[Irl-dean] Future of Accessible Interactive Television Workshop, CfP

[Graham McAllister]

Hi All,

For anyone interested in getting involved in the future of accessible  
interactive television (iTV), there's a one-day workshop in Salzburg,  
Austria on July 2nd (you could make a long trip out of this and go to  
the ICCHP conference that Mark circulated also). The call for papers  
is attached below and more information is available on the website at http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk//workshop/index.html

Graham.




Title:  Inclusive Interactive Television: Setting the Agenda for  
Innovative Research
One-Day Workshop organised by COST Action 294, EuroiTV 2008
Salzburg (Austria) 2nd July 2008




Technical description
This workshop seeks to bring together broadcasters, industrial service  
designers and academics who are concerned about making Interactive  
Television inclusive and accessible to all citizens. Worldwide, as  
many countries prepare for a ‘digital switchover’, questions remain  
over the ‘inclusiveness’ of this emerging technology. Currently, there  
appears to be minimal commitment from industry to make interactive  
television (iTV) related services more accessible across the wide  
spectrum of users. Whilst contemporary design thinking tends to target  
at a notional ‘average’ user without impairments, an increasingly  
significant segment of the population does not fit this description.   
Therefore a different perspective is needed.  Many vulnerable groups  
are at significant risk of being increasingly marginalized if deeper  
consideration is not given to the wide diversity of abilities within  
television viewing populations, and how this may be addressed by design.

The next phase of development involves an increase in the  
personalisation of services and handheld devices to enhance the iTV  
experience. This implies a significant challenge to designers and  
developers.   As with every technological advance, user groups on the  
margins (e.g. older adults, those with sensory and cognitive  
impairments) are in danger of being further segregated, as digital  
services overwhelmingly focus on mainstream audiences. This is partly  
due to commercial expediency, but also due to a tendency for designers  
to work with a mental model of the ‘average user’ as the target group.

iTV has both a clear imperative for ‘design-for-all’, and an  
opportunity to use ‘design-for-all’ as a mission that motivates  
exploration and innovation by practitioners working within this  
growing multidisciplinary field. The imperative is that a whole range  
of users have much to gain from, and contribute to, the next  
generation of digital products and services. Therefore it would be  
bitterly ironic if such audience groups were purposefully excluded.  
For example, AbilityNet in the UK www.abilitynet.com have found that  
many users with impairments have huge enthusiasm for social software  
such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘MySpace’ and see them as having the potential  
to compensate for social difficulties caused by their impairments.   
However many current User Generated Content sites effectively exclude  
users with impairments.

The opportunity is that the vast spectrum of needs and desires  
represented by the population of ‘non-average’ users affords the  
discovery and development of pioneering solutions at the leading-edge,  
which may also prove to be a better fit for many other (almost-but-not- 
quite) ‘average’ users.  The ubiquity of host technologies, innovation  
and diversity in the design of input devices, greater tailorability in  
content delivery and greater user involvement in the creation and  
selection of content and in all aspects of ‘interface design’ all  
represent this leading edge. Rather than condense design targets to  
‘typical’ users, the agenda is to explore the space of possible  
solutions for diversity and personalisation across the wider  
heterogeneous population.

The considerations above suggest that ‘design-for-all’ belongs at the  
leading edge of iTV research.  This implies the need for novel  
strategies in research and design that facilitate exploration of the  
whole user population, of the physical, psychological and social  
landscape, of the evolving leisure, entertainment and domestic  
contexts and of technology (device) and service (infrastructure)  
designs.  This workshop seeks to set out an agenda for putting  
universal usability and accessibility in the forefront of iTV research  
innovation.

Position papers are sought from those who wish to attend.  Workshop  
candidates are requested to send a position paper of 1000 words length  
(2 A4 pages) before 29/02/2008. Themes include but are not limited to:

Strategies for designing accessible social software and supporting  
user-generated content
Innovation in design of handheld interaction devices to support users  
with impairments
Inclusive and participatory design approaches
Design for ubiquitous TV
Design for supporting users with specific impairments
Tangible interaction and iTV
New metaphors and models for iTV interaction
Accessible games as a pioneer application
Design for diversity (rather than an ‘average user’)

Intended audience:   The workshop invites contributions from  
industrial iTV service designers, human factors practitioners,  
broadcasters, researchers, HE academics and students interested in  
design-for-all, innovation in design and the design process in general.

The workshop will begin with a plenary discussion of the major issues  
raised in previously submitted position statements.  The discussion  
will be introduced by a member of the organising group presenting an  
overview of the interests and concerns expressed in the position  
statements.   This will be followed by breakout groups themed by the  
organising committee on the basis of papers received. Prior to the  
workshop, and based on the overview, a number of topics for breakout  
groups will be proposed together with proposed membership.  The  
relevance of this grouping will be confirmed or amended by the plenary  
discussion.

