Research in HCI and autism has become more focused on involving autistic adults in technological design. In this paper, we present the results of a scoping review analysis of 11 projects across 18 papers that focused on including autistic adults in the design of technology that impacts their lives. This paper contributes a deeper understanding of how autistic adults were involved in participatory design processes. Our findings reveal mixed positions on how the lived autistic perspective was harnessed to direct the application of topics and technologies chosen. Most projects employed infrastructures to enhance participation (e.g., providing multiple modes to participate or employing a tailored methodology). We pose future opportunities for autistic involvement, for example, in topics and technologies where autistic research is employed (e.g., autism diagnosis and machine learning), reviewing the importance of formal diagnosis for inclusion, and harnessing the multiple expertise of autistic adults.

This demo paper presents a Virtual Reality (VR) application designed to explore innovative methods of learning basic music theory through sound-colour cross-modal associations.Leveraging the immersive capabilities of the latest head-mounted displays, the application provides an interactive and engaging platform with significant potential for music education.The demo marks an initial step in investigating how VR's immersive features can enhance the understanding of sound-colour associations and their role in learning musical concepts, specifically intervals and melodies within the C Major scale.Two groups will participate in the study: a control group will learn using a predefined sound-colour mapping, while the experimental group will create their own personalised mappings through a pre-test in VR, which will be applied in subsequent lessons.The forthcoming study aims to provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of VR and cross-modality in facilitating music theory education.

Recent HCI scholarship has critiqued anthropocentrism in design as contributing to the ecological crisis. The current paper contributes theoretically and empirically to this area, adopting the lens of Socio-Ecological Relations, inspired by Environmental History and STS. We argue that a socio-ecological lens can offer practical tools to HCI and Interaction Design to overcome the separation between humanity and nature-as-a-resource. For this reason, our unit of analysis is humanity-in-nature and nature-in-humanity, and we show how this double internality becomes visible using an historical and geographical approach in the design process. Methodologically, using Situational Analysis, we analyse an Action Research project that introduced a digital platform for community radio in rural contexts. We find that Socio-Ecological Relations, performed in specific places, shape the design process and are themselves transformed by becoming part of it. We provide a set of sensitivities for operationalizing this approach for design researchers.

Licencing frameworks are embedded with sociotechnical imaginaries that limit the potential for networked technologies to make traditional media forms, like radio, more inclusive. We sought to refine and extend a platform, RootIO, which aims to enable diverse people to run small radio stations by using internet and mobile networks that avoid the costs of studios and specialist equipment. We situated design and refinement in the activities of groups that set up and ran four community stations in rural Romania and some Irish islands over three-years and found national regulations limited who articulated requirements. Activities in applying for, and complying with, licences shaped design priorities, embedded temporal demands, certain organisational structures and division of responsibilities, and assumptions about studios and professionalism. Indeed, small radio stations are subject to the same values as large media corporations that pursue market power. Regulatory frameworks are specific to nations and media form, yet our analysis illustrates that they impede designing platforms to widen inclusion by enacting broader sociotechnical imaginaries. We hope this reflection provokes discussion, in HCI and CSCW, about our responsibilities in engaging with the policies that shape possible futures.

This article contributes to research that aims to better understand and describe the rural context for rural computing. We argue that the particularities of rurality are heightened by the experience of ‘islandness’. We report on our experiences of engaging on one small island as islanders established community radio using a novel platform. Data comes from 12 semi-structured interviews with community members and ethnographic field notes assembled through eight researcher visits to the island. Transcripts and notes were analysed using thematic analysis. We discuss how rural islandness as a socio-cultural lens influenced technology appropriation and factors to support participation. We explore the elements of rural islandness that can be used as an analytic tool for rural HCI and HCI more broadly, through three main contributions of rural islandness that we believe have not yet been sufficiently explored in HCI. These are (1) separateness, (2) pushing things ahead, and (3) publics and rural pluralities.

Rural communities often lack platforms to support civic engagement and local deliberation. Community radio is intended to facilitate such functions, yet, radio technologies can be expensive and complex to use. To tackle this challenge, low-barrier radio technologies are becoming available. We argue that technology to support civic engagement and local deliberation are important, and design of such platforms must take into consideration specific community needs. We contribute by exploring the needs of three rural European communities. Findings indicate that communities are now distributed beyond place. Platforms for deliberation must include both hyper-local and geographically dispersed populations. Rural values of accountability, reliability and maintaining social harmony are important design considerations. Community radio platforms should support geographically distributed community connections, sharing of health and emergency information, preservation of heritage and as a space for advocacy and civic action.