D

Universal Design / Disability Access - for Advanced Computational Infrastructure

Overview
Program Areas
In the News
Selected Publications and Presentations
Contact Information

Overview

The Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program invests in infrastructure development by and for the application of advanced computational techniques. This infrastructure of the next generation Internet is generally called the "Grid," borrowed from the electricity grid, to imply that any compatible device could be plugged in anywhere on the Grid and be guaranteed a certain level of resources, regardless of where those resources might come from. As a result more people will have access to more advanced computational capabilities sooner.

The Universal Design/Disability Access Program (UD/DA) for Advanced Computational Infrastructure project, headquartered at the Trace Center, is part of the Education, Outreach and Training (EOT) thrust area within the PACI program. The Universal Design/Disability Access Program (UD/DA) for Advanced Computational Infrastructure project, headquartered at the Trace Center, contributes to the accelerated development of advanced computational infrastructure in two ways. The first is by assisting the PACI partners in applying Universal Design practices to the systems and technologies they are developing and applying. In FY'03 we are working with the expedition partners for the "Scientific Workspaces of the Future" (SWOF) to better integrate scientists and learners with disabilities into the Access Grid and the SWOF. We are also tying the work of PACI in general and the EOT and SWOF in particular into the external standards work relating to both Grid technologies and accessibility. This involves standardization and dissemination efforts within PACI and beyond.

Program Areas

Currently the UD/DA program can be divided into the following general program areas:

Translation and Modality Transformation on the Grid

This area comprises the exploration of general translation on the Grid as a concept for a variety of network-enabled services on demand, including text to speech, sign language, international language, and language level translation, as well as print recognition and image/video description services. See also Modality Translation Services Program.

Guided by the vision of making these services available for the Access Grid, the scientific tele-collaboration environment of the Grid, we are collaborating with the Alliance Expedition on Scientific Workspaces of the Future (SWOF). One short-term goal is to incorporate a speech to text service into the Access Grid system infrastructure in order to allow participation of individuals with hearing impairments and deafness, as well as to facilitate participation of everyone (noisy environments, poor or lost audio, distracted by side conversation, archiving, indexing and searching of audio portion of interaction, difficulty in following speech due to language differences, etc.). Another short-term goal is to explore barriers to and strategies for participation of individuals with visual impairments in visualization based educational and scientific work spaces.

For the SC2002 conference, Trace provided experimental speech to text service for the plenary sessions.

Standards and Other NII Efforts

This area consists of ongoing work with standard-setting groups that would impact Alliance technologies and efforts in order to maximize the accessibility of the standards, including:

• Work with the Grid Forum, specifically with its Grid Computing Environments and Advanced Collaborative Environments working groups;
• work with the National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS) Technical Committee V2 on alternative user interface access (e.g. by a universal remote console);
• work in the FCC Technological Advisory Council;
• work with the W3C/WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group;
• work in the W3C/WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group; and
• work with the DAISY Consortium and National Information Standards Organization (NISO) on navigable text-data standards.

Public and Researcher Awareness

This area supports the EOT-PACI agenda of reaching out through participation in public events, including the annual High Performance Networking and Computing Conference, and All-Hands meetings that gather large numbers of PACI investigators.

We are striving to maximize the awareness of Alliance and other communities to the importance of, opportunities for, and general benefits of increased disability access to evolving information technologies. We are specifically working with the SWOF expedition outreach team to help disseminate information on the Access Grid and its potential for Universal Access.

In the News

• More than a matter of equity. Cover Story in NCSA Access Magazine, Jan. 2003.
• Building an Accessible Access Grid. Feature Story in NCSA Access Online, Jan. 15, 2002.
• BOF Focuses on Access for Everyone. NCSA Access Online, Nov. 1, 2001.
• Trace Center Director Urges Product Design For All Ability Levels. NCSA Access Online, April 24, 2001.
• Experts: Computers slouching toward usability. ComputerWorld, April 12, 2001.
• Trace Center Demonstrates Remote Translation Services for the Deaf (NPACI & SDSC Online, Vol. 4/24, 2000)
• Trace Center Demonstrates Remote Translation on the Grid (NCSA Access Online, Dec. 13, 2000)
• Future Tech to Meet Needs of People with Disabilities - Sign Language Interpretation over the Grid Featured in Presentation at FCC (NPACI & SDSC Online, Oct. 4, 2000)
• Trace Center Director Speaks on Future Technologies (Access Online, Sept. 28, 2000)
• EOT-PACI Partner Helps Deaf Community Participate in SC99 (NPACI & SDSC Online, Vol. 3/25, 1999)
• TRACE Center Demonstrates Live Captioning for the Deaf at SC99 (NPACI & SDSC Online, Vol. 3/23, 1999)
• Trace Center Demonstrates Live Captioning for Hearing Impaired at SC99 (NCSA Access Online, Nov. 16, 1999)

