Abigale Stangl

3D printed tactile picture books for children with visual impairments: a design probe

Young children with visual impairments greatly benefit from tactile graphics (illustrations, images, puzzles, objects) during their learning processes. In this paper we present insight about using a 3D printed tactile picture book as a design probe. This has allowed us to identify and engage stakeholders in our research on improving the technical and human processes required for creating 3D printed tactile pictures, and cultivate a community of practice around these processes. We also contribute insight about how our inperson and digital methods of interacting with teachers, parents, and other professionals dedicated to supporting children with visual impairments contributes to research practices.

Transcribing Across the Senses: Community Efforts to Create 3D Printable Accessible Tactile Pictures for Young Children with Visual Impairments

The design of 3D printable accessible tactile pictures (3DP-ATPs) for young children with visual impairments has the potential to greatly increase the supply of tactile materials that can be used to support emergent literacy skill development. Many caregivers and stakeholders invested in supporting young children with visual impairments have shown interest in using 3D printing to make accessible tactile materials. Unfortunately, the task of designing and producing 3DP-ATPs is far more complex than simply learning to use personal fabrication tools. This paper presents formative research conducted to investigate how six caregiver stakeholder-groups, with diverse skillsets and domain interests, attempt to create purposeful 3DP-ATPs with amateur-focused 3D modeling programs. We expose the experiences of these stakeholder groups as they attempt to design 3DP-ATG for the first time. We discuss how the participant groups practically and conceptually approach the task and focus their design work. Each group demonstrated different combinations of skillsets. In turn, we identify the common activities required of the design task as well how different participants are well suited and motivated to preform those activities. This study suggests that the emerging community of amateur 3DP-ATP designers may benefit from an online creativity support tool to help offset the challenges of designing purposeful 3DP-ATPs that are designed to meet individual children with VIs emergent literacy needs.

Nothing to Hide: Aesthetic Customization of Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants in an Online Community

Hearing aids and cochlear implants can improve accessibility and quality of life for people with hearing impairments. However, use of these devices may cause concern amongst some users due to sociocultural issues such as unwanted attention and perceived stigma. While some individuals may respond to these concerns by attempting to conceal their devices, or even abandoning their devices, others have responded by making their devices more visible through aesthetic customization, and some have begun to share these customizations online. In this paper, we describe community interactions in an online forum dedicated to customized hearing aids and cochlear implants. We found that community members discussed customization tools and techniques, shared their customizations, and provided each other with encouragement and support. Community members customized their devices as a means of self-expression that demonstrated the wearers fashion sense, revealed favorite sports teams and characters, and marked holidays and personal milestones. Our findings may inform the design of assistive technologies that better support personalization, customization, and self-expression.

NatureNet: a model for crowdsourcing the design of citizen science systems

NatureNet is citizen science system designed for collecting bio-diversity data in nature park settings. Park visitors are encouraged to participate in the design of the system in addition to collecting bio-diversity data. Our goal is to increase the motivation to participate in citizen science via crowdsourcing: the hypothesis is that when the crowd plays a role in the design and development of the system, they become stakeholders in the project and work to ensure its success. This paper presents a model for crowdsourcing design and citizen science data collection, and the results from early trials with users that illustrate the potential of this approach.

FluxMarker: Enhancing Tactile Graphics with Dynamic Tactile Markers

For people with visual impairments, tactile graphics are an important means to learn and explore information. However, raised line tactile graphics created with traditional materials such as embossing are static. While available refreshable displays can dynamically change the content, they are still too expensive for many users, and are limited in size. These factors limit wide-spread adoption and the representation of large graphics or data sets. In this paper, we present FluxMaker, an inexpensive scalable system that renders dynamic information on top of static tactile graphics with movable tactile markers. These dynamic tactile markers can be easily reconfigured and used to annotate static raised line tactile graphics, including maps, graphs, and diagrams. We developed a hardware prototype that actuates magnetic tactile markers driven by low-cost and scalable electromagnetic coil arrays, which can be fabricated with standard printed circuit board manufacturing. We evaluate our prototype with six participants with visual impairments and found positive results across four application areas: location finding or navigating on tactile maps, data analysis, and physicalization, feature identification for tactile graphics, and drawing support. The user study confirms advantages in application domains such as education and data exploration.

Using LEGO to model 3D tactile picture books by sighted children for blind children

3D printing has shown great potential in creating tactile picture books for blind children to develop emergent literacy. Sighted children can be motivated to contribute to the modeling of more tactile picture books. But current 3D design tools are too difficult to use. Can sighted children model a tactile book by LEGO pieces instead? Can a LEGO be converted to a digital model that can be then printed?

Moodcasting: home as shared emotional space

The home experience revolves around an intangible yet pervasive dynamic: shared emotional space, in which members of the home are influenced by each others expressions of mood as well as the associated values, activities, people and spaces that influence mood. The Moodcasting system is a set of pervasive and ambient technologies designed to interactively enhance mood awareness and understanding in a home by representing mood and the supporting contexts in easy-to-understand and actionable representations.

Understanding the Role Fluidity of Stakeholders During Assistive Technology Research "In the Wild"

Deploying novel technologies requires the coordinated efforts of the research team, research participants, and a variety of community members and project stakeholders. To ensure that the project is completed successfully, these disparate groups of people engage in articulation work, which is the meta-work that supports the use of collaborative systems. In this paper, we examine the articulation work surrounding the deployment of systems that have found limited long-term adoption: assistive technology. Specifically, we examine three research deployments of a collaborative game for children with autism. Analysis of the articulation work performed during these studies demonstrates how research deployments of technologies create conditions in which stakeholders must take on additional roles to make the deployment work. By understanding the articulation work surrounding deployment studies engendered in this role fluidity, we can improve both research design and the analysis of data emergent from these studies.

BrowseWithMe: An Online Clothes Shopping Assistant for People with Visual Impairments

Our interviews with people who have visual impairments show clothes shopping is an important activity in their lives. Unfortunately, clothes shopping web sites remain largely inaccessible. We propose design recommendations to address online accessibility issues reported by visually impaired study participants and an implementation, which we call BrowseWithMe, to address these issues. BrowseWithMe employs artificial intelligence to automatically convert a product web page into a structured representation that enables a user to interactively ask the BrowseWithMe system what the user wants to learn about a product (e.g., What is the price? Can I see a magnified image of the pants?). This enables people to be active solicitors of the specific information they are seeking rather than passive listeners of unparsed information. Experiments demonstrate BrowseWithMe can make online clothes shopping more accessible and produce accurate image descriptions.

“Wear It Loud”: How and Why Hearing Aid and Cochlear Implant Users Customize Their Devices

We investigate the role of aesthetic customization in managing sociocultural issues of assistive technology (AT) use. First, we examined an online forum dedicated to customized hearing aids and cochlear implants to understand the breadth of activity occurring in this space. Next, we conducted a series of interviews to understand motivational factors and sociocultural outcomes related to expressive AT. We found that community members discussed customization tools and techniques, shared their customizations, and provided each other with encouragement and support. Community members customized their devices as a means of self-expression that demonstrated the wearers fashion sense, revealed favorite sports teams and characters, and marked holidays and personal milestones. We also found that aesthetic customization worked on multiple levels to create personal and meaningful relationships with ones AT and with other AT users, and also to manage societal expectations regarding hearing loss. Our findings may inform the design of assistive technologies that better support personalization, customization, and self-expression.