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CHAPTER 1

40 years–Highlights and a Brief Review

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Digital technology has maked an enormous difference in the lives of a great many people, but significant numbers of people have been excluded, or have excluded themselves, from these benefits. These include many older and disabled people and other minority groups including people from certain cultures and those with very poor educational achievements. This has been called the Digital Divide. As government and commerce increasingly rely on the internet, these groups are becoming more and more disenfranchised.

In the later part of the first decade of the 2000s, a range of initiatives were introduced to encourage such people to use Information Technology (IT) including advertising, provision of broadband in homes, and educational courses. A major problem, however, is that most information technology has not been designed with these groups of people in mind. They are either scared of it and/or do not think they will ever be able to use it. In order to play their part in reducing the Digital Divide, designers need take on the challenge of including the requirements of these “extra-ordinary” people in their practices.

IT systems have been developed to support older and disabled people for many years, and this book contains an historic review of research in some areas in the field. One important lesson from this research is that rules and guidelines for including disadvantaged people in designs are sometimes less than adequate.

Orthodoxy is the Grave of Intelligence. (Bertrand Russell)

This book highlights insights and lessons learnt from over 40 years leading a group researching into and developing computer systems for older and disabled people. With the goal of influencing the mind sets of designers, it focuses on ideas on which to ponder, rather than describing an exhaustive research methodology.

1.1 AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION

I was very fortunate whilst at University to have been, more or less, forced into what turned out to be an interdisciplinary education. I was too young to be trained as a computer engineer but I did learn to touch type before going up to University—in the vain hope that I would type out my lecture notes each evening. This early decision has been immensely helpful to me as a software engineer, and, in more recent times, for any writing tasks. (All students learning to touch type would, I believe, make a significant improvement to their efficiency—but in the UK this is not happening).

I had been very much focussed on science and engineering at school and read Electrical Engineering at Birmingham University. This was a traditional course, and was at the time (1959-1962) when transistors were gradually being introduced into such courses. So, I was taught about power transmission, valves (vacuum tubes), and transistors, but not computers or integrated circuits. On being awarded a BSc in 1962, I was offered a PhD studentship in that Department. My supervisor (Prof. Jack Allanson) was interested in how sound was reproduced on the cortex. He persuaded me to perform some experiments which involved playing sounds to human subjects and noting their responses. Thus, I had to learn about experimental psychology, both experimental methods and statistical analysis of results.

It had been agreed that, at the half-way point of my PhD, I would return to more traditional electrical engineering. Another staff member, however, had different ideas. He wanted some experiments done on how people recognised sonar images, and it was made clear to me that it would fit in better with a three-year PhD—as I was already up to speed on perceptual experiments. I was disappointed, but agreed to go down that path which resulted in my PhD being entirely in “Subjective Pattern Recognition”, with little or no engineering.

Everything might be for the best in this the best of all possible worlds. (Pangloss revised: Voltaire)

At the end of my student days I was a trained electrical engineer and, by happenstance, a self-taught experimental psychologist. Such an interdisciplinary background was unusual in those days. This combination, however, proved to be very beneficial in my career, and, towards the end of it, the concept of “inter-disciplinary research” had become very popular. So my reluctant decision proved to be a very good one—my first example of an apparent set-back turning out to be for the best in the long run.

1.2 INDUSTRY—SPEECH RECOGNITION RESEARCH

In 1965 my background in people, sound and engineering secured me a job in an industrial research laboratory that was funded to develop a speech recognition system. This was at a time when most researchers saw speech recognition as a relatively simple technical problem which “would be solved in two years, and make much money in five years”. This view of speech recognition continued throughout the rest of the last century but commercial success was very elusive. Interestingly, however, some of the earliest examples of commercial success of speech technology (synthesis and recognition) were as aids for people with disabilities. I was, and remain, very conscious of the complexity of speech and of the advantages of speech recognition—except in limited and carefully controlled situations [Newell, A., 1992a]. I was in a research environment whose aims did not fit with my views of what could be achieved, and the contribution that I, and the group I was part of, were able to make to that very overly-ambitious project was not great.

There were, however, many advantages: the project purchased one of the first laboratory computers—a Digital Equipment PDP8. This had 4,096 12-bit words of storage, a keyboard and a 10-character per second printer, paper tape reader and punch, and led to me obtaining on-the-job training in software engineering. As a laboratory tool, programming in assembly language was essential, and many hours were spent trying to produce very efficient programmes which fitted into the 4K of storage that was available. Thus, I was again fortunate in being an early user of laboratory computers—initially for developing laboratory tools and simulating electronic circuits and latterly as prototype electronic systems in their own right.

