Proceedings of the 2001 EC/NSF workshop on Universal accessibility of ubiquitous computing: providing for the elderly

Abstract

Overview The joint workshop, sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Luso-American Foundation for Development (FLAD), INI-GraphicsNet, SIEMENS Corporation, the European Commission and the U. S. National Science Foundation took place in Alchcer do Sal, Portugal from May 22 to May 25, 2001. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss and recommend policies and a research agenda that would promote universal accessibility for a growing elderly population within the context of ubiquitous computing. The development of ubiquitous computing was seen as both a promise and a threat for this group: A promise, because ubiquitous computing has the potential for providing support for disabilities that come with aging; A threat, because the spread of ubiquitous computing could close off access to basic services for elderly people. For the better part of a week, twenty-six people from multiple research disciplines, European, American and South East Asian cultures, and a variety of professional roles, gathered to discuss the issues surrounding universal accessibility for the elderly and to recommend approaches that could be taken with the development, regulation and promotion of ubiquitous technology that would support universal accessibility for this group. ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH and the IFIP Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (TC 13) have agreed to help disseminate the results of this workshop through their publication channels and conferences. Post-workshop proceedings will be available from ACM Press and through the ACM Digital Library. Workshop reports were published on ACM SIGGRAPH and SIGCHI Bulletin. A Panel at CHI'2002 entitled "When I am Sixty-Four" will also convey the results and findings of the Workshop. Organizational Strategy for the Workshop A diverse set of people was invited to attend. Attendees ranged from government officials to elderly computer users with age-related disabilities. Disciplines ranged from biomechanics and economics to sociology and computer science. Attendees submitted a position paper in advance of the workshop. These contributions and the participant list can be found at http://virtual.inesc.pt/wuaue01/. The workshop opened with a statement of its goals and a short presentation from each attending on their concept paper. After this, the attendees decided to split into four working groups to best address the subject matter in greater depth. The working groups were (1) Theoretical, Fundamental and Social issues of Universal Accessibility; (2) Designing for Dynamic Diversity; (3) Tools and Devices for Ubiquitous Computing and Universal Access; and (4) Architecture and Interaction. These groups met for two days to further explicate the issues associated with their subtopic. They joined forces at intervals during their meetings to discuss how findings from each groups were inter-related and to develop a plan for writing up the results of the workshop. What follows is only a quick summary of the major approaches developed in each working group. The final report can be found on the aforementioned web page. Theoretical, Fundamental and Social Issues of Universal Accessibility The goals of this group were to specify an infrastructure that listed and characterized the various societal structures and social forces affecting universal accessibility for the elderly. Given that the goal of the workshop was to generate strategies that would ensure universal accessibility, we could not simply investigate ways to make technology embrace this goal, but had to look at a larger picture that involved the many different groups that had an impact on universal accessibility. Thus, for example, the group discussed the ways in which regulation and economic incentives affected universal accessibility. A key portion of the group's work was not just in specifying the key factors involved, but also in noting the relationships between these factors, for example, how non-profit organizations lobbying efforts changed government policies and eventually generated regulation that supported universal access. Design for Dynamic Diversity The Design for Dynamic Diversity group identified a major process change that put the user in the driver seat. In this process, products and applications are created based on the user's dynamically changing needs and technology becomes the servant, not master, of the user. The design process, difficult though it is to conceive of, must be rethought to encompass the dynamic nature of user capabilities and their wide diversity between people. A key issue that arose in all of this group's discussions was the sheer lack of information that was available in this area. Little research had been conducted on the learning, motivation and variations in capabilities that an elderly population would experience when using computing technology. The group developed a structured list of the research questions that remained unanswered in specifying this user constituency. Architectures and Interaction This group concluded that future multi-modal, multi-sensor interfaces needed to be able to adapt to the user, task, ongoing dialogue, input modalities, and environmental context. Such adaptability fundamentally would be aimed at identifying and accommodating the user's intentions, or their purposeful communications and actions. To achieve such an increasingly natural or transparent interface design that is appropriate for use by diverse users in changing environmental contexts requires further research in a number of areas. A natural interface should strive to minimize a user's cognitive load. It also should be self-disclosing, for example, by making use of new kinds of metaphors that are appropriate for recognition-based input modes (e.g., social metaphors for spoken input). The group noted that tracking user intentions is a difficult problem because users do not articulate goals clearly. The group members felt that future research in this area needs to establish a new class of flexible and extensible architectures that can adaptively process multiple sources of user input, as well as coordinating multi-modal input and output. The group members suggested that a new generation of architectures is needed that is based on modular components. This will make system processing easily extensible to handle new input and output modes, as appropriate for a given user or usage context. The group sketched out a rough modular architecture that represented this type of need. Tools and Devices for Universal Accessibility The Tools and Devices Group was given the task of focusing on the tools and devices that could be developed to support universal accessibility in the elderly. Tools and Devices were defined as anything that extends the perceptual, cognitive and motor capabilities of the user. To achieve true universal design, the group believed that these tools and devices should accommodate all ranges of user abilities and adapt to a user's changing abilities. New ideas for Research The workshop ended with a list of suggested grant solicitation ideas. These were categorized into large, medium and small grants. Four relevant suggestions in the large grant category included (1) research that identified guidelines for UA technology design through specifying the contributing physical, sensory and cognitive parameters; (2) the development of an overall architecture for separating the application from the user interface in order to enable personalization of user interface interaction; (3) the development of a demonstration project of multiple instances of applications and interfaces; and (4) the creation of a collective awareness of the UA problem in legislators and policy workers through the provision of a virtual reality experience of life with impairments. The suggested topics in the medium category included: (1) the design and implementation of a college-level competition in universal accessibility similar to steel bridge, micromouse or other competitions; (2) new interaction systems that incorporate and explore the use of new modalities apart from speech and gesture; (3) an investigation into how people organize their information, communications, and tasks; and (4) the creation of an institution that evaluates and enforces accessibility guidelines for new and existing applications. Small research topics included: (1) the observation of a design team to learn where issues of accessibility are addressed in the design process; (2) conducting a study of the impact of the introduction of interfaces at various quality levels; and (3) the creation of a web tutorial to train people in universal accessibility.

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