Keynotes at ICCHP-AAATE: "Brainfood for AT and eAccessibility"

ICCHP-AAATE presents outstanding talks with the potential to raise awareness for new domains and to open new perspectives for researchers and practitioners in AT and eInclusion. The keynote speeches should make the field of eInclusion reflect and rethink its own practice. They should be provoking and motivating to look accross traditional borders of disciplines:

Wednesday Springer Opening Keynote
Thursday Roland Wagner Keynote
Friday Accessibility Outlook Keynote and Panel

Springer Opening Keynote - Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Giampiero Griffo

Post-human society and persons with disabilities citizenship: A question of democracy

Giampiero GRIFFO, Human right defender, Coordinator of the technic and scientific committe of the National Observatory of the condition of persons with disabilities and Co-director of the Center for governmentality and disability studies “Robert Castel” (CeRC) of University “Suor Orsola Benincasa” in Naples. Wheelchair user, active from 19722 at local, national and international level, is World Council member of Disabled Peoples International, board member of European Disability Forum and chairperson of the Italian network on disability and development, member of S. Marino bioethic commette. Advisor in Italian delegation at the Ad Hoc Committee that writed the UNCRPD. Expert in European and international cooperation projets has editing articles, books and research in all areas of disability issues at national and international level in 4 languages. Member of the economic and social committee of the Italian Council of Ministries Presidency for planning the post SARS-COV-2 pandemic.

Roland Wagner Keynote - Thursday, July 14, 2022

Alessandra Pedrocchi

Neuroprostheses and robotics in neurorehabilitation and for assistance of severely disable people

Superficial Functional Electrical Stimulation has been studied for years. However, it is still underexploited in daily clinical practice. One of the primary reasons is that we still do not clearly understand what happens to the brain when using Functional Electrical Stimulation at the muscular level. This understanding is essential to define how to use FES to enhance its effects at the brain level. The development of hybrid solutions, where FES and robotics are combined, have proved to powerfully impact the relearning and translation of motor abilities to recover daily autonomy.
The use of robotics for supporting daily tasks by persons with severe disabilities is a very open field. At the same time, robotics for assistance must be sustainable for single users in a niche market. Technological complexity and sustainability must be discussed and faced with the patients and society.

Alessandra Pedrocchi is full Professor at the Department of Electronics, Informatics, and Biomedical Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano. She is one of the founders of the Nearlab laboratory, the NeuroEngineering And Medical Robotics lab, established in 2008 at POLIMI.

Keynote Session and Panel discussion: Accessibility Outlook 2022 - Friday, July 15, 20d22

XR-Accessibility: The missing links to make it happen

The easy, flexible, universally applicable, considerably stable and globally standardised Human-Computer Interface (HCI) has been the core and main access point for digital Accessibility and Inclusion. Being able to focus on this one standard interface reduces the complexity of addressing the diversity requirements of users with disabilities considerably. This has been a major driving force and success factor making "digital" the universal tool for inclusion, as best expressed in the UNCRPD. Guidelines, standards, techniques and tools for implementing accessibility in the design and engineering process are at hand, as this year's ICCHP-AAATE and the series of STSs and keynote panels running for more than 20 years, documents.

By nature any changes to the HCI have a high impact on accessibility and participation of people with disabilities in the digital society. Carefully monitoring and pro-actively researching and analysing trends and developments is key. This session will highlight challenges related to the upcoming broad scale uptake and use of XR - Extended Reality, an umbrella term also including Virtual or Augmented Reality. It includes new ways of interacting including haptics, tangibles, spatcial computing, sensor technology, etc.

