modulating the features (i.e. fre-

quency, rhythm, inter-aural balance) of a sinusoidal

pure tone which is continuously displayed to the pilot

via his headphones (Val

ery et al., 2017). In contrast to

these technological advances for blind pilots, no sys-

tem is used for DHH pilots to the best of our knowl-

edge. A promising avenue is the implementation of

multimodal cockpit assistants (Lounis et al., 2019) or

mobile assistants (Simon et al., 2022) to support pi-

lots in difﬁcult situations.

3 DESIGN PROCESS

To make ATIS accessible to DHH pilots, several as-

pects need to be addressed. In the current project, we

focus on the user interface, i.e. how to display the

information that is currently presented using audition

with a different sensory modality. To design a system

that meets the users’ needs, in our case DHH pilots

of General Aviation, we applied a user-centered de-

sign approach involving users at every stage of the

design process to ensure satisfying their needs. This

approach is in line with prior projects on mobile assis-

tants for General Aviation pilots (Simon et al., 2022).

Due to restrictions during the COVID crisis, we had

to adapt the process to comply with the local instruc-

tions and some steps had to be conducted online.

Since there are few DHH pilots in France (and none in

Toulouse) we extended our user population to hearing

pilots. 16 pilots (including 3 who were DHH) partic-

ipated in our project. Our design process consisted in

four different phases: exploration, ideation, elabora-

tion and evaluation.

3.1 Exploration Phase

The goal of the exploration phase is to better under-

stand the context and user needs. As a ﬁrst step, a

workshop with DHH pilots and designers allowed to

better understand the current situation and problems

of DHH pilots. Following this workshop, the objec-

tive of the project was deﬁned as designing and de-

veloping an accessible ATIS system that 1) delivers

the complete information currently delivered via ra-

dio / phone, 2) has a comparable or shorter acquisition

time as ATIS via radio / phone, 3) has a comparable

error rate as ATIS via radio / phone, 4) is usable dur-

ing all ﬂight phases, 5) notiﬁes pilots about changes

(update of ATIS) and 6) allows selecting a new airport

with a comparable or better time than ATIS via radio

/ phone. There was no constraint regarding the device

to be used. A second step consisted in an observa-

tion ﬂight with two hearing pilots. Since the audio

quality of ATIS was bad, we concluded that a written

version of ATIS might even be of interest for hearing

pilots. Third, we conducted interviews with 14 pilots

(including one DHH pilot). This allowed us to pre-

pare 17 scenarios which involved the use of ATIS and

possible challenges, such as accessing the ATIS be-

fore the ﬂight, accessing ATIS of an airport that was

not initially on the ﬂight plan during the ﬂight, equip-

ment malfunctioning, forgetting to consult ATIS be-

fore contacting ATCO, forgetting the frequency, etc.

3.2 Ideation Phase

The goal of the ideation phase is the creation of ideas

based on the observations from the exploration phase.

We conducted two brainstormings. First, an on-site

brainstorming with 10 students from ENAC who were

either studying to become pilots or aeronautical engi-

neers, and second an on-line brainstorming with one

Making ATIS Accessible for Pilots who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Figure 1: Examples of sketches from the brainstorming session from left to right: 1) strip-based interface, 2) sketch of the

terrain, 3) mobile app interface.

DHH pilot and 6 pilot students. In both brainstorm-

ing sessions we asked the following two questions: 1)

How should ATIS information be visualized ? and

2) How should ATIS be selected ? At the end of the

on-site brainstorming session, we asked participants

to sketch ideas for an accessible ATIS system. Ideas

for different types of devices were proposed, such as

printing paper strips or using a mobile device (see

Figure 1 for examples).

3.3 Elaboration Phase

During the elaboration phase, we followed an iter-

ative design process, allowing us to converge from

initial paper-based prototypes to a functional proto-

type on an Android tablet. Initially, we explored de-

signs for four different device types: mobile phone,

tablet, smartwatch and an embedded cockpit system.

