Haptic Field of View

The limited area that can be perceived through touch at any given moment, analogous to the visual field of view but much more restricted. While vision allows perception of an entire scene simultaneously, touch typically provides information only from the area directly under the fingertips or hand. This constraint has significant implications for accessible interface design: tactile exploration of graphics is inherently sequential and requires users to integrate information across time and space into a mental representation. The haptic field of view limitation makes operations like panning particularly challenging for non-visual interfaces, as users can lose their reference point and become disoriented when content shifts.