Forum for Advancing Cognitive Technologies

1. About the Forum
   1. Audience
   2. Goals
   3. How to Participate
   4. Sponsorship
2. Announcements
3. Compatibility Opportunities
   1. AIMS (AbleLink Instructional Media Standard)
   2. User Interface Guidelines
   3. Common Architecture
   4. Service Architectures
4. Technology Trends
   1. Single System Signon and User Profiles
   2. Occasionally Connected Computing
   3. Ubiquitous Social Communication
   4. Wireless Electrode Technologies
   5. Smart Home Technologies
   6. Disability, Identity, and Interdependence: ICTs and New Social Forms
5. Technology Opportunities
   1. Wheelchair Collision Avoidance
   2. Text Simplification
   3. Multimodal Presentation Support
   4. A Methodology for Promoting Assistive Technology Development
6. Resources
7. Projects
   1. Discussion Forum: Including People with Cognitive Disabilities in Usability Studies
   2. Language Engineering for Text Simplification
   3. Information Presentation Preferences in User Profile for e-Authentication
   4. The Aphasia Project
8. Participants

About the Forum

1. Audience

   People interested in cognitive assistive technology.

2. Goals

   We wish to support people with cognitive disabilities by shaping mainstream technology developments. We want mainstream technology trends to shape the next generation of cognitive assistive technology. We want to promote compatibility among cognitive assistive technology products.

3. How to Participate

   Share your knowledge by adding comments, announcements, and resources to this site, using the input links provided below. Recruit new participants whose expertise will help meet our goals. Add your name to the Participants list.

4. Sponsorship

   The Forum for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies is an activity of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Advancing Cognitive Technologies, based at the University of Colorado. It is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities.

   RERC-ACT is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

Announcements

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1. ACM Student Research Competition http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/assets06/src/ Undergraduate and graduate students can gain visibility for the research on assistive technology and accessibility.


2. Student Design Competition in Cognitive Assistive Technology The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Advancing Cognitive Technologies is conducting a student design competition, with a first prize of $5000, over the coming year.
   
   Examples of appropriate projects include: Improvement in accessibility of information on the World Wide Web for persons with cognitive disabilities. Memory aids for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Automated monitoring and coaching to help a person with a brain injury follow accepted conversation patterns. Aids for using public transportation. Prompting systems for work or daily life tasks. Interfacing an augmentative or alternative communication device, usable by a person with a cognitive disability, to a smartphone or email client. An email client or Web browser usable by a person with a cognitive disability. A communication device that helps a person with a cognitive disability stay in touch with friends, family, or care givers. Educational games usable by a person with a cognitive disability. Please note that these are only examples; entrants are encouraged to respond to needs they identify, using their creativity.
   
   The competition is open to students who are enrolled in accredited institutions of higher learning.
   
   Please see the details of the competition at http://rerc-act.org//NewsAndEvents/index.cfm?page=StudentDesignCompetition

Compatibility Opportunities

This section identifies ways developers can make cognitive assistive technology products and services more compatible by creating voluntary standards.

1. AIMS (AbleLink Instructional Media Standard)

   AIMS is a specification that will allow materials for task prompting systems to be played on different devices. People developing prompting materials can reach more users, since any AIMS-compatible player can used. People developing players can increase the available prompting materials for their players if they support AIMS, since any AIMS-compatible materials can be used. See AbleLink Instructional Media Standard for more information.

2. User Interface Guidelines

   Can the cognitive assistive technology community develop user interface guidelines that will promote compatibility? Today, users who move from one device to another, as different features or functions become important to them, face the need to learn new controls and conventions even for functions they have mastered on their old device. Can we do better? What are your ideas? Look at EZ-Access from the Trace Center at the University of Wisconsin. It defines core controls that have been used in a wide range of designs.

3. Common Architecture

   The President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities has issued a comprehensive call for action that includes recommendations for assistive technology. The call specifically highlights the need for "creating a common architecture in developing assistive technology." Such an architecture would have enormous benefits for developers as well as for users, allowing modular combinations of features and functions, and easier, more economical configuration of systems to meet individual needs.

   How can we address this challenge?

