Multiple challenges face people with cognitive and communication impairments when asked to be involved in the design of technology that is appropriate for them. This population is under-represented in healthcare research and have health inequalities relative to most people. The work discussed here concerns how to adapt research processes to suit people with these difficulties when developing smartphone apps to give access to health promotion information, an area in which health inequalities arise. Strategies are identified to assist participants to understand the proposed area of work, to give consent to participation and be involved with activities such as evaluation. A combination of adaptations is proposed to engage people who would otherwise be excluded. It is clear that strategies used to make research participation accessible can assist people with cognitive and communication impairments to influence and inform the development of technology for their use.

Social networking sites (SNSs) are becoming increasingly popular as a method for social interaction. While research has reported benefits associated with components of SNS usage, a digital divide has emerged between younger and older users. SNSs can be useful for communicating with family members and helping one feel digitally included; however, there are a wide range of reasons why many older adults choose not to use this kind of technology. We present a series of user studies investigating the barriers and challenges that SNSs can present to older users. These user studies led to the derivation of user recommendations to mitigate these barriers. The recommendations were then evaluated within a comparative evaluation which involved 25 older adults completing tasks on two interface versions of a simulation SNS. We present the recommendations and the methods of their creation and evaluation. Implications for developers of SNSs are discussed.

Eye-tracking is a valuable tool for usability research. Studies into the effect of age on eye-movement behavior tend to indicate a propensity for slower viewing and longer times spent examining information. This pattern is usually attributed to the general physiological and cognitive slow-down associated with normal aging. In this paper, however, across three different tasks based on computer and internet use (free-viewing, visual search, and browser interaction), we show that among older adults (n=18, age range: 70-93) computer experience appears to be a highly important factor in eye-movement behavior. We argue that as a consequence of the experimental environment used in modern eye-tracking studies, characteristics such as familiarity and experience with computers should be taken into account before conclusions are drawn about the raw effects of age.

The overall purpose of this study is the enhancement of devices and visualisations used by older adults as part of a telecare system for the self-management of health conditions. The opinions and feelings towards devices that could be used as part of a telecare system were gathered from a range of older people. This was done through the use of technology evaluation workshops, and the subsequent analysis of the collected data using grounded theory and thematic coding methodologies. Presenting healthcare data to an elderly person with chronic health issues, may be an appropriate way to help that person to better manage their condition, if the data can be understood.

Older people living in their own dwelling may be at increasing risk of loss of well-being and quality of life as a result of changes in health or personal circumstances. Processing the information gathered from sensors in the home and presenting it in the form of functional and practical interfaces to users might help decision-making before a critical situation arises in the older adult's life. The objectives of this study were to understand how to include various stakeholders in the design process and how to design intuitive and self-explanatory interfaces for older people and carers.

The overall purpose of the research discussed here is the enhancement of home-based care by revealing individual patterns in the life of a person, through modelling of the "busyness" of activity in their dwelling, so that care can be better tailored to their needs and changing circumstances. The use of data mining and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) is potentially interesting in this context because of the possibility of exploring, detecting and predicting changes in the level of activity of people's movement that may reflect change in well-being. An investigation is presented here into the use of data mining and visualisation to illustrate activity from sensor data from a trial project run in a domestic context.

A proof of concept web search and navigation system was developed for older people for whom the Internet is seen as an alien territory. A joint industry/academia team deployed User Sensitive Inclusive Design principles, focusing on the usability of the interface for this user group. The search and navigation system that was developed was significantly preferred by the user group to that provided by a standard commercial (Internet Service Provider) system; it scored highly for ease of use and the participants reported increased confidence in their ability to master the Internet. Recorded quantitative measures showed fewer task errors. The outcome of the development was a successful "proof of concept" search and navigation system for older novice computer users together with approaches to design and development for those who wish to design for this user group.

Experimental research in human – computer interaction commonly uses participant groups that are unrepresentative of demographic realities, being young, technically knowledgeable and highly educated. One way of reflecting society more accurately in research is to include older adults in research groups, but the elicitation of high-quality data from these participants requires alterations in research methods and organization. In the present paper, methodological and organizational experiences from a range of research studies with older participants are reported. It concludes with a list of guidelines for maximizing the research outcomes of working with older adults.

The move from institution to community care has resulted in more disabled and elderly people receiving care at home. For some, their disability or frailty prevents them from being involved in social activities outside the home, resulting in unacceptable social isolation. This problem is compounded if the person has a speech or language impairment. In general, social interaction is important for people, and they often use stories, pictures and other media to present important events to others, In this paper, we will describe a communication service designed to provide non-speaking people with a means to interact socially when living independently, based on the sharing of stories using pictures and other media.

AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices are often used by disabled people who are non-speaking, in order to assist them to communicate. However, many such systems require the user to build up an utterance word-byword each time, and are thus often laborious for the user and slow (and thus less effective) in communication. For this reason, an AAC system was developed which relies on pre-stored scripts and an engaging user interface to predict and guide the user through many standard dialogue situations with a minimum of effort. In order to allow individuality in using the system, an authoring package has been developed. This allows users (or their carers) to modify existing scripts or to add new scripts into the system, and has also been designed to facilitate exchange of scripts between users. The systems developed utilise current speech synthesisers for spoken output, and are commercially available in English, Dutch and German versions.