The other major advantage of my time in these laboratories was that I was able to read widely in the general area of speech and to be an early investigator of human computer interfaces. Up until that time the majority of work on human factors had been supported by the military with a focus on knobs and dials. As will be seen, the background that this gave me proved to be essential to many of the research issues that I subsequently investigated.

Opportunism—a valid research strategy.

What, in retrospect, was the turning point in my career path occurred by chance. It was becoming increasingly clear that the automatic speech recognition project—like the vast majority of such projects at that time—was not going to achieve its aim. One day, my immediate boss, almost as an aside, suggested that our technology might be beneficial to people with disabilities. As it was not possible at that time to recognise speech, I developed “VOTEM”, a Voice Operated Typewriter employing Morse Code. The idea being that a disabled person could speak Morse Code (dots and dashes), to spell out what they wanted to type.

Technology push is sometimes a useful driver.

VOTEM was licensed to a manufacturer of systems for disabled people but it was never made commercially available. This particular piece of research did not have a commercial outcome, but it did interest me in developing systems for disabled people. There are many and varied reasons why researchers move into this field—some because of a relationship either with disabled people directly, or via discussions with clinicians, but in my case it was because of a potential use for technology. Technologically led research, particularly in this field, can be problematic and, although disabled people were not involved in the development of VOTEM, they should have been. This experience gave me an interest in, and a particular perspective on, this area of research, and much of my subsequent work has promoted the idea of “user-centred design”.

1.3 SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY—A DEVELOPING FOCUS ON “AIDS FOR DISABLED PEOPLE”

I was appointed to a lectureship in Electronics at Southampton University and decided that developing systems for disabled people would be one of my major research interests. In comparison to the organisation of many universities in the 21st Century, the choice of research area was entirely left up to me—there was no institutional pressure for or against such a choice. The research in this, and subsequent sections of this chapter, will be described very briefly, with the details and rationale being expanded upon in later chapters.

Designing VOTEM had opened my eyes to the communication problems of people without speech, and my readings in psychology had made me aware of the many and varied characteristics of speech, including speech being more that just the words spoken, and the importance of body language. I was struck by the fact that all the systems that had been developed for non-speaking people required the non-speaking person and their communication partner to look at a single screen or printer—which meant that eye contact, which is very important in face-to-face communication between speaking people, was not possible. The “Talking Brooch” [Newell, A., 1974a] consisted of a small “rolling” alphanumeric display worn on the lapel and operated via a hand-held keyboard, and was designed to provide eye contact for non-speaking people. I wrote a simulation of this on a PDP12 (the successor to the PDP8 as a laboratory computer), and my team subsequently developed a dedicated electronic version. (In the early 1980’s, even “small computers” were very large.)

Encourage serendipity.

The Talking Brooch was a major factor in my being awarded a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship in 1976 to visit researchers in the U.S. This was an immensely useful experience, enabling me to visit the major players in the field. Many of the people I met have remained friends and colleagues throughout my career. The Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship was excellent in that its modus operandi was to choose Fellows on the basis of their ideas and then give them freedom to plan their fellowship without having to check back to the Trust. For example, I was advised not to have a full diary so that I could follow up leads that came up during the tour. If it wasn’t for this ability I would never have met the New York-based speech pathologist, Arleen Kraat. She was not on my original itinerary, but became a very important mentor and supporter throughout my research activities in this field.

The Travel Fellowship confirmed my view that research into, and development of, systems to assist people with disabilities was an area which was satisfying and which I would enjoy. The area of assisting human communication was particularly interesting and held some exciting technological challenges, but serendipity led to the specific projects I and my team pursued.

1.4 A CHANCE MEETING WITH A MEMBER OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT

Lewis Carter-Jones, a Member of Parliament was visiting the Department at Southampton and I demonstrated the Talking Brooch to him. He was a friend of Jack (now Lord) Ashley, a labour MP who had suddenly become deaf. He suggested that the Brooch would be useful to assist Jack in the House of Commons, where he had great difficulty in following debates, and he arranged for me to meet Jack in the House. This led to my team developing a transcription system for machine shorthand, in particular the Palantype Machine that had been developed in the UK. This system provided a verbatim transcript of speech on a display screen. It became the first computer system to be used in the Chamber of the House of Commons, and led the field in commercially available real-time systems for stenograph transcription.

