Amy Hurst
Shaun Kane
ABSTRACT
Assistive technologies empower individuals to accomplish tasks they might not be able to do otherwise. Unfortunately, a large percentage of assistive devices that are purchased (35% or more) end up unused or abandoned [8], leaving many people with assistive technology that is inappropriate for their needs. This paper describes our ongoing work to help more people gain access to the assistive technology they need by empowering non-engineers to "Do-It-Yourself" (DIY), and thus create, modify, or build their own assistive technology. We discuss how a new generation of rapid prototyping tools and online communities can empower more individuals, and we describe two technologies we have developed to enable novices to prototype and create physical objects.
- Assistive Tech Act of 1998, Section 3, http://www.section508.gov/508Awareness/html/at1998.html, accessed: 5/3/2011Google Scholar
- C. Brown and A. Hurst. 2012. VizTouch: automatically generated tactile visualizations of coordinate spaces. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '12), Stephen N. Spencer (Ed.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 131--138. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hurst, A. and Tobias. 20011. J. Empowering individuals with do-it-yourself assistive technology. Proc. ASSETS '11, ACM (2011), 11--18. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kane, S., Wobbrock, J. O., Ladner. R. E. 2011. Usable gestures for blind people: understanding preference and performance. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 413--422. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ladner, R. E., Ivory, M. Y., Rao, R., Burgstahler, S., Comden, D., Hahn, S., Renzelmann, M., Krisnandi, S., Ramasamy, M., Slabosky, B., Martin, A., Lacenski, A., Olsen, S., Croce, D. 2005. Automating Tactile Graphics Translation, In Proc. ACM conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '05), ACM Press, 1--8. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lipson, H., and Kurman, M. 2010. Factory @ Home: The Emerging Economy of Personal Manufacturing. Report Commissioned by the Whitehouse Office of Science & Technology Policy.Google Scholar
- Phillips, B. and Zhao, H. 1993. Predictors of assistive technology abandonment. In Assistive Technology. Taylor & Francis. 5(1): 36--45.Google Scholar
- Scherer, M. J. 1996. Outcomes of assistive technology use on quality of life. In Disability & Rehabilitation. Informa Healthcare. 18(9): 439--448.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Making "making" accessible
Recommendations
Empowering individuals with do-it-yourself assistive technology
ASSETS '11: The proceedings of the 13th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibilityAssistive Technologies empower individuals to accomplish tasks they might not be able to do otherwise. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Assistive Technology devices that are purchased (35% or more) end up unused or abandoned [7,10], leaving many ...
Making "Making" Accessible
W4A '18: Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All ConferenceAssistive Technologies empower individuals to accomplish tasks they might not be able to do otherwise. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Assistive Technologies end up unused or abandoned, leaving people with solutions that are inappropriate for their ...
Accessible EPUB: Making EPUB 3 Documents Universal Accessible
Computers Helping People with Special NeedsAbstractCurrent document standards have the characteristic that they can only serve one group of users under the aspect of vision (sighted, visually impaired or blind reader). Wouldn’t it be nice if one documentformat could combine all properties in one ...
Comments