Alan F. Newell
Abstract
This article gives a personal perspective on Glinert and York's 1992 paper, focusing on whether and how the situation has changed over the past 15 years, and makes recommendations for the future of the field of accessible computing with a particular focus on the needs of older people and people with cognitive dysfunction.
- Alm, N., Arnott, J. L., and Newell, A. F. 1992. Prediction and conversational momentum in an augmentative communication system. Commun. ACM 35, 5 (May), 46--35. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Arnott, J. L. and Javed, M. Y. 1992. Probabilistic character disambiguation for reduced keyboards using small text samples. Augment. Alternative Commun. 8, 3, (Sept.), 215--223.Google Scholar
- Clarkson, J., Coleman, R., Keates S., and Lebbon C. (Eds). 2003. Inclusive Design -- Design for the Whole Population. Springer, London.Google Scholar
- Demasco, P. W. and McCoy, K. F. 1992. Generating text from compressed input: An intelligent interface for people with severe motor impairments. Commun. ACM 35, 5, 58--66. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Glinert, E. P. and York, B. W. 1992/2008. Computers and people with disabilities. Commun. ACM 35, 5 (May), 32--35. ACM Trans. Access. Comput. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gregor, P., Dickinson, A., Macaffer, A., and Andreasen, P. 2003. See-Word --- A personal word processing environment for dyslexic computer users, British J. Edu. Technol., 34 3, 341--355.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Gregor, P. and Newell, A. F. 2002. Design for older and disabled people --- Where do we go from here? Universal Access Inf. Soc., 2, 1, 3--7.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Gregor, P., Sloan, D., and Newell, A. F. 2005. Disability and technology: building barriers or creating opportunities. Advances Comput., 64, 283--346.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Hanson, V. L., Brezin, J., Crayne, S., Keates, S., Kjeldsen, R., Richards, J. T., Swart, C., and Trewin, S. 2005. Improving Web accessibility through an enhanced open-source browser. IBM Syst. J. 44, 3, 573--588. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hypponen, H. 1999. The Handbook on Inclusive Design for Telematics Applications. Siltasaarenkatu 18A, 00531 Helsinki, Finland.Google Scholar
- Newell, A. F. 2006. Older people as a focus for inclusive design. J. Int. Soc. Gerontechnol., 4, 4, (Eds. J. E. M. H. van Bronswijk et al.), 190--199.Google Scholar
- Newell, A. F., Carmichael, A., Gregor, P., Alm, N., and Waller, A. 2008. Information technology for cognitive support, The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, 2nd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, NJ, 811--828.Google Scholar
- Newell, A. F., Carmichael, A., Morgan, M., and Dickinson, A. 2006. The use of theatre in requirements gathering and usability studies. Interact. Comput. 18, 996--1011. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Newell, A. F. and Gregor, P. 1997. Human computer interfaces for people with disabilities. In Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, M. Helander et al., eds. Elsevier Science, 813--824.Google Scholar
- Newell, A. F. and Gregor, P. 2000. User sensitive inclusive design --- In search of a new paradigm. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Universal Usability, J. Scholtz and J. Thomas, eds. Washington, DC, 39--44. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pullin, G. and Newell, A. F. 2007. Focussing on extra-ordinary users. In Proceedings of the Human-Computer Interaction Conference (HCI), Beijing. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4554, vol. 5, 253--262. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pausch, R. and Williams, R. D. 1992. Giving CANDY to children: User-Tailored gesture input driving an articulator based speech synthesizer. Commun. ACM 35, 5, 58--66. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pieper, M., Morasch, H., and Piela, G. 2002. Bridging the educational divide. In Universal Access and Assistive Technology. Springer, London, 119--130.Google Scholar
- Thatcher, J., Waddell, C., Henry, S., Swierenga, S., Urban, M., Burks, M., Regan, B., and Bohman, P. 2002. Constructing Accessible Web Sites. Glasshaus, Birmingham, UK. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Waller, A. and Newell, A. F. 1997. Towards a narrative-based communication system. Eur. J. Disorders Commun. 32, 289--306.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Accessible Computing -- Past Trends and Future Suggestions: Commentary on “Computers and People with Disabilities”
Recommendations
Ability-Based Design: Concept, Principles and Examples
Current approaches to accessible computing share a common goal of making technology accessible to users with disabilities. Perhaps because of this goal, they may also share a tendency to centralize disability rather than ability. We present a refinement ...
User-Sensitive Inclusive Design
Special Issue: Innovations in user sensitive design, research and developmentAlthough “User-Centred”, “Participatory”, and other similar design approaches have proved to be very valuable for mainstream design, their principles are more difficult to apply successfully when the user group contains, or is composed of, older and/or ...
Accessible skimming: faster screen reading of web pages
UIST '12: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technologyIn our information-driven web-based society, we are all gradually falling ""victims"" to information overload [5].However, while sighted people are finding ways to sift through information faster, Internet users who are blind are experiencing an even ...
Reviews
Molisa D. Derk
Newell attempts to do something that is badly needed: raise awareness of the relatively slow progress of computing accessibility for the disabled. In the first section, he focuses on the period of time since 1992, commenting on how software for the blind has outpaced software for those with other, more common disabilities. The rest of the paper focuses on the need for software that is designed for older people. While many of his points are well taken, it seems that his approach is very nearly ageism. He explains that older users are more likely to suffer from impaired sight and other disabilities. However, it would make more sense to focus on the disabilities per se, rather than the age of the person with the disability. He says that older people are less likely to be "desirous of learning to use" computer technology, while not citing any reference for this. Even if this is true, the paper does not point out that those who will be "older" in the near future have been using computer technology for years, and will have a very different attitude than what he describes. Newell closes the paper with a good discussion on the drawbacks of inclusive design, again centered on the "older" user, and suggests some improvements. Even with its drawbacks, this paper is a good contribution to the discussion of how we could?and should?bridge the digital divide. Online Computing Reviews Service
Access critical reviews of Computing literature here
Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.
Comments