1.5 TELEVISION SUBTITLING

My investigations into the needs of deaf people led me to consider television subtitling, and we investigated ways in which “closed captions” could be transmitted. This research was superseded when the UK text services of Oracle and Ceefax were developed. We thus refocussed our research on the characteristics required for effective captioning, and developing equipment that would enable captioners to work efficiently. Although the Independent Television authorities supported the former research, they did not see any need for new equipment. So again there was no support from the potential users of such a system, but Andrew Lambourne, a research student at the time, continued this development both as a PhD topic and as a commercial venture [Lambourne et al., 1982a]. In 2011 he continues to run a successful company marketing this type of equipment.

Research without stakeholder support can still be valuable.

The Palantype and the Subtitling projects were brought together in our research into live subtitling. ITV supported our work, our system being used for the Charles & Diana royal wedding, whereas the BBC supported Earnest Edmunds at Leicester University. In those early days, although subtitling for deaf people added only 1/3 of one percent to the cost of programmes, it was deemed to be too high a price to pay (to assist 10% of the audience!). After much lobbying, this view changed and a large percentage of programmes in the UK are now subtitled, including 100% of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s output news being subtitled mainly by stenographers.

1.6 DUNDEE UNIVERSITY

In 1980, I moved to the NCR chair of Electronics and Microcomputer Systems in Dundee University’s Electrical Engineering and Electronics Department. There I founded a group investigating the uses of microcomputers with a special interest in disabled people. This again was not a “strategic” decision by the University—their aim was to expand their research and teaching in microcomputers. My research group was not a good fit with the Electrical Engineering and Electronics Department and, in 1986, the group joined Mathematics to produce a Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Later, it became a stand-alone Department of Applied Computing and subsequently the School of Computing. My move from being essentially an electrical/electronic engineering academic to the head of an Applied Computing Department was not entirely for academic reasons, but proved to be exactly the right move to make both from teaching and research standpoints.

1.7 THE SCHOOL OF COMPUTING

A major thrust of the School of Computing at Dundee University is computer systems for areas of high social impact. It had four research groups: Assistive and Healthcare technologies, Interactive Systems design, Computational systems and the Space Technology group. There was cross-fertilization between all four groups, but, in particular, there was close links between Assistive and Health care technologies and Interactive system design. The Assistive and Healthcare technologies group contains over 30 researchers developing computer and communication technology for older and disabled people, and has become the largest and one of the most influential academic groups in the world in this field [Newell, A., 2004].

In the 1980s and 1990s, much of the group’s research to support disabled people focussed on non-speaking people and the development of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems [Gregor et al., 1999]. These are computer systems that control a speech synthesiser—the most well-known user of such a system being Professor Steven Hawking of Cambridge University. My academic colleagues Adrian Pickering, John Arnott, Norman Alm, Annalu Waller and Ian Ricketts, plus a large number of Research Students, Assistants and Fellows worked in this field. This work which will be described in more detail in later chapters, but was aimed at increasing the rate at which non-speaking people could talk, and was based on prediction, and the use of conversational models. It is vital that such work be interdisciplinary, and our research group has included a wide variety of disciplines, including psychologists, speech and occupational therapists, linguists, philosophers, nurses, school teachers, and creative designers, as well as computer engineers and human computer interface (HCI) specialists. I, and other colleagues, also have interdisciplinary academic backgrounds, which have proved particular helpful in our research. We were concerned with providing systems that allowed the non-speaking people to transmit their personalities, rather than simply deliver messages, and the work included Iain Murray’s pioneering work on inserting emotion into the output of speech synthesisers.

Our work in the AAC field led us to be considered mavericks by many speech therapists in the international field, some of whom were strongly opposed to our ideas, but Arlene Kraat was a constant source of support for our work.

A maverick: “a person pursuing rebellious, even potentially disruptive, policies or ideas”.

Thanks to Lynda Booth, a special education teacher, we were the first research group to show that predictive systems can assist people with spelling and language dysfunction, and John Arnott’s research into disambiguation was one of the triggers for the development of the T9 system which is available in most mobile phones today. Other work the group did during this period included Peter Gregor’s research into computer-supported interviewing, where we worked with child psychiatry units and collaborated with researchers in a secure mental hospital. Peter Gregor also conducted ground-breaking research into support for people with dyslexia.

Unusual perspectives can be valuable.

