Thoughts on day two of the The 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.

A bazaar coincidence; the first session again provided to haul of
good work! From ‘Humsher’ the soft-keyboard controlled (quite well, it seems) by humming different notes/tones; ‘ACES’, an Aphasia emulator which looks like it may provide us with a way of showing developers just the kind of missing aspects of language an aphasic user would experience (may favourite for today); and on to ‘We Need to Communicate!’ to help hearing parents of deaf children learn, and continue to use, sign language. Finally, I was also stuck by an exploratory study of 3D gaming environments for people with Aphasia from City University – very nice cross-disciplinary work – and don’t let the title fool you, it is much less about gaming than you may imagine.

I must also mention ALL the Student Research Competition presenters – all very good presentations, I wrote after each – good slides, good delivery, confident and clear for each one as they came to present (mouth open and incredulous, as I wasn’t expecting such a consistently great show).

In conclusion, I think the main thing that stuck me was the nature of all the work presented both today and yesterday. Some of it may not be in my field, some may not have been directly to my taste, but without doubt it was all solid work, and a pleasure to hear (as supported by the high number of audience members in attendance at all sessions).