Person-centered accessible technologies and computing solutions through interdisciplinary and integrated perspectives from disability research

Human-centered computing and human-centered multimedia computing (HCMC) have emerged as important subfields of computational science which leverage the social and behavioral sciences toward improving the usability of technologies and multimedia systems. While technological solutions have made significant strides for the broader population, individuals with disabilities have been largely ignored, often having to force-fit or adapt themselves to available solutions. The authors first introduced a methodology to enrich HCMC by considering perspectives from individuals with disabilities. They subsequently introduced a person-centered approach to HCMC known as person-centered multimedia computing (PCMC). In the proposed work, they seek to further enrich the PCMC methodology by incorporating interdisciplinary inspirations that take into account the diverse challenges associated with assistive technology design and deployment. Several applications are presented, highlighting how considerations of technology, adaptation and policy from a disability perspective can enrich the design of person-centered accessible technologies. This approach has been implemented through ongoing work on a NSF IGERT project, “Alliance for Person-centered Accessible Technologies,” details of which are also provided in this paper.