Technology for disabled and older people : what have we achieve, where are we going?

Research on technology for disabled and older people has expanded considerably in the past 25 years. This meeting will critically review that research and the role human computer interaction has played in it. It will then consider how human computer interaction research can positively contribute to the further development of the area and what directions research can most usefully follow

Exploring intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to participate in a crowdsourcing project to support blind and partially sighted students

There have been a number of crowdsourcing projects to support people with disabilities. However, there is little exploration of what motivates people to participate in such crowdsourcing projects. In this study we investigated how different motivational factors can affect the participation of people in a crowdsourcing project to support visually disabled students. We are developing “DescribeIT”, a crowdsourcing project to support blind and partially students by having sighted people describe images in digital learning resources. We investigated participants’ behavior of the DescribeIT project using three conditions: one intrinsic motivation condition and two extrinsic motivation conditions. The results showed that participants were significantly intrinsically motivated to participate in the DescribeIT project. In addition, participants’ intrinsic motivation dominated the effect of the two extrinsic motivational factors in the extrinsic conditions

Comparing Concurrent and Retrospective Verbal Protocols for Blind and Sighted Users

International audienceVerbal protocols are widely used in user studies for evaluating websites. This study investigated the effectiveness and efficiency of concurrent and retrospective verbal protocols (CVP and RVP) for both blind and sighted participants, as well as participant workload and attitudes towards these methods. Eight blind and eight sighted participants undertook both protocols in a website evaluation. RVP was more effective as measured by problems encountered for both groups, although it was no more efficient than CVP. The severity of problems identified by both protocols was equivalent. As measured on the NASA TLX, participants found RVP found more demanding than CVP. Sighted participants found rating problems during CVP more disruptive than blind participants. These results show that RVP is a more useful protocol for practitioners and researchers even though it takes more time and is more demanding for participants. It is equally applicable for both blind and sighted participants

Intelligent support technologies for older people : an analysis of characteristics and roles

For almost two decades there have been many developments in using intelligent technologies to support older people, with many different terms proposed to describe these technologies including assistive robots, embodied conversational agents and relational agents. Many technologies have been proposed in many different configurations and many assistance roles have been explored. Characteristics of these technologies include tangible or virtual; anthropomorphic, biomorphic, creature or object-like; level of visual realism; paralinguistic abilities; interactivity; adaptability; movement; and positioning. The assistive roles proposed include providing information, advice and reminders, helping with physical tasks, monitoring, providing companionship and emotional support. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics and roles of these technologies and attempts to clarify some of the terminology used. It aims to provide a guide for researchers from the wide range of disciplines working on such technologies for supporting older people

Cognitive support for older people from multimedia options

If older users of multimedia displays could select among presentation options, would they choose display combinations that supported their performance? After three short touch-screen tasks which measured the perceptual and cognitive abilities of 50 older adults, they answered questions about a route on an online map that could be accompanied by written and/or spoken text. Half the participants saw animated routes; and they were less accurate answering questions than those who saw static routes but this did not affect people’s multimedia choices which, although diverse, were systematic. Spoken text was more often selected by people who had lower scores on the spatial working memory task, than by the older adults with higher scores. This suggests that older people with cognitive limitations recognise ways in which multimedia information can be supportive

Visitors' Emotions, Touristic or Spiritual Experiences in Historic Churches : The Development of Church Experience Scale (CES)

AbstractIn this paper we describe the development of the Church Experience Scale (CES) that allows us to measure visitor experience in historic churches, both with and without multimedia guides and other technologies. This study was carried out with 272 respondents at three historic churches in York, UK. Respondents for this study were visitors to these churches who were asked to complete a questionnaire immediately after their visit. A full psychometric scale development procedure was used which resulted in the Church Experience Scale (CES) which has five components: Enjoyment, Intellectual Stimulation and Curiosity; Emotional and Spiritual Experience; Immersion; Information Overload; and Knowledge and Learning. The usefulness of the scale in investigating visitors’ experiences in historic churches is explored. An initial comparison between inactive and an active historic church were compared using CES