WORKSHOP: The Future of Interfaces and Accessibility

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Next-next generation interfaces and the technologies that will drive them provide new challenges to accessibility, as well as new tools for addressing these barriers. These new technologies can also help us address barriers that some people face with today’s technologies – barriers that we currently do not have good solutions for. This is particularly true for cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, deaf-blindness, blindness and intellectual impairments and other combinations of disabilities. Despite successes, it has become apparent that this work needs a new paradigm. Thus, this workshop aims to gather and engage mainstream and disability leaders and innovators in their fields to: a) Thoroughly explore all visions for the future of the interface; b) Gather all different thoughts, approaches, and paradigms from the best in the international accessibility community; and c) Create both mainstream and accessibility research agendas that can result in solutions for next-next generation interface technologies, to be available when these technologies enter the marketplace instead of five years or more behind them. As a byproduct of the workshop, a special website will be created, capturing all of the presentations, preparatory materials, and the final research agenda. The impact on society of more accessible product interfaces cannot be easily measured, but with the new estimates of a fifth to a quarter of the population having disabilities, and the increasing reliance on digital interfaces in everything we do, even in developing countries, the impact of more accessible interfaces will be quite significant, both to economies and to quality of life for large sectors of the population. This workshop will bring together leaders in mainstream human computer interaction and supporting technologies to help predict the future interface, as well as the best minds in accessibility to help imagine new approaches and methods to address these technologies. The result of just these two activities would be of great value to the field. The creation of both a mainstream technology and an accessibility research agenda will be of even more immediate and long-term use to academic researchers and students, and to developers in companies interested in practical ways to make their future product interfaces accessible. It will also be useful to consumer groups, funding agencies, policy makers, assistive technology developers, and independent researchers and developers in shaping their future work, agendas, and goals. The resulting research agenda is intended to be a living agenda that is updated over time and used by the broad range of stakeholders. 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.