Categories | Social impact: Education | Disabilities: Medical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Auditory | Disabilities: Visual |
Description - Some forms of entertainment, video games for instance, cannot be accessed by persons with disabilities. Build a video game that can be enjoyed by anyone. A game that can be used in an educational setting for young children would be excellent. Multiplayer games would be interesting, especially ones that involve cooperation among kids with different abilities.
Categories | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Medical | Disabilities: Auditory | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - Survey what one-handed keyboards are available and how they are used as computer input devices for people with disabilities. How would typing-to-speech compare to ASL to speech as a communication device? In a world where everyone uses "text messaging" on their cell phones and is really good (and fast) at typing on the little keyboards, will people with disabilities benefit?
Categories | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Medical | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - A free, easy to use Morse-code input system that works with any app by synthesizing keystroke events (easy) could be benefinicial to users with physical impairments. How does it compete with Graffiti? It should have the huge advantages only requiring one hand and leaving the eyes free.
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Disabilities: Auditory | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Medical | Interfaces: Auditory | Interfaces: Visual | Interfaces: Tactile |
Description - Computer interfaces are mostly sequential. Consider telephone menu systems: enter 1 for parts, enter 2 for service, etc. As another example, when you kill an unresponsive program, Windows XP pops up a dialog asking me if you want to send an error report to MS. You must respond to it before proceeding. An alternative user interface strategy (for both sighted and blind) depends on asynchronous alerts and user responses. Think of the underlining of misspelled words in many editors; it occurs sometime after typing and can be corrected (or not) anytime. Emacspeak has some nice features like this. The presence of a footnote associated with a word is indicated by a audible signal played along with the speech for the word without stopping. The listener can respond to the signal by requesting the footnote be followed or ignore it. A project investigating what is known about asynchronous user interfaces and perhaps a prototype implementation would be really interesting and likely result in a paper.
Categories | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Auditory |
Description - People who have cognitive or physical impairments that prevent them from speaking can sometimes be helped with an augmented communication device. For example see this news story about a local student: http://rdu.news14.com/content/health_report/?SecID=247&ArID=35605. We could emulate most of the functions of these expensive devices (~$7000) with a program running on an inexpensive PDA (~$300) such as the Sharp Zaurus.
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Disabilities: Auditory | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Medical |
Description - This website is a list of assistive technology companies. Each listing includes the main products of the company and contact information. I think this website may be helpful for students researching present technology regarding their project interests.
Submitted by Christa Wheeler
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Disabilities: Auditory | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Disabilities: Medical | Social impact: Acceptance | Social impact: Legal issues |
Description - Online book about accessibility.
Submitted by Fred Brooks
Categories | Disabilities: Physical |
Description - A stair climbing wheel chair.
Submitted by Gary Bishop
Categories | Disabilities: Physical | Interfaces: Devices |
Description - A project that uses the location of one's nose as an input device.
Submitted by Peter Parente
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Disabilities: Physical |
Description - This is the site about a guide dog school in North Carolina. There is information about obtaining a guide dog, what guide dogs know when they graduate, and sponsorship. There is also interesting information about what makes a good guide dog.
Submitted by Kelly Van Busum
Categories | Disabilities: Visual | Disabilities: Auditory | Disabilities: Physical | Disabilities: Cognitive | Interfaces: Visual |
Description - Provides suggestions and descriptions of various ailments. Organized by disability, user group, and technology.
Submitted by Sean Hanlon