The breakout groups will report to a plenary session where the  
rapporteurs will summarise the discussion and present the prioritised  
research agenda for the topic addressed by their group.  An integrated  
agenda for research will be developed through discussion (and  
hopefully consensus).

The final plenary session of the workshop will discuss the  
practicalities of putting the research agenda into action.  This will  
include setting up a network for future communication and  
collaboration. Possibilities for collaboration through FP7, an ACM  
Special Interest Group or other funding streams will be examined.

Workshop agenda:
09.00 - Introduction and Welcome
09.15 - Plenary discussion: Overview of interests and concerns raised  
in position papers
10.15 - Organisation of breakout groups
10.30 - Coffee Break
11.00 - Breakout groups
13.00 - Lunch
14.00 - Continue breakout groups
15.00 - Coffee break
15.30 - Breakout group summaries
16.15 - Final Plenary session: future agenda
17.15 - Close

Deadlines
     * March 14th, 2008: Workshop submission deadline
     * March 31st, 2008: Feedback to authors
     * April 25th, 2008: Submission of camera-ready papers
     * July 2nd, 2008: Workshop at EuroITV2008, Salzburg, Austria

Organizing Committee:
Dr Mark Springett (m.springett at mdx.ac.uk)  is a member of the  
Interaction Design Centre and the Design-for-all research group at  
Middlesex University. He is a member of the Usability Professionals  
Association.  He is a Working Group Co-ordinator for MAUSE (COST  
action 194).  He has 19 years experience of working in the area of  
Human-Computer Interaction, and has had a specialist interest in  
accessibility since 2000.  His recent research includes investigations  
of iTV accessibility for citizens with low vision. (primary contact)

Mr Mark Rice is a researcher at the Queen Mother Research Centre,  
University of Dundee. He is also a board member of Capability Scotland  
(Scotland’s largest disability organisation). With a keen interest in  
the development of user interfaces and user-centered methods for non- 
mainstream groups, he has worked on a number of iTV-related projects  
in support of people with low vision, dementia, and older people per  
se. He has also been involved in logistically supporting (organizing  
committee - Pemberton, Griffiths, Masthoff) both the 1st and 2nd  
EuroITV conferences held in Brighton, UK.

Dr Alex Carmichael is an applied cognitive ageing researcher (BA  
Psych, PhD Applied Experimental Cognitive Psychology [based on EC  
funded AUDETEL project]).  He has fifteen years experience in human  
factors research of older users of ICT (including digital television),  
covering all aspects from initial requirements gathering to summative  
evaluation. Throughout this, his approach has aimed to emphasise  
‘ageing’ as a reflection of the true diversity of the ‘normal’  
population, rather than as a separate sub-group. He was involved in  
organising the workshop (with Newell, Mueller & Jones); Promoting User  
Sensitive Inclusive Design: Strategies for Communicating User Needs to  
Designers, which was part of Accessible Design in the Digital World  
Conference, 23-25 August, 2005, Dundee. He was also involved (as part  
of the UTOPIA Project team) in organising In Search of Utopia, a  
workshop aimed primarily at people from industry to raise awareness  
about the requirements of older adult users of ICT, held on the 20th  
April 2004 in Edinburgh.

Mr Richard N Griffiths a member of the British HCI Group is course  
leader of the MSc in Digital Television Management & Production at the  
University of Brighton, UK, a course the he has managed since its  
inception in 2001.  He researches usability design for interactive TV,  
particularly accessibility, and is currently involved with an EU FP6  
multi-partner project; LOGOS: Knowledge on demand for ubiquitous  
learning.  He has previously been an organising member of workshops at  
Interact 1999 and CHI 2000 on usability pattern language, and HCI 2002  
and 2003 on iTV and accessibility.

Prof Rudolf Jäger heads the interactive TV Laboratory at the  
University of Applied Science Giessen-Friedberg, Germany. He has more  
than 10 years experience in digital TV, STB development and in the  
design of user Interfaces for interactive digital TV Services. His  
current research concerns advanced iTV-services comprising the  
broadcast and the on demand model in a modern Home-IPTV environment.

Dr Graham McAllister is a Senior Lecturer in HCI at the University of  
Sussex, UK. His research interests are in the areas of accessibility  
and usability of video games and interactive systems.  In particular,  
how the user experience of interactive media can be evaluated and how  
games can be designed for people with special needs.

Effie Lai-Chong Law is a Research Fellow at ETH Zürich (Switzerland)  
and at the University of Leicester (UK). She obtained her M. Soc. Sc.  
in Psychology from the University of Hong Kong and her PhD in  
Psychology from the University of Munich (LMU), Germany. Her research  
domains are human-computer interaction (HCI) and technology-enhanced  
learning (TEL). She has presented and published a number of papers in  
international conferences, books and journals. She is the chief editor  
of a recent book entitled “Maturing Usability: Quality in Software,  
Interaction and Value” (2008, Springer UK). Currently, she is chairing  
a large-scale international project COST294-MAUSE (http://www.cost294.org 
) in which leading HCI experts from 21 European countries are involved.





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