4. Service Architectures

   OnStar shows how human agents and automated services can be integrated in an assistance system. CaringFamily LLC is developing network support for family elder care. Prosocial Applications, Inc., has client-centered tools for coordinating the services of multiple caregivers, including data sharing. Can we envision a unified architecture that integrates an expanding array of assistive services for people with cognitive disabilities?

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Technology Trends

This section identifies things that are happening or about to happen in mainstream technology that create opportunities for cognitive assistive technology.

1. Single System Signon and User Profiles

   Two consortia, LIberty Alliance and WS Federation, are developing protocols that will allow Web users to identify themselves once and then rove among participating sites without reentering identity information. The user profiles used in these systems could allow people with disabilities to specify what information presentation accommodations they prefer, so that sites that offer these accommodations would provide them automatically. To develop this opportunity, people with disabilities and their advocates need to define the need profile attributes and the appropriate privacy policies. How can we get this done?

   There are good developments in the world of instructional management systems that may provide the basis for user profile contents for Single System Signon. See ACCLIP.
   Also see work by W3C on CC/PP: this effort may adapt the ACCLIP spec for wider use. See project.

2. Occasionally Connected Computing

   The mainstream tech world is striving to make it easier to create information systems that can be used from devices that are mobile, and only sometimes online. Here's a sample discussion. A lot of cognitive assistive technology is delivered on that kind of platform... should assistive technology developers be following these developments? Do assistive technology applications present special challenges that should be addressed as Occasional Connected Computing ideas mature?

   1. Comment from Ed LoPresti:

      I am very interested in occasionally connected computing, and am interested to learn more about how different groups are addressing these issues. Ubiquitous computing has a lot of potential for helping people with disabilities in general, and cognitive disabilities in particular, stay in touch with both social support networks and software agents providing assistance (such as reminders or emergency support). But if we start to rely on network connectivity for these services, we must also make sure that high-priority prompts (e.g. medication reminders) don't get lost when the user walks out of a hotzone or an internet connection goes down.

3. Ubiquitous Social Communication

   Technology is making it inexpensive to be always in touch with your friends. Observers of young people, especially in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, report constant text messaging, no matter the setting. Does this kind of constant contact offer opportunities for people with cognitive disabilities? Are there obstacles to realizing these opportunities?

   1. Comment from Ed LoPresti:

      An opportunity and two obstacles leap to mind. The opportunity is to help a person with cognitive disability stay in contact with support persons without requiring constant in-person support; the consumer can be out in the community independently and a caregiver can stay home or in the office, but both can have peace of mind knowing that there is a connection in an emergency. One obstacle: the opportunity for constant communication can become a burden if either the consumer or the caregiver starts demanding constant attention from the other, no matter where they are. Another obstacle: conversing through instant text messaging requires a certain nimbleness of both mind and fingers which I (with no documented disabilities) lack; someone with a cognitive disability could get left behind by the flow of a conversation.

4. Wireless Electrode Technologies

   Mike Lightner adds the following news story: "$6.7 Million for Bionic War on Disabilities," University of Utah News (12/29/2004)

   The National Institutes of Health have awarded nearly $6.7 million in grants to researchers at the University of Utah's College of Engineering and Health Sciences Center to develop wireless electrodes that would help blind people see and disabled people walk, speak, or control a computer with neural impulses. [full story]

5. Smart Home Technologies

   Mike Lightner adds the following news story: "Intel: Home Sensors Could Monitor Seniors, Aid Diagnosis" IDG News Service (01/07/05)
   

   Intel researcher and social scientist Eric Dishman detailed the progress his company has made in developing a home sensor network for monitoring elderly residents and keeping doctors, family, and friends apprised of activities and problems at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Jan. 6, 2005. [full story]

1. Comment from Ed LoPresti:

   For one example of this technology moving into the marketplace for elders and people with disabilities, check out Blueroof Technologies in Pittsburgh.

6. Disability, Identity, and Interdependence: ICTs and New Social Forms

   1. Comment from Ed LoPresti:

      I'm interested in this general concept; but what are "ICT's" and what types of new social forms do you have in mind?

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Technology Opportunities

This section identifies new technology that could be useful for cognitive assistive technology if developed.

1. Wheelchair Collision Avoidance

   See University of Toronto news report.

