This week, our project member Offenburg University participated in the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020). ASSETS is the premier forum for presenting research on the design, evaluation, use, and education related to computing for people with disabilities. Due to the on-going covid-19 pandemic, ASSETS was moved to a virtual format for the first time. The virtual format, however, was able to provide better accessible accommodations to those who need captioning, sign interpretation or text-based communication.
On Monday, a demonstration of the Keep Your Distance system was presented to attendees. The system was a collaboration between Offenburg University and the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås. The haptic wearable was designed to be used in a navigation game where a person with deafblindness plays as a secret agent and another player is a suspect that should be followed. To win the game, the secret agent should follow the haptic signals provided on the belt area and keep an optimal distance of 1.5 meters from the other player.
We are glad to share that the Keep Your Distance demonstration was the most liked presentation at ASSETS 2020 and won the “People’s Choice Award” of the year. A special recognition was given during the conference’s closing ceremony. Congratulations to all the authors! You can check the video presentation here:
On Wednesday, our on-going work on exploring materials for making touchscreens accessible to users with deafblindness was also presented at ASSETS. The work explored the concept of creating accessible interfaces for pattern locks through rapid prototyping with materials easily found at home. Attendees were impressed by our raw quinoa braille prototype!
Overall, ASSETS 2020 gave us the opportunity to showcase our current SUITCEYES project results and discuss future research directions with a community of top researchers in the field of accessible computing. Looking forward to ASSETS 2021!
If you are interested in reading our work, please find the references for the conference proceedings below:
- James Gay, Moritz Umfahrer, Arthur Theil, Lea Buchweitz, Eva Lindell, Li Guo, Nils-Krister Persson, and Oliver Korn. 2020. Keep Your Distance: A Playful Haptic Navigation Wearable for Individuals with Deafblindness. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), October 26–28, 2020, Virtual Event, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418048
- Lea Buchweitz, Arthur Theil, James Gay, and Oliver Korn. 2020. Exploring Low-Cost Materials to Make Pattern-Based Lock-Screens Accessible for Users with Visual Impairments or Deafblindness. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), October 26–28, 2020, Virtual Event, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418020