Many non-speaking people use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems to assist them to communicate with other people. Access to an AAC system is generally slow for its user, who may have other disabilities as well as being non-speaking. An AAC system can contain stored words, messages and stories for use in communication, and there can be a large quantity of such information for the user to search through and select from while he or she is trying to participate in conversation. New user interface techniques are required to assist a user to navigate through the information stored in an AAC system and select appropriate items for use during live conversation. Information visualisation techniques may be able to assist a user to overview and appraise the contents of an AAC system as part of that selection process, and therefore improve its efficiency of use. This paper outlines key AAC issues and explores visualisation techniques which may be of value in an AAC context.

The proportion of the elderly population in many countries is increasing sharply. The number of elderly people who have dementia or have other difficulties and are in need of support in their daily life will correspondingly increase. Appropriately designed technology can help us to meet this challenge by providing cognitive assistance. For healthy elderly people who want to find creative and engaging ways to share their reminiscences, we have been working on systems which allow them to make use of the Internet to collect and build their own personalised reminiscence Web site. For people who are quite severely affected by dementia, with no functioning short-term memory, we have been developing ways in which they could still enjoy speaking about the past, assisted by a multimedia system. For people with dementia who are still in their own homes we have been developing the elements needed for a 24 hour computer-based prompting system.

Computer-based systems that are developed to assist people with severe disabilities can often have interesting wider applications. A computer-based communication system has been developed to give non-speaking people multi-lingual capability. It is based on developments in this field in conversational modelling and utterance prediction, making use of pre-stored material. The system could also be used by people whose only communication disadvantage is not being able to speak a foreign language. The system consists of a large store of reusable conversational material duplicated in several languages and a model of conversation which allows the system to link the items together into appropriate sequences. A unique feature of the system is that both the non-speaking person and the communication partner use the communicator in their dialogue. In comparison with a multi-lingual phrase book, the system helped users to have a more natural conversation, and to take more control of the interaction.

This paper details the development of ICU-Talk, a computer-based communication aid. This aid has been designed specifically for patients who are temporarily unable to communicate due to intubation and/or ventilation within a hospital intensive care unit (ICU). The very specific needs of this client group have been considered by the multi-disciplinary research team and incorporated into the design of the system.

Virtual reality technology offers a number of useful possibilities for people with disabilities. An obvious application is for those who face mobility problems to navigate around a virtual environment with minimal physical movement, allowing someone with limited motor ability the opportunity to explore virtual spaces with the same freedom of someone without physical impairments. This has implications for educational and entertainment systems, but also opens up possibilities for therapeutic systems, where the effects of a small amount of movement might be exaggerated in virtual representation. We have been investigating some less obvious applications of virtual reality for people with disabilities. The development of graphical interfaces with metaphorical representations which the user manipulates suggests that a three dimensional, realistic representation may be helpful as a interface in some situations. Work on improving complex computer based communication systems for non speaking people has involved investigating new ways to present conversational material to the user. A system has been developed which presents the material in terms of realistic scenes through which the user can navigate. In another project a virtual reality scene has been used to attempt to capture the interest and then channel the attention of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In both cases the approach seems to offer advantages. One feature of both projects is giving the disabled user more and better control-over the interface, and also in their interactions with others.

The challenges faced by people who are severely physically impaired and nonspeaking are demonstrated by the fact that, even with current technology, the word rates that they can achieve using current communication systems tend to range from two to ten words per min. We have been investigating ways in which prestored reusable texts might assist in improving the performance of such systems. Beginning with a study of the acceptability and effects of including prestored texts in a conversation, this investigation examined a series of methods of increasing complexity that had the system itself perform some of the cognitive and manipulative tasks required to locate suitable texts for a user to include in conversation. These methods have included logging conversational paths for potential reuse in future interactions, using a hypertext structure for storing and navigating through conversational texts, employing fuzzy information retrieval, and building a system based on scripts, plans, and goals. Seeing the possible conversation modes as occurring at varying levels of novelty, from predictable routines through reusable texts to uniquely created utterances, the most likely area for significant improvement then is in the storage and retrieval of large amounts of reusable text. Research needs to discover ways of making the retrieval process as effortless and efficient as possible to free the user to concentrate on the interaction itself.

The University of Delaware and the University of Dundee are collaborating on a project that is investigating the application of spatialization and spatial metaphors to interfaces for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. This paper outlines the project's motivation, goals, and methodological considerations. It presents a number of design principles obtained from a review of the HCI literature. Finally, it describes progress on the demonstration of this approach. This application called VAL provides a computer-based word board that retains spatial equivalence to the user's paper-based system. It also allows the user to access an extended lexicon through an interface to the WordNet lexical database.

Groupware is designed to provide opportunities for physically dispersed computer users to co-operate in a manner akin to a face-to-face meeting. Little is understood, however, of the factors that might influence its success. One possible factor is ‘floor control’, or turntaking, which is an important feature of face-to-face meetings. The paper describes experiments designed to examine the importance of turn-taking in computer-mediated communications, in comparison with face-to-face conversations, and considers means whereby turntaking behaviour, and hence the effectiveness of groupware, can be improved.

No abstract available.

A system for producing synthetic speech which incorporates vocal emotion effects has been developed. This has been incorporated into a communication prosthesis for non-vocal people to give them more freedom of expression via a synthetic voice. A range of common emotions can be simulated by the system.