People rely on online information for important life tasks such as managing personal finances and understanding medical symptoms. However, due to its intrinsically language-focused nature, online search poses considerable difficulties for people with language impairments. Currently these difficulties are poorly understood. We report findings from an observation of the information search behavior of 12 people with aphasia. We identify a wide range of difficulties and strategies aimed at combating them, spanning the entire information search process. Findings include previously unreported difficulties and strategies that highlight the importance of designing search technologies to better support the complex needs of people who find language challenging, such as by facilitating word finding cueing strategies, error prevention and recovery, browsing, appropriation, text interpretation and and by decreasing reliance on language competency in general. This has the potential not only to benefit searchers with language impairments, but to make information search easier for all.

Speech-enabled smart speakers are common devices used for numerous tasks in everyday life. While speech-enabled technologies are widespread, using one’s voice as a computing modality introduces new accessibility challenges for people with speech disfluencies such as stammering (also known as stuttering). This paper investigates the smart speaker user experiences of people who stammer over three weeks. We conducted diary studies and semi-structured interviews with 11 individuals to identify their daily routines, difficulties with successful interactions, and strategies to overcome these barriers. Our analysis demonstrates key factors such as device location, its affordances, and the structure of commands had a strong impact on user experience. Participants highlighted different linguistic strategies to try and overcome interaction difficulties and discussed the potential of using smart speakers for speech and language therapy. We emphasise the need to further understand the experiences of people who stammer in smart speaker design to increase their accessibility.

Visual creative forms, such as painting and sculpture, are a common expressive outlet and offer an alternative to language-based expression. They are particularly beneficial for those who find language challenging due to an impairment – for example, people with aphasia. However, being creative with digital platforms can be challenging due to the language-based barriers they impose. In this work, we describe an accessible tool called Inker. Inker supports people with aphasia in accessing digital creativity, supported by previously created physical artistic work.

Creativity and humour allow people to be expressive and to address topics which they might otherwise avoid or find deeply uncomfortable. One such way to express these sentiments is via comics. Comics have a highly-visual format with relatively little language. They therefore offer a promising opportunity for people who experience challenges with language to express creativity and humour. Most comic tools, however, are not accessible to people with language impairments. In this paper we describe Comic Spin, a comic app designed for people with aphasia. Comic Spin builds upon the literature on supporting creativity by constraining the creative space. We report both the design process and the results of a creative workshop where people with aphasia used Comic Spin. Participants were not only successful in using the app, but were able to create a range of narrative, humorous and subversive comics.

Multimedia digital content (combining pictures, text and music) is ubiquitous. The process of creating such content using existing tools typically requires complex, language-laden interactions which pose a challenge for users with aphasia (a language impairment following brain injury). Tangible interactions offer a potential means to address this challenge, however, there has been little work exploring their potential for this purpose. In this paper, we present CreaTable a platform that enables us to explore tangible interaction as a means of supporting digital content creation for people with aphasia. We report details of the co-design of CreaTable and findings from a digital creativity workshop. Workshop findings indicated that CreaTable enabled people with aphasia to create something they would not otherwise have been able to. We report how users' aphasia profiles affected their experience, describe tensions in collaborative content creation and provide insight into more accessible content creation using tangibles.

Personas are powerful tools for designing technology and envisioning its usage. They are widely used to imagine archetypal users around whom to orient design work. We have been exploring co-created personas as a technique to use in co-design with users who have diverse needs. Our vision was that this would broaden the demographic and liberate co-designers of their personal relationship with a health condition. This paper reports three studies where we investigated using co-created personas with people who had Parkinson's disease, dementia or aphasia. Observational data of co-design sessions were collected and analysed. Findings revealed that the co-created personas encouraged users with diverse needs to engage with co-designing. Importantly, they also afforded additional benefits including empowering users within a more accessible design process. Reflecting on the outcomes from the different user groups, we conclude with a discussion of the potential for co-created personas to be applied more broadly.

Creative activities allow people to express themselves in rich, nuanced ways. However, being creative does not always come easily. For example, people with speech and language impairments, such as aphasia, face challenges in creative activities that involve language. In this paper, we explore the concept of constrained creativity as a way of addressing this challenge and enabling creative writing. We report an app, MakeWrite, that supports the constrained creation of digital texts through automated redaction. The app was co-designed with and for people with aphasia and was subsequently explored in a workshop with a group of people with aphasia. Participants were not only successful in crafting novel language, but, importantly, self-reported that the app was crucial in enabling them to do so. We refect on the potential of technology-supported constrained creativity as a means of empowering expression amongst users with diverse needs.

The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) have become widely accepted as the standard for web accessibility evaluation. This poster investigates how the mobile version of these guidelines caters for people with aphasia (PWA) by comparing the results from user testing against that of an audit using the guidelines. We outline the efficacy of the guidelines in the broader context of how they cater for various impairments and offer some recommendations for designing for people with aphasia.

This paper reports the experience of participating in usability testing from the perspective of a person with aphasia. We briefly report adaptations to classic usability testing to enable the participation of people with aphasia. These included the use of short, direct tasks and physical artefacts such as picture cards. Authors of the paper include Ian, a user with aphasia who participated in adapted usability testing and Abi, a speech and language therapist researcher who facilitated sessions. Ian reports that these methods allowed him, as a person with aphasia, to engage with the usability testing process. We argue that such adaptations are essential in order to develop technologies which will be accessible to people with aphasia. This collaborative report provides a case for both how and why these adaptations can be made.

We report a novel and accessible questionnaire designed to examine levels of technology use in adults with severe aphasia and to assess the impact of a co-designed computer-delivered gesture therapy (GeST) on participants' wider technology use. The questionnaire is currently being used in a group study of 30 participants with severe aphasia. Early outcomes indicate that people with severe aphasia are able to use the questionnaire effectively to report levels of technology use. Data from 11 participants suggests low levels of use for many items of everyday technology prior to therapy. Presented work will further examine the effect of GeST therapy on individuals' reported technology-use and also examine correlations between questionnaire outcomes and three other factors: performance on measures of cognition; and the amount and diversity of GeST-use.

People with aphasia experience difficulties with all aspects of language and this can mean that their access to technology is substantially reduced. We report a study undertaken to investigate the issues that confront people with aphasia when interacting with technology, specifically 3D game environments. Five people with aphasia were observed and interviewed in twelve workshop sessions. We report the key themes that emerged from the study, such as the importance of direct mappings between users' interactions and actions in a virtual environment. The results of the study provide some insight into the challenges, but also the opportunities, these mainstream technologies offer to people with aphasia. We discuss how these technologies could be more supportive and inclusive for people with language and communication difficulties.