$JOHNB@OCVAXC.BITNET (John Brooking) (05/10/91)
Index Number: 15471 From the ACM SIGGUCS Newsletter, News & Announcements (I'm just passing it on, like it says to, please direct question to the guy mentioned): ============================================================================== UNWINDOWS: A VISUAL HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERFACE FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED A Research Project Funded by the National Science Foundation Ephraim P. Glinert, Prinipal Investigator The ever expanding role of window-based human-computer interfaces, while leading to dramatic improvements for users with normal vision, is in fact detrimental, and often highly so, to the millions of people who are visually impaired but not blind. Indeed, current trends threaten to widen rather than close the gap between normal and visually impaired users, so much so that the latter group may soon find themselves virtually locked out of the community of people able to take advantage of the full power of computers. Our goal in the current research is to prevent that from happening! To do this we need to develop radically new concepts and then implement a prototype for an alternative -- perhaps extension would be a better word -- to the interfaces currently in use, an alternative which will allow those who are visually handicapped to become first-class computer users. Since we're determined to assist real people in solving real problems, we'll need input from many sources if we're to be successful. That's why we're turning to you for help. The UnWindows project provides a unique opportunity for indiviuals like yourself, who use comptuers on a regular basis and who: * are themselves visually impaired * work with the visually impaired * have friends or relatives who are visually impaired to tell us of their experiences and to provde our team with ideas which may eventually benefit society as a whole. UnWindows is a not-for-profit government sponsored research project. NO COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF ANY KIND WILL BE DEVELOPED! Rather, our results will be published in the scientific literature will thereby become freely availble to all. We are committed to doing our utmost to ensure that the UnWindows project succeeds, and we hope you'll join us in this undertaking. All it takes is a small amount of your time. Please feel free to deluge the Principal Investigator with your thoughts and ideals (or even just one!), or to contact him for further information. Duplicate this document and pass it on to others who may be interested. Your active participation in this project CAN make a difference, and we look forward to hearing from you! Thank you. About the Principal Investigator: Ephraim P. Glinert joined RPI in 1985 after completing PhD at the University of Washinton. In addition to computers and the physically handicapped, his research interests include visual and multiparadigm programming environments, multimodal human-computer interfaces, and CASE for large-scale systems. He is the author of an introductory computer science text, and editor of a two-volume tutorial on visual programming environments published earlier this year by the IEEE Computer Society Press. In 1987, he was elected Vice Chair of the ACM's Special Interest Group for Computers and the Physcially Handicapped (SIGCAPH), a position in which he currently serves. Ephraim P. Glinert, Assistant Professor Computer Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York 12180 (518) 276-2657 (voice) (518) 276-4033 (fax) glinert@turing.cs.rpi.edu