“User sensitive inclusive design”— in search of a new paradigm
CUU '00 Proceedings on the 2000 conference on Universal Usability
Making the computer accessible to mentally retarded adults
Communications of the ACM - Supporting community and building social capital
Information technology for cognitive support
The human-computer interaction handbook
Making the Internet accessible for people with cognitive and communication Impairments
Universal Access in the Information Society
Usability evaluation involving participants with cognitive disabilities
Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction
HCI for people with cognitive disabilities
ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Picture planner:: a cognitively accessible personal activity scheduling application
Proceedings of the 8th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)
Involving domain experts in assistive technology research
Universal Access in the Information Society
Proceedings of the 11th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
User testing when test tasks are not appropriate
European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics: Designing beyond the Product --- Understanding Activity and User Experience in Ubiquitous Environments
Computer Usage by Children with Down Syndrome: Challenges and Future Research
ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)
Finger instead of mouse: touch screens as a means of enhancing universal access
ERCIM'02 Proceedings of the User interfaces for all 7th international conference on Universal access: theoretical perspectives, practice, and experience
Design and development of a pictogram communication system for children around the world
IWIC'07 Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Intercultural collaboration
Interactive visual supports for children with autism
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Pictograph chat communicator III: a chat system that embodies cross-cultural communication
KES'10 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Knowledge-based and intelligent information and engineering systems: Part III
UMAP'11 Proceedings of the 19th international conference on User modeling, adaption, and personalization
AphasiaWeb: a social network for individuals with aphasia
Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
Proceedings of the 12th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Persons with intellectual disabilities benefit from participating in the modern information society, especially the World Wide Web, social media and Internet-mediated communication services. Although several computer-based prototypes and commercial systems have been introduced for accessible in-person communication, currently few applications and services exist to support synchronous remote communication for this user group. We introduce SymbolChat, a software platform that supports the creation of multimodal communication applications utilizing picture-based instant messaging. End users and their support personnel can customize the input and output features of the application based on their individual needs and abilities. The interaction is based on touchscreen input and speech output using speech synthesis technology. The SymbolChat platform was developed together with the prospective end users and practitioners in the field of special needs care. We evaluated the prototype application in a field study with nine users with varying degrees of intellectual and other disabilities. The results clearly indicate that the participants were able to express themselves in spontaneous communication using a large-scale picture-based vocabulary (around 2000 symbols) even without prior training in the use of symbols. This finding was supported in the constructive feedback gathered from professionals working in the area. We also successfully applied methodology from other settings, such as child-computer interaction to evaluate interaction in this challenging context. Overall, the results show that social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities can be improved with customizable communication tools. The implemented communication platform forms a solid basis for further improvements and new communication services. In addition, we found that users with motor impairments would greatly benefit from alternative input and output methods for symbol browsing and selection.