43 research outputs found

    Crowdsourcing Accessibility: Human-Powered Access Technologies

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    People with disabilities have always engaged the people around them in order to circumvent inaccessible situations, allowing them to live more independently and get things done in their everyday lives. Increasing connectivity is allowing this approach to be extended to wherever and whenever it is needed. Technology can leverage this human work force to accomplish tasks beyond the capabilities of computers, increasing how accessible the world is for people with disabilities. This article outlines the growth of online human support, outlines a number of projects in this space, and presents a set of challenges and opportunities for this work going forward

    Multimodality in the Digital Environments of Deaf Education (DE2)

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    This paper contextualizes multimodality theory in digital-epistemological paradigms and analyzes their combined effects upon operations of power in deaf pedagogical practices. Deafness is unbound by geography. Deaf people constitute a heterogeneous, globalized ethnic minority who are singularly linked. Often thought to be rendered powerless by disability, deaf people generate forms of power that disrupt conventional ontology and epistemology by way of divergent adaptations of visuospatial language modalities. As creators and users, deaf people have positioned themselves at the cutting-edge of innovation by developing and repurposing digital technologies to secure insurgent power in the face of sociopolitical oppression. This paper establishes digital environments of deaf education (DE2) as an object of study. Research reviewed in this study (Bauman & Murray, 2014; Thoutenhoofd, 2010; Young and Temple, 2014), demonstrates that multimodality is a critically important but undertheorized concept related to power in deaf education. The paper reviews multimodality theory, entrained as a lens to examine DE2. Findings are subdivided into three categories: (1) the purposes for which DE2 are used, (2) the practices constitutive of DE2, and (3) the characteristics of learners and educators within DE2. The paper closes by examining DE2 exemplars via multimodality. This paper contextualizes multimodality theory in digital-epistemological paradigms and analyzes their combined effects upon operations of power in deaf pedagogical practices, including how knowledge is created and shared by deaf people using digital technologies and pedagogical practices derived thereof. This investigation examines how technosocial tools are embedded in a nexus of historical, social, political, and educational changes—at key times, deaf people effectuate change with celerity. This paper argues that theoretical deaf research is clarified by multimodality; likewise, multimodality benefits by considering deaf ontologies/epistemologies. Converging domains illuminate the dynamism and synergy of technosocial changes in history, and contributes to literatures on the history of technology by documenting complex, interdependent relationships between digital knowledge modalities and the deaf users who drive their development

    Automatic captions on video calls: a must for the older adults

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    Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Work co-financed by the Canary Islands Agency for Research, Innovation and Information Society of the Ministry of Economy, Knowledge and Employment and by the European Social Fund (ESF) Integrated Operational Program of the Canary Islands 2014–2020, Axis 3 Priority Topic 74 (85%). This work has been supported by the PERGAMEX ACTIVE project, Ref. RTI2018- 096986-B-C32, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Spain. Agencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información (TESIS2020010113).In recent years, the use of video call or video conference tools has not stopped increasing, and especially due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, the use of video calls increased in the educational and work spheres, but also in the family sphere, due to the risks of contagion in face-to-face meetings. Throughout the world, many older people are affected by hearing loss. Auditory functional diversity can make it difficult to enjoy video calls. Using automatic captions might help these people, but not all video calling tools offer this functionality, and some offer it in some languages. We developed an automatic conversation captioning tool using Automatic Speech Recognition and Speech to Text, using the free software tool Coqui STT. This automatic captioning tool is independent of the video call platform used and allows older adults or anyone with auditory functional diversity to enjoy video calls in a simple way. A transparent user interface was designed for our tool that overlays the video call window, and the tool allows us to easily change the text size, color, and background settings. It is also important to remember that many older people have visual functional diversity, so they could have problems reading the texts, thus it is important that each person can adapt the text to their needs. An analysis has been carried out that includes older people to analyze the benefits of the interface, as well as some configuration preferences, and a proposal to improve the way the text is displayed on the screen. Spanish and English were tested during the investigation, but the tool allows us to easily install dozens of new languages based on models trained for Coqui STT.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer NatureCanary Islands Agency for Research, Innovation and Information Society of the Ministry of Economy, Knowledge and Employment and by the European Social Fund (ESF) Integrated Operational Program of the Canary Islands 2014–2020, Axis 3 Priority Topic 74 (85%)PERGAMEX ACTIVE project, Ref. RTI2018- 096986-B-C32, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. SpainAgencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información (TESIS2020010113

    An excursus on audiovisual translation

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    Phase 2 Outreach Plan: Georgia DOT ITS4US Deployment Project- Safe Trips in a Connected Transportation Network

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    693JJ32250011The Georgia Department of Transportation ITS4US Deployment project, Safe Trips in a Connected Transportation Network (ST-CTN), is leveraging innovative solutions, existing deployments, and collaboration to make a positive impact using transportation technology to support safety, mobility, sustainability, and accessibility. The ST-CTN concept is comprised of an integrated set of advanced transportation technology solutions (connected vehicle, transit signal priority, machine learning, predictive analytics) to support safe and complete trips, with a focus on accessibility for those with disabilities, older adults, and those with limited English proficiency. This document serves as the Outreach Plan for the deployment project. The Outreach Plan consists of the public relations and media strategy for communicating information about the project. It also defines the Outreach Site Lead for coordinating requests and the Site Outreach Spokesperson who will speak for the project. The Outreach activities described in this plan will be consistent with the Complete Trip Integration Plan being prepared for this project

    Attitudes, behaviors, and learning outcomes from using classtranscribe, a UDL-featured video-based online learning platform with learnersourced text-searchable captions