Selected Publications and Presentations

• Designing a future that is more accessible to all humans and machines: An overview of projects at the Trace R & D Center. Access Grid Users Seminars Series, presentation by Gregg Vanderheiden.
• Zimmermann, G. (2002, Oct.). Invited presentation, "When Virtual Assistive Technology Becomes Universal Design", at the Pervasive Computing 2002 conference, Oct. 1-2, 2002, National Institute for Standard Technologies (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland.
• Zimmermann, G., Vanderheiden, G., & Gilman, A. (2002, Jun). Internet-Based Personal Services on Demand. In: Winters, J.; Robinson, C.; Simpson, R.; Vanderheiden, G. Emerging and Accessible Telecommunications, Information and Healthcare Technologies, pp. 62-70. Arlington, VA: RESNA Press.
• Vanderheiden, G., & Zimmermann, G. (2002, Jun). State of the Science: Access to Information Technologies. In: Winters, J.; Robinson, C.; Simpson, R.; Vanderheiden, G. Emerging and Accessible Telecommunications, Information and Healthcare Technologies, pp. 152-184. Arlington, VA: RESNA Press.
• Zimmermann, G. (2001, Oct). Network Based Personal Services on Demand - A Vision and Its Implications on Telecommunications in the Future. Presentation at the Telecommunications Access RERC State of the Science Conference, Oct. 29-30, 2001, Washington, DC.
• Zimmermann, G., & Vanderheiden, G. (2001, July). Modality Translation And Assistance Services: A Challenge For Artificial Intelligence. Journal of the Austrian Society of Artificial Intelligence (OGAI), 20(2), 26-27.
• Zimmermann, G., Vanderheiden, G. (2001, Jun). Modality Translation Services on Demand - Making the World More Accessible For All. RESNA 2001 Annual Conference and Educational Program, June 22-26, 2001, Reno, Nevada.
• Gilman, A. (2001, May). Wireless Access and People with Disabilities in a Universal Grid. Presentation at Grid on the Go workshop.
• Zimmermann, G., Vanderheiden, G. (2001, March). Translation on Demand Anytime and Anywhere. CSUN's Sixteenth Annual International Conference, "Technology and persons with disabilities", March 19 - 24, 2001, Los Angeles, CA.
• Zimmermann, G., Vanderheiden, G., Gilman, A. (2001, Feb.). Modality Translation on the Grid - Real-time, on-demand access to information across modalities. Poster and Handout for the EOT-NPACI All-Hands Meeting, Feb. 25-28, 2001, San Diego, CA.
• Zimmermann, G. (2000, Jan.). Modality Translation on the Grid. Presentation at Access Grid Retreat, Jan. 30-31, 2001, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois.
• Zimmermann, G., Vanderheiden, G., Gilman, A. (2000, Nov.). Modality Translation on the Grid. Poster and Handout for the High Performance Networking and Computing Conference (SC2000), Dallas, Texas, Nov. 4-10, 2000.
• Gilman, A., Vanderheiden, G., Zimmermann, G. (2000, Nov.). Middleware and the eSCaped Web. Handout for the High Performance Networking and Computing Conference (SC2000), Dallas, Texas, Nov. 4-10, 2000.
• Gilman, A., Vanderheiden, G., Zimmermann, G. (2000, Oct.). Universal Design and the Grid. Working draft for Grid Forum 5, Oct. 2000.
• Barnicle, K., Vanderheiden, G. C., Gilman, Al., Reinberg, J., Schauer, J., Kelso, D., & Williams, N. (2000, June). Sign language interpretation over an Internet 2 network. Proceedings of the RESNA 2000 Conference, Orlando, FL. Arlington, VA: RESNA Press, pp. 25-27.
• Barnicle, K. (2000, May). On-demand remote sign language interpretation. Poster session presented at the World Wide Web 99 (WWW9) Conference, Amsterdam.
• Vanderheiden, G. C., Law, C., & Barnicle, K. (2000). Cross disability telecollaboration systems. Proceedings of the Designing for the 21st Century Conference, Providence, RI.
• Vanderheiden, G. C. (2000, Jan.-Feb.). Live sign language interpretation over Internet II. RESNA News, 9-10.
• Vanderheiden, G. C. (1999, October). Impact of digital miniaturization and networked topologies on access to next generation telecommunication by people with visual disabilities. Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 36(4), 365-370.
• Vanderheiden, G. C. (1998). Cross-modal access to current and next-generation Internet - fundamental and advanced topics in Internet accessibility. Technology and Disability, 8(3), 115-126.
• Vanderheiden, G. C. (1998). Access to global information infrastructure (GII) and next-generation information systems. In A. Weasel (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress on Education of the Deaf. Tel Aviv: Ramot Publications.
• Vanderheiden, G. C. (1997). Anywhere, anytime, (+ anyone) access to the next-generation WWW. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 29, 1439-1446. Elsevier Science B.V.

Contact Information

For more information about the Universal Design/Disability Access Program, please contact the Trace Center Info Line.