In addition to research focussed on the needs of disabled people, we examined the wider ramifications of such work, and developed the idea of “ordinary” and “extra-ordinary” human computer interaction. The concept was that “ordinary” people operating in an “extra-ordinary” environment (high workload and stress, such as flying planes and warfare), provided similar HCI challenges to those of “extra-ordinary” (disabled) people operating in an “ordinary” environment (e.g., word processing). This led to a number of projects, and was also used to encourage researchers in the international HCI community to consider the needs of disabled people in their research. Messages from other researchers to the HCI and Design communities were focussed on the concepts of “Inclusive Design”, “Design for All”, and “Universal Design”. In the UK at least, however, these concepts only began to be seen in mainstream Information Technology research and development in the early years of this century. The growing importance of the digital economy and the demographics of the user base gave these ideas a commercial impetus. Policy makers are realising that older and disabled people, and other minority groups, are much less represented in cyber space than young, able-bodied, educated people. This is important for the UK Government as many of the services they offer and hope to computerise are targeted at these groups.

1.8 IT SUPPORT FOR OLDER PEOPLE—THE QUEEN MOTHER RESEARCH CENTRE

In the latter part of the 20th Century, most of the research work in this field, including that at Dundee, had been focussed on disabled people. By the turn of the century, however, the wider public were beginning to become aware of the changing demographics: the world was becoming older, people were living longer, and, in the developed world, birth-rates were reducing. This led to serious concerns about how the world could support such a changing demographic, and there was a growing interest in how technology could help support older people. We realised that the characteristics of older people, some of whom had disabilities, were very different to those of the traditional disabled person for whom most computer-based technology had been developed. We thus decided to investigate how technology could support older people, and developed the concept of a research centre focussed on information technology to support older people.

“I don’t skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be”. Wayne Gretzky (Canadian hockey player)

Through the good offices of Dr. Mary, Dowager Countess of Strathmore, we were able to persuade Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, to give her name to this venture (see Figure 1.1), and the University to provide a purpose-designed building for the School of Computing that contained both a studio theatre and a User Centre—a facility specifically for our older users. In 2006, the Princess Royal formally opened the Queen Mother Building which housed the School (see Figure 1.2), including the research specifically aimed at supporting older and disabled users [Newell, A., 2006]. The research in the School can be seen at:

www.computing.dundee.ac.uk.

During this period, Peter Gregor developed links with the School of Design, and introduced an “Interactive Media Design Degree” (now called Digital Interaction Design). This led to the recruitment of Graham Pullin from the design house IDEO, who had a background in rehabilitation engineering and creative design. He has been developing the use of creative design techniques within disability and AAC research, and this has produced novel and very interesting research directions. Peter Gregor also initiated the School’s Digital Media Access Group. This combines research activities with an audit and advisory service for accessibility and usability of websites and software interfaces, usability research with older and disabled people, and advice on accessibility strategies. This combination of research and service is not usual within an academic environment, but in our case has proved extremely successful, with much synergy existing between the two remits.

Norman Alm re-aligned his research from communication aids for speech-impaired people into a focus on how information technology could be used to support people with dementia. This led to the development of a multi-media-based system to encourage reminiscence and other systems to improve the quality of life of people with dementia. John Arnott and Nick Hine expanded their research into Smart Housing, and Steve McKenna’s research on computer vision included similar application areas.

Figure 1.1: Letter from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Figure 1.2: The Queen Mother Building.

During this time, I was particularly focussed on how the needs of older people could be included within current design methodologies such as “user-centred design”. Our UTOPIA (Usable Technology for Older People Inclusive and Appropriate) project—in collaboration with Glasgow, Napier and Abertay Universities—investigated the most effective ways of including older people in the design process. We were also commissioned to act as consultants to Fujitsu, who were developing a portal for older people for the Department for Education. The research in this project formed the basis for the government’s “MyGuide” website for older people. The lesson from this project was that we had to look for very powerful ways of raising software and human interface designers’ awareness of characteristics of older people: not only their sensory and motor characteristics, but also the effects of their up-bringing and their relationship with new technologies.

1.9 THEATRE FOR AWARENESS RAISING AND REQUIREMENTS GATHERING

It was essential that powerful communication techniques be used for awareness raising, and we thus began a fruitful collaboration with Maggie Morgan, a script writer and theatre director (then artistic director of the Foxtrot Theatre Company and now of MM Training) who had a background in Forum Theatre and the use of Interactive Theatre in training and community consultation, and a film maker David Goodall (of Soundsmove). In collaboration with these, and other theatre professionals, we used theatre both for requirements gathering for projects to support older people and for raising designers’ awareness of the characteristics, needs and wants of older people. A particular use of theatre within a research framework was part of the Inclusive Design Educational Network of academic and industrial researchers that was aimed at producing a research agenda for this field. In parallel with developing a research agenda, this group briefed a film maker, who illustrated the research agenda developed by this project by a narrative film. “Relatively PC” and other examples of the use of theatre in this field can be seen at:

www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/acprojects/iden.

