Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sensing the World: The Development of Tactile Information Systems

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding data is key to scientific literacy in the twenty-first century. This doctoral dissertation project investigates how Science and Technology Studies can contribute to developing new approaches to making technical data intelligible by collaborating with computer scientists. Working with specialists in Human-Computer Interaction, the principal investigators ethnographically investigate how computer scientists seek to translate data visualizations into other sensory modes for visually impaired users. Through historical research, this project documents how the science and technology studies can inform the development of communication technologies for people with disabilities, which will also be the foundation for developing a set of best practices for integrating social analysis into the technical research process. This project follows a tradition of technically-engaged Science and Technology Studies projects that takes scientific collaboration as a working method and a site of investigation. Using insights from critical disability studies, the history of computing, and sensory studies, the principle investigators explore how discourses of “accessibility” as a design ideal in Human-Computer Interaction always involve implicit ideas about physical, perceptual, and cognitive ability. By using historical and ethnographic methods to make those ideas explicit, this project seeks to improve approaches to conceptualizing and designing communication technologies for people with disabilities. The historical case study of tactile reading systems like braille and haptic computer interfaces serves as an empirical basis for understanding how ideas about ability become embedded in the design of computer interfaces. This project thus draws on the long history of these systems to investigate, inform, and critique the current practice of making multisensory data visualizations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.