Jennifer George

Developing multimedia interfaces for speech therapy

Multimedia has been used creatively to entertain and educate, and can also be used for therapeutic and medical purposes. This paper addressed this issue by incorporating multimedia to design and develop an assistive device to help disabled children with speech impairments in mainstream education. The appropriate methodology for developing such an interface was investigated. Relevant multimedia, psychology, social and educational theories were taken into account. Based on this literature review, interfaces to enhance pronunciation were designed, developed and tested.

Supporting Dyslexia in the Programming Classroom

Abstract Existing approaches to teaching in higher education continue, despite legislation, to be largely exclusive of the dyslexic population. In this report, the ICF classification of dyslexia, current legislation on disability, and the problems associated with dyslexia are investigated within the higher educational sphere, and specifically within the field of programming. Dyslexic adults who study programming at university or college level could be better supported through the use of sequential assessments, multi-modal approaches to learning, assistive technologies, and appropriate tutor support. In consequence of these approaches, the standards set by the ICF, the DDA (1995), and the Equality Act (2010) should be met in the higher education programming classroom.

A social approach to accessible social networking using the CAT model

The social model of disability looks beyond medical and technical solution moving towards social approach. This paper applies the label and table attributes of the CAT models to understand the social setting of the child with the disability together with the care circle. It goes on to understand their social needs and identifies accessibility challenges in communication between members of the care circle. Evaluation is carried out in both a computer and Internet based environment and a traditional communication environment. Finally brief guidelines are drawn upon which an accessible social network based design solution could be built for the reduction of disability of children with motor impairment.

Multimedia Interfaces for BSL Using Lip Readers

This paper deals with mainly the profoundly deaf people who are beginning to learn the British Sign Language (BSL) as their first language for communication. These beginners could be children, teenagers or even adults who have hearing problems. There are already quite a few BSL learning websites and Lip Reading software available on the market. However, there is no such software that associates the two associated problems although there might be BSL users who can benefit from Lip Reading. This could help them not only for communication but also enable them to interact more with people with a normal hearing range, who as a matter of fact, form a major part of the society we live in. The artifact aims to be run on most computers making it easier for people to access and use it without the need for any additional costly features.

Facilitating pronunciation skills for children with phonological disorders using human modelling

Children are often forced into mainstream schools while special needs schools are being shut down. Children with phonological disorders in mainstream schools go through fear, shame and frustration of not being understood or misunderstood. The proposed research attempts to address this issue by way of designing and developing a prototype for an assistive device that would help special needs children in mainstream education. This will also help children overcome problems that result from lack of confidence. This work has been very much a pioneering work and has achieved the target it pursued.

Developing rehabilitation robots for the brain injured

Although rehabilitation robotics have been used for helping disabled persons in various areas of disability, such as stroke rehabilitation, very little research has been done with the brain injured persons and robotics. This paper discusses the implementation of a simple model, which consists of brain body interface, a computer, an interface program and an electronic circuit to interface the computer to a robotic arm. This was an exploratory research that was carried out that allowed a brain-injured person to do simple tasks using robotic arms. This paper also looks at rehabilitation robotics both past and present. The paper goes on to explore the new avenues available to enhance this exploratory research. In this paper, we take the brain body interface communications a step further where the brain injured persons will not only communicate but will also be able to do simple tasks.

An Experiment Using Personalised Multimedia Interfaces for Speech Therapy

This paper discusses the experiments used in the design and development of assistive technology interfaces for children with phonological disorders and answering the research question should there be a group of interaction paradigms or one novel interaction paradigm that can be personalised, to enhance the performance of pronunciation skills for children with speech impairments? This research question is tested against an artifact designed and developed to address the need for an assistive device to rehabilitate children with phonological disorders.