Accessibility of New Media for Disabled, Elderly and Vulnerable Individuals
| Project Leader | Project Co-leader |
| Deborah Fels Ryerson University |
Ronald Baecker University of Toronto |
Designing for exceedingly variable motor, sensory and cognitive abilities requires innovative digital media solutions. These can be used to satisfy compliance requirements for accessibility in organizations and inform government legislative process regarding accessibility. A taxonomy and evaluation framework will guide the research.
Novel sensory substitution in a vibrotactile element can represent speech prosody for non-verbal communication by children with cochlear implants, mobile tools can support artists and designers with disabilities to achieve self-expression, learnability of devices for older adults can be increased, a multimodal system to combat social isolation among individuals in hospice or user-created memory aids for patients with dementia can be built.
INCLUDE will explore, develop and evaluate technologies to improve access to interactive media systems for people with disabilities, people isolated from others, and seniors.