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

在440万有身体、认知或感官残疾的加拿大人中，有许多人在使用计算机技术方面有困难，或者发现计算机技术不能完全满足他们的需求。许多努力都是针对收集计算能力，为残疾用户的利益。这些努力都是针对如何使计算机系统更容易获得不同的能力，并在如何设计系统，以帮助残疾人在他们的日常生活。然而，许多这样的设备被放弃了，或者从来没有被采用。一个潜在的原因是，迄今为止的工作主要集中在残疾人用户上，而没有充分考虑每个用户如何适应他或她的社会环境。社会环境可以产生简单但强大的影响。例如，一个手部震颤的人可能会选择使用电脑鼠标（尽管他会发现轨迹球更容易使用，也更有效），仅仅因为它是他妻子和孩子的首选设备。或者，一位老年妇女可能会选择使用一个复杂的，功能丰富的电子邮件客户端（尽管更简单的一个可以满足她的需求），因为她唯一的技术指导来源是她的“技术”孙子。社会关系也可以产生积极的影响。值得注意的是，智能手机等小型功能强大的设备提供了前所未有的潜力，使护理人员能够为残疾人提供分布式支持，而新型通信技术为将孤立的个人与亲人联系起来提供了新的潜力。这项研究的目标是，因此，开发新一代的辅助设备和无障碍技术是敏感的社会环境中，他们将被使用，并寻求利用这些关系，以改善援助和支持。个别项目将侧重于为特定目标人群进行设计，并将综合各个项目的研究结果，以形成设计社会知情的无障碍技术的准则。

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.