often denigrated as “simply anecdotes”, but a good story—particularly one with some humor and/or conflict—which effectively illustrates the message behind the data, can be a very powerful tool.
1.11 SUMMARY
“Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die, Life is a broken winged bird Which cannot fly”. (anon.)
This monograph essentially follows an historical perspective of research in the fields in which researchers at Dundee University’s School of Computing were operating, together with lessons learned from this journey.
Chapters 2–7 focus on research into the use of information technology to improve human-to-human communication.
Chapter 2 highlights the development of VOTEM—the speech-operated typewriter for physically disabled people, the Palantype Transcription System for deaf people, and the Talking Brooch, the first system we developed for non-speaking people. Chapter 3 describes the work on television subtitling for hearing-impaired people. This includes research into both the style of captioning, and the development of efficient captioning systems for both pre-prepared and real-time captions.
The Talking Brooch led to sustained research in the AAC field. This included word prediction (Chapter 4), and its importance not only for reducing key-strokes, but also for improving literacy. Other software for dyslexia is also described in this chapter, as is research that led to disambiguation techniques. Systems based on this research are now included in most mobile phone texting systems: possibly the most ubiquitous example of research for disabled people leading to a mainstream product.
Even with word prediction, AAC devices still produced speech at very slow rates, thus other speed increasing techniques were developed. Chapter 5 examines the influence of Conversational Analysis research on the AAC field. This led to the concept of reusable conversation, and an examination of the relative importance of pragmatics and semantics in conversation. A number of systems based on this concept are described, together with the conflicts that arose from these developments.
The ultimate instantiation of “reusable conversation” is stories: these are very important for personal development and building relationships. Because of their length, however, AAC users rarely relate stories. Chapter 6 describes systems that were developed to encourage non-speaking people to relate stories.
Chapter 7 relates the lessons that the team at Dundee learned from this research and recommends ways in which the efficacy of research in this particular field can be increased.
Towards the end of the 20th Century, demographic trends clearly indicated an increasing percentage of older people in the population. People were living to an increasingly old age, and were exhibiting physical, sensory and cognitive decline. In general, information technology had not designed for such people and a “digital divide” was developing between younger people and the majority of those over 65. Chapter 8 describes a range of computer-based systems that have been designed particularly for older people, including those with dementia. Although older people may have disabilities, their general characteristics were different from those of younger disabled people. Chapter 9 describes these differences and how they relate to design challenges in Information technology and Human Computer Interface research. Chapter 9 lays out a range of methods for including older people in the design process.
The differences between older and disabled people and young able-bodied people, however, are less than might at first appear to be the case—particularly in relation to the design of IT products. Chapter 10 introduces the concept of Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary Human Computer Interaction as a way of bridging this gap, and of encouraging mainstream designers to consider the needs and wants of currently excluded populations of users. Chapter 11 suggests “User Sensitive Inclusive Design” as an expansion of “User-Centered Design” to include disadvantaged users. The philosophy behind this is described and a number of suggestions made as to how this can be implemented, and how the concept of Designing for Dynamic Diversity provides a framework for interface design that responds to the changes in users as they grow older.
It is vital for designers and users to relate to each other, and this is particularly important where there are age and cultural differences between these two groups. There is evidence that design rules and guidelines are not sufficient, and Chapter 12 describes ways in which professional theater can be used both for requirements gathering and for raising designers’ awareness of the challenges older people have with technology.
Chapter 13 draws these ideas together with recommendations for design practice in the field of developing computer systems to support older and disabled people. It suggests how such approaches can benefit all users, young and old, fit and unfit, healthy or unhealthy, and with varying degrees of cognitive functioning. It recommends this approach to designers of mainstream as well as assistive technology.
CHAPTER 2
Communication Systems for Non-Speaking and Hearing-Impaired People
The development of a voice-operated typewriter for non-speaking, physically disabled people described in Chapter 1 led to the development of the Talking Brooch. This was one of the first truly portable communication aid for non-speaking people. Demonstrating this to a chance visitor to the Department introduced the challenge of providing a communication aid for a profoundly deaf Member of Parliament and led to the development of a system based on the automatic transcription of machine shorthand.
2.1 A VOICE-OPERATED TYPEWRITER FOR PHYSICALLY DISABLED PEOPLE
In my readings related to speech recognition research, I had come across a paper that was trying to automatically recognise hand-sent Morse Code. This had not been particularly successful as the timing of hand-sent Morse Code is not accurate. Fast operators can send Morse that can be understood by a human being, but differences in the lengths of the dots and dashes and the spaces within and between characters defeated automatic recognition methods.
It seemed to me, however, that, if speed was not the overarching objective, an operator could be trained to send Morse Code which could be automatically decoded. Also, the system would provide excellent feedback from errors as, if an “i” (dot-dot), was recognised as an “m” (dash-dash), the operator would know that s/he had to reduce the length of the dots. Thus, spoken Morse code was a possible way in which people who were paralysed from the neck down could type. I simulated VOTEM (Voice Operated Typewriter Employing Morse-code) on the PDP 8 to prove that this was possible and subsequently designed and built an electronic version [Newell and Nabavi, 1969, Newell, A., 1970].
Clearly, disabled people would have