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    This thesis consisted of a series of three studies on students' attitudes, behaviors, and learning outcomes from using ClassTranscribe, a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) featured video-based online learning platform. ClassTranscribe provided accurate accessible transcriptions and captioning plus a custom text-searchable interface to rapidly find relevant video moments from the entire course. Users could edit the machine-generated captions in a crowdsourcing way. The system logged student viewing, searching, and editing behaviors as fine-grained web browser interaction events including full-screen-switching, loss-of-focus, caption searching and editing events, and continued-video-watching events with the latter at 15-second granularity. In Study I, lecture material of a sophomore large-enrollment (N=271) system programming 15-week class in Spring 2019 was delivered solely online using a new video-based web platform - ClassTranscribe. Student learning behaviors and findings from four research questions were presented using individual-level performance and interaction data. Firstly, we reported on learning outcomes from alternative learning paths that arose from the course's application of Universal Design for Learning principles. Secondly, final exam performance was equal or better to prior semesters that utilized traditional in-person live lectures. Thirdly, learning outcomes of low and high performing students were analyzed independently by grouping students into four quartiles based on their non-final-exam course performance of programming assignments and quizzes. We introduced and justified an empirically-defined qualification threshold for sufficient video minutes viewed for each group. In all quartiles, students who watched an above-threshold of video minutes improved their in-group final exam performance (ranging from +6% to +14%) with the largest gain for the lowest-performing quartile. The improvement was similar in magnitude for all groups when expressed as a fraction of unrewarded final exam points. Finally, we found that using ClassTranscribe caption-based video search significantly predicted improvement in final exam scores. Overall, the study presented and evaluated how learner use of online video using ClassTranscribe predicted course performance and positive learning outcomes. In Study II, we further explored learner's searching behavior, which was shown to be correlated with improved final exam scores in the first study. From Fall 2019 to Summer 2020, engineering students used ClassTranscribe in engineering courses to view course videos and search for video content. The tool collected detailed timestamped student behavioral data from 1,894 students across 25 engineering courses that included what individual students searched for and when. As the first study showed that using ClassTranscribe caption search significantly predicted improvement in final exam scores in a computer science course, in this study, we presented how students used the search functionality based on a more detailed analysis of the log data. The search functionality of ClassTranscribe used the timestamped caption data to find specific video moments both within the current video or across the entire course. The number of search activities per person ranged from zero to 186 events. An in-depth analysis of the students (N=167) who performed 1,022 searches was conducted to gain insight into student search needs and behaviors. Based on the total number of searches performed, students were grouped into “Infrequent Searcher” (< 18 searches) and “Frequent Searcher” (18 to 110 searches) using clustering algorithms. The search queries used by each group were found to follow the Zipf’s Law and were categorized into STEM-related terms, course logistics and others. Our study reported on students’ search context, behaviors, strategies, and optimizations. Using Universal Design for Learning as a foundation, we discussed the implications for educators, designers, and developers who are interested in providing new learning pathways to support and enhance video-based learning environments. In Study III, we investigated students' attitudes towards learnersourced captioning for lecture videos. We deployed ClassTranscribe in a large (N=387) text retrieval and mining course where 58 learners participated in editing captions of 89 lecture videos, and each lecture video was edited by two editors sequentially. In the following semester, 18 editors participated in follow-up interviews to discuss their experience of using and editing captions in the class. Our study showed how students use captions to learn, and shed light on students' attitudes, motivations, and strategies in collaborating with other learners to fix captions in a learnersourced way

    Technology for subtitling: a 360-degree turn

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    Subtitling has become one of the most important audiovisual translation modes and cannot be understood outside the context of the technology that makes it possible. New audiovisual media are appearing, such as 360º videos, and the necessity of subtitling this type of content to make it accessible is emerging. In this article, an updated review of current subtitling technology is presented to contextualise the study. Then, a review of main immersive environments (3D, augmented reality and virtual reality) and their implications for subtitling has also been introduced. The focus of the study is on virtual reality and, therefore, the main challenges of subtitling 360º content are presented. To respond to the needs of subtitling this type of content, a first version of a subtitle editor has been developed and presented to twenty-seven professional subtitlers who have tested the tool and reported the correspondent feedback on usability and preferences. This study has proven the importance of carrying out usability tests with end users when developing specific software, as well as the challenges faced by subtitlers in new audiovisual media such as 360º content.La subtitulación se ha convertido en uno de los modos de la traducción audiovisual más importantes y no puede estudiarse fuera del contexto tecnológico que la hace posible. Asimismo, nuevos medios audiovisuales, como los vídeos de 360º, están emergiendo y la necesidad de subtitular este tipo de contenidos para hacerlos accesibles es evidente. En este artículo se presenta una revisión de la tecnología de subtitulación existente para contextualizar el estudio. A continuación, se presenta una revisión de los principales entornos inmersivos (3D, realidad aumentada y realidad virtual) y sus implicaciones para la subtitulación. El estudio se centra en la realidad virtual y, por lo tanto, se presentan los principales retos de la subtitulación de contenidos en 360º. Para responder a las necesidades de subtitulación de este tipo de vídeos, se ha desarrollado una primera versión de un editor de subtítulos que se ha presentado a veintisiete subtituladores profesionales que han probado la herramienta y aportado sus opiniones y sugerencias. En este estudio se ha demostrado la importancia de realizar pruebas de usabilidad con los usuarios finales a la hora de desarrollar software específico, así como los retos a los que se enfrentan los subtituladores en nuevos medios audiovisuales como los contenidos 360º

    How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

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    Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program
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