In 2006, I became an Emeritus Professor, and, in 2009, Vicki Hanson, formerly the Accessibility Manager of IBM, based in New York, joined the School as a full professor. Together with other research projects, she is a Principal Investigator for the Newcastle and Dundee Universities £ 13M Inclusive Digital Economy Hub funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The School thus continues to go from strength to strength in this field of research.

1.10 PUTTING ONE’S FAITH IN STORIES

A vital part of research is communicating results—both to fellow researchers and to the public, and I have investigated ways of trying to increase the impact of one’s results. I have come to the conclusion that, although data is vital, the power of the message in the data can be greatly increased by presenting a story, if possible with a personal narrative. Such stories are often denigrated as “simply anecdotes”, but a good story—particularly one with some humor and/or conflict—which effectively illustrates the message behind the data, can be a very powerful tool.

1.11 SUMMARY

“Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die, Life is a broken winged bird Which cannot fly”. (anon.)

This monograph essentially follows an historical perspective of research in the fields in which researchers at Dundee University’s School of Computing were operating, together with lessons learned from this journey.

Chapters 2–7 focus on research into the use of information technology to improve human-to-human communication.

Chapter 2 highlights the development of VOTEM—the speech-operated typewriter for physically disabled people, the Palantype Transcription System for deaf people, and the Talking Brooch, the first system we developed for non-speaking people. Chapter 3 describes the work on television subtitling for hearing-impaired people. This includes research into both the style of captioning, and the development of efficient captioning systems for both pre-prepared and real-time captions.

The Talking Brooch led to sustained research in the AAC field. This included word prediction (Chapter 4), and its importance not only for reducing key-strokes, but also for improving literacy. Other software for dyslexia is also described in this chapter, as is research that led to disambiguation techniques. Systems based on this research are now included in most mobile phone texting systems: possibly the most ubiquitous example of research for disabled people leading to a mainstream product.

Even with word prediction, AAC devices still produced speech at very slow rates, thus other speed increasing techniques were developed. Chapter 5 examines the influence of Conversational Analysis research on the AAC field. This led to the concept of reusable conversation, and an examination of the relative importance of pragmatics and semantics in conversation. A number of systems based on this concept are described, together with the conflicts that arose from these developments.

The ultimate instantiation of “reusable conversation” is stories: these are very important for personal development and building relationships. Because of their length, however, AAC users rarely relate stories. Chapter 6 describes systems that were developed to encourage non-speaking people to relate stories.

Chapter 7 relates the lessons that the team at Dundee learned from this research and recommends ways in which the efficacy of research in this particular field can be increased.

Towards the end of the 20th Century, demographic trends clearly indicated an increasing percentage of older people in the population. People were living to an increasingly old age, and were exhibiting physical, sensory and cognitive decline. In general, information technology had not designed for such people and a “digital divide” was developing between younger people and the majority of those over 65. Chapter 8 describes a range of computer-based systems that have been designed particularly for older people, including those with dementia. Although older people may have disabilities, their general characteristics were different from those of younger disabled people. Chapter 9 describes these differences and how they relate to design challenges in Information technology and Human Computer Interface research. Chapter 9 lays out a range of methods for including older people in the design process.

The differences between older and disabled people and young able-bodied people, however, are less than might at first appear to be the case—particularly in relation to the design of IT products. Chapter 10 introduces the concept of Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary Human Computer Interaction as a way of bridging this gap, and of encouraging mainstream designers to consider the needs and wants of currently excluded populations of users. Chapter 11 suggests “User Sensitive Inclusive Design” as an expansion of “User-Centered Design” to include disadvantaged users. The philosophy behind this is described and a number of suggestions made as to how this can be implemented, and how the concept of Designing for Dynamic Diversity provides a framework for interface design that responds to the changes in users as they grow older.

It is vital for designers and users to relate to each other, and this is particularly important where there are age and cultural differences between these two groups. There is evidence that design rules and guidelines are not sufficient, and Chapter 12 describes ways in which professional theater can be used both for requirements gathering and for raising designers’ awareness of the challenges older people have with technology.

Chapter 13 draws these ideas together with recommendations for design practice in the field of developing computer systems to support older and disabled people. It suggests how such approaches can benefit all users, young and old, fit and unfit, healthy or unhealthy, and with varying degrees of cognitive functioning. It recommends this approach to designers of mainstream as well as assistive technology.