The use of working prototypes for participatory design with people with disabilities

Brandon Haworth, Muhammad Usman, Melanie Baljko*, Foad Hamidi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

The inclusion of people with disabilities and their circle of stakeholders in the design and deployment of digital assistive technology is increasingly being recognized as important. The Do-It-Yourself Assistive Technology (DIY-AT) approach investigates methodologies and tools to support accessible making practices. In prior work, we successfully used a DIY-AT approach to develop TalkBox, an open-source directselection communication board for those with little or no functional verbal communication. In this paper, we describe a follow-up project in which we use TalkBox as a prototyping platform to facilitate co-design and co-fabrication of DIY-AT. We present results from (1) a workshop in which users with disabilities and their parents/caregivers fabricated their own TalkBoxes, and (2) a collaborative co-design session with a nonverbal child and his mother wherein the potential for TalkBox variants led to novel design decisions. We illustrate the outcome of our process by describing the multi-vocabulary variant called Hot Swappable Talk- Box, in which RFID technology is used to afford easy switching among different vocabulary sets.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputers Helping People with Special Needs - 15th International Conference, ICCHP 2016, Proceedings
EditorsChristian Bühler, Klaus Miesenberger, Petr Penaz
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages134-141
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9783319412634
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event15th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs, ICCHP 2016 - Linz, Austria
Duration: 13 Jul 201615 Jul 2016

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9758
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference15th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs, ICCHP 2016
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityLinz
Period13/07/1615/07/16

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.

Keywords

  • Assistive technology
  • Communication boards
  • Do-It-Yourself (DIY)
  • Open-source hardware
  • Participatory Design
  • SGDs

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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