The 2010 SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award has been awarded to Anne Marie Piper from the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA, for her contribution to the paper “Introducing Multimodal Paper-Digital Interfaces for Speech-Language Therapy”. This was written in conjunction with Nadir Weibel and James D. Hollan from the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.

Introducing Multimodal Paper-Digital Interfaces for Speech-Language Therapy

After a stroke or brain injury, it may be more difficult to understand language and communicate with others. Speech-language therapy may help an individual regain language and cope with changes in their communication abilities. Our research examines the process of speech-language therapy with an emphasis on the practices of therapists working with adults with aphasia and apraxia of speech. This paper presents findings from field work undertaken to inform the design of a mixed paper-digital interface prototype using multimodal digital pens. We describe and analyze therapists’ initial reactions to the system and present two case studies of use by older adults undergoing speech-language therapy. We discuss the utility of multimodal paper-digital interfaces to assist therapy and describe our vision of a system to help therapists independently create custom interactive paper materials for their clients.

Full Paper Available from the ACM Digital Library

Labels: Awards, Best Student Paper

The 2009 SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award has been awarded to Anna C. Cavender from the University of Washington, USA, for her contribution to the paper “ClassInFocus: Enabling Improved Visual Attention Strategies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students”. This was written in conjunction with Jeffrey P. Bigham from the University of Rochester, New York, USA and Richard E. Ladner from the University of Washington, USA.

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

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.

Full Paper Available from the ACM Digital Library

Labels: Awards, Best Student Paper