Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sensing the World: The Development of Tactile Information Systems

理解数据是21世纪科学素养的关键。这个博士论文项目调查了科学和技术研究如何通过与计算机科学家合作，为开发新的方法做出贡献，使技术数据易于理解。与人机交互专家合作，主要研究人员从民族志上研究计算机科学家如何寻求将数据可视化转化为视障用户的其他感官模式。通过历史研究，本项目记录了科学技术研究如何为残疾人通信技术的发展提供信息，这也将成为制定一套将社会分析纳入技术研究过程的最佳实践的基础。本项目遵循技术参与的科学技术研究项目的传统，将科学合作作为一种工作方法和调查地点。利用来自关键残疾研究、计算机历史和感官研究的见解，主要研究者探索了“可访问性”作为人机交互设计理想的话语如何总是包含关于物理、感知和认知能力的隐含思想。通过使用历史和民族志方法来明确这些想法，该项目旨在改进为残疾人概念化和设计通信技术的方法。触觉阅读系统的历史案例研究，如盲文和触觉计算机界面，为理解有关能力的想法如何嵌入到计算机界面的设计中提供了经验基础。因此，该项目利用这些系统的悠久历史来调查、告知和批评当前制作多感官数据可视化的实践。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Understanding data is key to scientific literacy in the twenty-first century. This doctoral dissertation project investigates how Science and Technology Studies can contribute to developing new approaches to making technical data intelligible by collaborating with computer scientists. Working with specialists in Human-Computer Interaction, the principal investigators ethnographically investigate how computer scientists seek to translate data visualizations into other sensory modes for visually impaired users. Through historical research, this project documents how the science and technology studies can inform the development of communication technologies for people with disabilities, which will also be the foundation for developing a set of best practices for integrating social analysis into the technical research process.This project follows a tradition of technically-engaged Science and Technology Studies projects that takes scientific collaboration as a working method and a site of investigation. Using insights from critical disability studies, the history of computing, and sensory studies, the principle investigators explore how discourses of “accessibility” as a design ideal in Human-Computer Interaction always involve implicit ideas about physical, perceptual, and cognitive ability. By using historical and ethnographic methods to make those ideas explicit, this project seeks to improve approaches to conceptualizing and designing communication technologies for people with disabilities. The historical case study of tactile reading systems like braille and haptic computer interfaces serves as an empirical basis for understanding how ideas about ability become embedded in the design of computer interfaces. This project thus draws on the long history of these systems to investigate, inform, and critique the current practice of making multisensory data visualizations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.