ClassInFocus: Enabling Improved Visual Attention Strategies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Anna Cavender, Jeffrey Bigham and Richard Ladner

Eleventh International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2009)
Pittsburgh, PA, USA, October 26-28, 2009

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Abstract

Deaf and hard of hearing students must juggle their visual attention in current classroom settings. Managing many visual sources of information (instructor, interpreter or captions, slides or whiteboard, classmates, and personal notes) can be a challenge. ClassInFocus automatically notifies students of classroom changes, such as slide changes or new speakers, helping them employ more beneficial observing strategies. A user study of notification techniques shows that students who liked the notifications were more likely to visually utilize them to improve performance.