We will outline and discuss the state of the art and identify missing links 

1. to make XR  an assistive solutions to overcoming functional limitations and allowing easier and better participation 
2. to bring XR to a similar level of Accessibility as known from Digital/Web-Accessibility and integrate it into standards and policy measures

We will in particular discuss:

• the state of the art in XR guidelines, standards, techniques and tools (e.g. W3C/WAI XR activities)
• new and promising approaches and solutions of XR-based assistive solutions
• potential barriers and challenges of XR  for people with disabilities still working with traditional AT
• education and training needs for end users and the supporting environment
• support and training for designers, developers and engineers
• key domains and questions where research and development is needed

The session will include:

1. An introductory keynote  by Dr. Nicholas Giudice, Professor in the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Maine; Chief Research Scientist at the Virtual Environments and Multimodal Interaction (VEMI) Lab; Chief Research Officer at Unar Lab, Orono, Maine, USA.
2. An introductory statement by Chris Patnoe, EMEA Lead for Accessibility and Disability Inclusion, Google, UK.
3. An introductory statement by Christopher M. Lee, Ph.D., VP & Managing Director of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), G3ict
4. A panel discussion with the keynote speakers.

The session will be moderated by Dr. Joshue O'Connor, InterAccess and earlier W3C/WAI.

The session will finish with the official Closing Ceremony and Farewell reception of ICCHP-AAATE 2022.

More info on Panellists:

Joshue O’Connor is director of InterAccess, Ireland’s leading accessibility consultancy. Josh is an experienced technology consultant and internationally recognised expert in the field of inclusive design and accessible web, mobile and application development.
He is ex co-chair of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group at the W3C, ex-editor of the WCAG 2.1 accessibility standard.  He recently worked at W3C researching accessibility user needs and requirements for a range of emerging technologies, including Real Time Communications, Immersive environments (XR) and more.
He’s a tech sceptic, musician and has written a couple of books, one of which isn’t bad. He likes to cook Indian vegetarian food, garden, and jam on his Soundcloud.

Dr. Nicholas Giudice received his Ph.D. in the Cognitive and Brain Sciences program from the University of Minnesota in 2004. He is currently Professor of Spatial Computing in the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Maine and founder and Chief Research Scientist of UMaine's Virtual Environments and Multimodal Interaction (VEMI) Lab. Nicholas's research focuses on the design and evaluation of bio-inspired multisensory technology supporting graphical access, navigation with and without vision, and autonomous vehicle accessibility. His work is aimed at increasing information access and independence for blind and visually impaired (BVI) people, older adults experiencing visual impairment, and sighted folks in eyes-free situations. He is himself congenitally blind and has a long history of both designing and using assistive technologies.
Dr. Giudice has published over 150 scientific papers in these areas, advised over 100 graduate and undergraduate students, and collaborated on over $15 million in research grants in this field from NIH, NSF, and NIDILRR. He is on the board of directors of two blindness-related organizations (The Iris Network and ACB of Maine), the editorial board of two accessibility journals (Transactions on Accessible Computing and Assistive Technology), the scientific advisory board of two information-access companies (Aira Tech Corp and Click&Go wayfinding maps), and is the co-founder and Chief Research Officer of UNAR Labs, a Maine-based start-up company designing innovative multisensory technologies promoting inclusive information access.

Christopher Patnoe is the EMEA lead for Accessibility and Disability Inclusion at Google. He leads Google's efforts around the accessibility of product, people, policy and partnerships across EMEA - with a particular focus on Emerging Markets. He has more than 25 years experience in Tech working at companies like Apple, Sony Ericsson and Disney where he's built hardware, software, and services. His current passion is Accessibility at the intersection of immersive technologies (AR/VR) and consumer hardware. He is the chair for the Immersive Captions Community Group with the W3C, is the Accessibility Working Group Chair for the XR Association, and sits on the Board of Trustees for the American Foundation for the Blind, the GAAD Foundation, and Digit Music. Christopher has a degree in Music from UC Berkeley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christopher M. Lee, Ph.D., is VP & Managing Director of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), a division of the Global Initiative on Inclusive ICT (G3ict). Christopher founded and directed the largest higher education service and research center in North America, serving thousands of universities and colleges. He has been awarded and served as principal investigator on several research grants. Christopher is an international author and public speaker on learning disabilities and universal access.