Collaborative Cross Modal Interfaces

我们生活在一个信息社会，在这个社会中，多种沟通方式司空见惯。信息通信技术（ICT）在过去几年中的快速发展导致了新的通信方法;无论是社会还是专业。这项技术使协作成为解决问题的基石，使人们能够轻松地一起工作，尽管地理位置不同。信息和通信技术的改进也增加了对有知觉障碍的人的包容，例如，短信使有听力障碍的人能够相对容易地通过移动的电话进行交流。然而，在允许具有不同感知意识的人之间的协作通信的技术领域仍然需要做很多工作。在这个项目中，我们将探讨这一重要问题，解决的挑战：我们如何设计支持合作的参与者有不同的访问模式？具体来说，我们将着眼于视障用户和视力正常的用户在软件工程工作场所编辑图表的背景下进行协作。该项目的交付成果是一个开源软件工具，可以让视障和正常用户之间进行协作图表编辑。为此，我们将借鉴作者进行的一项试点研究，该研究表明，在协作环境中创建的图表的听觉访问，与共享的听觉感知机制相结合，支持参与者进行非视觉协作图表编辑和构建。该项目将争取在这方面有经验的两个项目伙伴（皇家国家盲人研究所和英国盲人计算机协会）的援助。合作伙伴将协助招募用户团体，并参加指导委员会。用户组研究将在"野外“进行，以确保改进是相关的。从用户研究的反馈将使我们能够添加适当的触觉和听觉组件，生产以用户为中心的软件工具。该工具将作为开源资源发布，我们将向学术界和从业者社区提供我们的研究结果。该项目的成果将扩大工作场所的包容性，使联合王国在辅助技术领域具有优势。随着人口老龄化的增加，对辅助技术的需求也在增加，该项目产生的软件将有助于融入基于工作的协作以及社会和创造性协作。该项目还将导致进一步的工作，如创建软件插件和解决教学环境中的辅助协作技术领域。

We live in an information society where multiple methods of communication are commonplace. The rapid advancements in Information Communication Technologies (ICT) over the last few years has led to new methods of communication; both socially and professionally. This technology has allowed collaboration to become a cornerstone of problem solving through enabling people to work together with ease, despite being geographically apart. The improvement in ICT has also increased the inclusion of people who have perceptual impairments, for example, text messaging allows a person with hearing impairments to communicate relatively easily on their mobile phone. There is still, however, much work needed in the area of technology that allows collaborative communication between people who have differing perceptual awareness. In this project we will examine this important issue by addressing the challenge: How do we design support for collaboration where participants have differing access to modalities?Specifically, we will look at collaboration between visually impaired users and sighted users in the context of editing diagrams in the software engineering workplace. The deliverable for this project is an open-source software tool that enables collaborative diagram editing between visually impaired and sighted users.To do this, we will draw on a pilot study undertaken by the authors which demonstrates that auditory access to diagrams created in a collaborative context, in conjunction with shared auditory awareness mechanisms, supports participants in non-visual collaborative diagram editing and construction. The project will enlist the assistance of two project partners who have experience in this area (Royal National Institute of Blind People and British Computer Association of the Blind). The partners will assist in the recruitment of the user groups and sit on the steering committee. The user group studies will be carried out 'in the wild' to ensure the improvements are relevant. The feedback from the user studies will allow us to add appropriate haptic and auditory components, producing a user centric software tool. This tool will be released as an open-source resource and we will make the findings of our studies available to both academic and practitioner communities. The results of this project will broaden inclusion in the workplace and give the UK an advantage in the area of assistive technology. As the ageing population increases, so does the need for assistive technology, the software produced from this project will be contributing towards both inclusion in work based collaboration as well as social and creative collaboration. This project will also lead to further work such as creating software plug-ins and addressing the area of assistive collaborative technology in the teaching environment.