Videos of the prototypes were presented to ten users

online and asynchronously. We analyzed and priori-

tized the collected feedback. Based on this feedback

we made the following design decisions. First, we

decided to focus on the design of an application for a

tablet. Indeed, it presents the advantage over an em-

bedded system that no modiﬁcations to the cockpit are

required. Moreover, the display size is more adapted

for visualizing ATIS information than the smaller size

of phone or smartwatch. Finally, pilots are already

used to carry on tablets while ﬂying (Simon et al.,

2022). Second, we learned that a radar view should

be included. Finally, we noticed that a few symbols

needed to be improved. Figure 2 shows the differ-

ent iterations of the mobile app interface. Prototype

1 was presented on-site to four pilots in a TB20 sim-

ulator and to two pilots in a wooden cockpit simu-

lator. Following the feedback from the users, mod-

iﬁcations were made in Prototype 2 such as includ-

ing automatic update of ATIS and displaying the ver-

sion number through letters A,B,C,D etc. Prototype

2 (Adobe XD) was presented to six users online in

an experience map. This allowed to choose interac-

tion techniques such as the pie menu for the radar

view, a virtual keyboard with enlarged keys and ges-

ture recognition for the input of OACI code as well

as visual notiﬁcations. Prototype 3 (Adobe XD) was

presented online and asynchronous as videos to four

pilots (including one DHH pilot). Feedback was col-

lected through the use of a questionnaire. It allowed

us to identify modiﬁcations that were considered in

the ﬁnal prototype for instance regarding choice of

colors and symbols. Prototype 4 was implemented in

React Native on Samsung Galaxy Tabs S6 Lite with

Android OS. It made use of the GPS position of the

tablet and touch recognition. ATIS update was han-

dled using HTTP communication. The interface was

slightly redeﬁned based on the user feedback in previ-

ous steps, but also because of constraints due to mov-

ing from an Adobe XD prototype to an Android im-

plementation.

3.4 Pilot Study

We evaluated the prototype in a preliminary study

with four pilots, including one DHH pilot. All pi-

lots tested the application in a Flight Simulator with

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and then replied to

a SUS questionnaire (Brooke, 1996). The three hear-

ing pilots and an additional fourth pilot participated

in a comparison between audio-based ATIS and our

mobile app. We also collected qualitative feedback.

DHH and hearing participants appreciated the appli-

cation and considered it useful. The SUS scores were

above 75 except for the ﬁrst participant who encoun-

tered many technical problems during his test. Ac-

cording to (Bangor et al., 2008), SUS values above

75 correspond to a good, respectively excellent us-

ability. The comparison of audio-based ATIS and our

application showed that the mobile app was quicker

to use (mean gain of time: 13s). However, SUS and

time scores would need to be veriﬁed with a larger

ICCAS 2022 - International Conference on Cognitive Aircraft Systems

Figure 2: Iterations of the mobile app interface. Prototypes 2 to 4 are composed by two views: left: ﬂight preparation, right:

ATIS consultation.

number of participants. Qualitative feedback allowed

us to identify aspects to further improve the applica-

tion in the future. For instance, some symbols need

to be improved to facilitate comprehension. More-

over, users requested to add direct interaction, such

as touching and moving elements or zooming with

pinch gestures. This is in line with interaction that is

already used in mainstream tablet applications. How-

ever, direct manipulation might be difﬁcult during tur-

bulences and this would need to be studied further.

Pilots also appreciated that the mobile app included

features beyond ATIS (such as wind information and

a radar view). It inspired them to aim even larger for

a more holistic application that includes features be-

yond ATIS, similar as for instance FlyMate (Simon

et al., 2022).

4 DISCUSSION

This project is a ﬁrst step towards a more accessi-

ble ATIS developed through a user-centered design

process with DHH and hearing pilots. However, the

current project only addresses the user interface and

some important challenges such as automatic speech

recognition from radio-based ATIS still need to be ad-

dressed. Since, there are currently few DHH pilots in

France (and none in Toulouse) this work has partially

been conducted with sighted pilots. Beyond involving

them as substitute users, we believe that an ATIS mo-

bile app might be interesting for them as well since

it allows including supplementary features and over-

coming low audio-quality of ATIS.

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

In this paper we present the user-centered design, im-

plementation and preliminary evaluation of an acces-

sible tablet-based ATIS application. This project is

part of a bigger project, involving Fans4All associ-

ation, SII and researchers from Universities Rennes,

Tarbes and ENAC, and we will continue the work on

making piloting more accessible to DHH pilots. In the

future, it would be interesting to conduct a controlled

user-study with additional participants in a ﬂight sim-

ulator or an aircraft. Moreover, it would be necessary

to work on the certiﬁcation and regulations to make

this usable in the cockpit. We hope that this work

will inspire other researchers and designers to work

towards making aeronautics more accessible for peo-

ple with impairments.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, we would like to thank all DHH and hearing

pilots who participated in the project. We are grate-

ful for the support by Fans4All association and SII.

This project was also conducted during the M2IHM in

Toulouse, and we would like to thank Sylvain Pauchet

and Nicolas Saporito for their helpful feedback.

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