2. Text Simplification

   Some pioneering efforts, like TheDesk.info, use carefully-edited text to simplify the presentation of complex information, in this case information about Medicaid programs relevant to people with cognitive disabilities. Mainstream natural language processing is advancing rapidly; is technology within reach that could automate the production of simplified text, or significantly reduce the cost of producing it? See project.

3. Multimodal Presentation Support

   TheDesk.info also includes optional spoken presentation of text, and optional video of a person speaking the text. Tools like Microsoft's FrontPage provide very high level support for putting your vacation pictures on the Web (it creates the thumbnails automatically, does the layout, etc.) Is there or could there be a tool that would make it much easier to include multimodal presentation of text on a Web page? In addition to encouraging the availability of multimodal material, such a tool would promote a standard user interface for controlling such presentations (a standard symbol for spoken output, for example.)

4. A Methodology for Promoting Assistive Technology Development

   The use of Personas in developing commercial software is spreading in popularity. If you could convince those using them to develop at least one of their Persona set to have a cognitive disability, it would push the team to learn more about such disabilities and to consider them in design. If you are not now familiar with Persona use, make note of this suggestion for possible consideration later.




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Resources

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1. ASSETS 2005 Keynote Talk on Technology for Cognitive Disabilities

   By Clayton Lewis. Reviews opportunities for progress in cognitive assistive technology.

Projects

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1. Discussion Forum: Including People with Cognitive Disabilities in Usability Studies

   Exchange questions and answers about appropriate procedures, Institutional Review Board approvals, and the like.

   Post a question or comment.(opens in new window).
   
   

1. References from RESNA 2006 Workshop on Including people with cognitive disabilities in usability studies.
2. Download slides from workshop... pdf

2. Language Engineering for Text Simplification

   Jim Martin, Clayton Lewis, Assad Jarrahian, Kirill Kireyev (University of Colorado). Seeking to extend language engineering techniques to automate the editing of text to reduce vocabulary and simplify sentence structure. See project description.

3. Information Presentation Preferences in User Profile for e-Authentication

   Keith Hazelton (University of Wisconsin) and collaborators in the Internet2 Middleware Architecture Committee for Education (MACE). USPerson is a user profile schema being developed for a US federal e-authentication project. USPerson will include the ACCLIP schema, so that users (with or without disabilities) can specify information presentation preferences in their profiles. See project wiki.

4. The Aphasia Project

   The Aphasia Project is a multi-disciplinary research project, a collaboration be tween the University of British Columbia and Princeton University, investigating how technology can be designed to support individuals with aphasia in their dai ly life. See our website for details about specific projects.

Participants

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1. Clayton Lewis Your moderator. RERC on Advancing Cognitive Technologies, University of Colorado. clayton dot lewis at colorado dot edu; http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~clayton


2. Cathy Bodine, Principal Investigator of the RERC-ACT, Director of Assistive Technology Partners at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center


3. Stefan Carmien, Graduate Student, CLever project. Stefan is interested in context aware mobile prompting technologies and end-user programming to support independence in persons with cognitive disabilities and caregivers. You can read more at  his website or contact him at carmien at cs dot colorado dot edu


4. Dan Davies, Founder and President, AbleLink Technologies, Colorado Springs, CO (dan at ablelinktech dot com)


5. Jack Davis, I am a former Biomedical Engineer; a graduate (1999) of NYU's Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program; currently co-authoring an introductory book on neuroanatomy. Currently, I am a computer specialist at the VA. My longstanding interest is in autism. (jack at panix dot com)


6. Melissa Dawe, PhD Student, Cognitive Levers Project, University of Colorado. I am working with families in the Boulder and Denver area to understand remote communication needs between individuals with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers. For my dissertation I will design a remote communication system to support these needs. My website is http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~meliss


7. Jonathan Grudin, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research (http://research.microsoft.com/~jgrudin)


8. Michael Lightner, Professor of ECE at CU Boulder and co-Director of the RERC-ACT.


9. Ed LoPresti, President, AT Sciences. http://www.at-sciences.com/about/edlopresti.html


10. David Randolph, Senior Staff Engineer, Motorola Mobile Devices and M.E. Candidate in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Email: David dot Randolph at colorado dot edu


11. Steven Stock, Vice President, AbleLink Technologies, 25 years of experience in organizations serving people with ID (steve at ablelinktech dot com)