"Socially-Informed Accessible Technology: Improving Access to Technology, Information, and People"

在加拿大440万身体、认知或感官残疾的人中，许多人在使用计算机技术方面存在困难，或者发现它不能完全满足他们的需求。为了使残疾用户受益，已经做出了许多努力来获取计算能力。这些努力既针对如何使不同能力的人更容易访问计算机系统，也针对如何设计系统来帮助残疾人的日常生活。然而，许多这样的设备被遗弃了，或者从一开始就没有被采用。造成这种情况的一个潜在原因是，迄今为止的工作主要集中在残疾用户身上，而没有充分考虑每个用户如何适应他或她的社会环境。 社会背景可能会产生简单但强有力的影响。例如，手部震颤的男性可能会选择使用电脑鼠标(尽管他会发现轨迹球更容易、更有效地使用)，只是因为它是他妻子和孩子的首选设备。或者，老年妇女可能会选择使用复杂、功能丰富的电子邮件客户端(尽管更简单的客户端可以满足她的需求)，因为她唯一的技术指导来源是她的“技术爱好者”孙子。社会关系也可以产生积极的影响。值得注意的是，智能手机等小而强大的设备提供了前所未有的潜力，使照顾者能够向残疾人提供分布式支持，而新颖的通信技术为孤立的个人与亲人之间的联系提供了新的潜力。因此，这项研究的目标是开发新一代辅助设备和可获得的技术，这些设备和技术对使用它们的社会环境敏感，并寻求利用这些关系来改善援助和支持。个别项目将侧重于为特定的目标人群进行设计，并将在各个项目中综合调查结果，以形成设计可获得社会信息的技术的指导方针。

Many of the 4.4 million Canadians with a physical, cognitive, or sensory disability have difficulty using computer technology or find that it does not fully meet their needs. Many efforts have been directed at harvesting computational power for the benefit of disabled users. These efforts have been directed both at how to make computer systems more accessible to diverse abilities, and at how to design systems to help disabled individuals in their everyday lives. Yet many such devices are abandoned, or never adopted in the first place. One potential reason for this is that work to date has focused extensively on disabled users, without sufficiently considering how each user fits within his or her social environment. Social context can have simple but power influences. For example, a man with hand tremor may choose to use a computer mouse (though he would find a trackball easier and more efficient to use), simply because it is the preferred device of his wife and children. Or, an elderly woman may choose to use a complicated, feature-rich email client (though a simpler one would meet her needs) because her only source of technical guidance is her "techie" grandson. Social relationships can have positive influences as well. Notably, small powerful devices such as smart phones offer unprecedented potential for enabling caregivers to provide distributed support to a disabled person, and novel communication technologies offer new potential for connecting isolated individuals to loved ones. The goal of this research is, thus, to develop new generation assistive devices and accessible technologies that are sensitive to the social environments within which they will be used, and that seek to leverage those relationships to improve assistance and support. Individual projects will focus on designing for a specific target population, and across projects the findings will be synthesized to form guidelines for designing socially-informed accessible technology.