EASI FLASH V3 April 5 1996 Conference on tech for the Blind (fwd)

From: David Andrews (dandrews@winternet.com)
Date: Fri Apr 05 1996 - 11:29:24 PST


I thought that the following message might interest you. It gives some
idea what is going on in Europe, and a URL to check it out further.

David Andrews

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 09:47:10 -0400
From: PROF NORM COOMBS <NRCGSH@RITVAX.ISC.RIT.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list EASI <EASI@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Subject: EASI FLASH V3 April 5 1996 Conference on tech for the Blind

EASI FLASH V3 April 5 1996

Last week I attended an unusual and most interesting symposium held in the Lake
District in England. It was sponsored by the RAnk Prize Fund. There were
speakers from across Europe, from the US and from Australia. The meeting had
two topics: one computers and information technology for the blind and the
other was on the state of research related to navigation, mobility aids and
computer vision and touch.

I wish I had time to summarize even the parts that excited me. but then that
was almost everyting. It was an honor to be with such a collection of
interesting and creative people.

I am including the program below. The abstracts for all of the talks are on
the web at http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk:5000/~pjp/rank.html and are worth looking
over. Most people on the list do have email addresses if you needed to follow
up on something specific.

Oh, in case you are worried, I didn't eat any beef. Even the airlines pulled
it off the menu. Saw no mad cows but heard plenty of mad politicians!

Norman Coombs EASI Chair nrcgsh@rit.edu

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME 25-28 March 1996 RANK PRIZE FUNDS MEETING
TECHNOLOGY TO ASSIST THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED

Monday March 25th: Registration and Dinner

##############################################################################
Tuesday March 26th: MOBILITY

INTRODUCTION
9.00-9.45
** John Gill RNIB London
        Technology to assist people with visual disabilities: Problems and
 possibilities

NAVIGATION AND POSITION FINDING
9.45-11.15
** Jack Loomis University of California Santa Barbara
        Navigation without vision
Herwarth Talkenberg Braunschweiger Flight Institute
         A technical approach on in-town positioning
Jim Fruchtermann Arkenstone Systems - California
        Talking maps and GPS systems

11.40-12.30
Andrew Braddock London Transport
       Public transport and sensory impairment: challenge and achievement
Duncan Irvine Possum Controls
       Talking Beacons
                        Discussion

2.00-4.00 FREE
4.00-5.15 USING AND TESTING NAVIGATIONAL AIDS
Allan Dodds Blind Mobility Unit, Nottingham University
        Objective evaluation of mobility aids

5.35-6.45 POSSIBILITIES WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY
** M.V. Srinivasan Canberra, Australia
        Cues for navigation with optic flow: inspiration from insect vision
David Lee University of Oxford
        Sensor fusion in mobility aids

                        Discussion

########################################################################
March 27th:

8.50-11.00 TECHNOLOGY IN THE ENVIRONMENT
** Jan Ekberg Finnish Institute for Welfare and Disabilities Helsinki
            Problems and solutions for improving the environment

Kelvin Currie British Telecom London
        Telecommunication and visual disability - the way forward
**Gordon Legge University of Minnesota
        Experience of reading aids in low vision

11.30-1.00 ACCESS TO COMPUTERS
** Pier-Luigi Emiliani CNRS Florence, Italy
        Adaptive and Adaptable Interfaces for Computer and Telecommunication Terminals
Paul Blenkhorn UMIST
        Giving visually impaired people access to computers
Geza Nemeth University of Budapest
        Multilingual aspects of speech synthesis

2.00-4.00 ACCESS TO INFORMATION
** Allen Schrier
        Use of the internet/on-line services
Norman Coombs University of Rochester
        Electronic communication and the internet
Tom Wesley University of Bradford
        Access to daily newspaper - long live the world wide web!
Alistair Edwards University of York
            Communicating complex information: mathematics

4.30-6.30 AUDIO INTERFACES
Knut Nordby University of Oslo
        Audible Television
*Peter Meijer
         Image to Sound conversion
*Jim Alty University of Loughborough
                Tonal interfaces for the blind and visually handicapped

* Both have demos; may need about 30 minutes +

Discussion

##############################################################################
MARCH 28th: COMMUNICATION USING TOUCH
9.00-10.15
Gunnar Jansson University of Uppsala
        Some properties of touch and haptics important for the
         usefulness of tactile displays
Jorg Frick Fernuniversitt Hagen Germany
        Tactile interfaces to graphical information

10.45-12.00
**Paul Bach-y-Rita University of Wisconsin
        History of display development
Gerhard Weber University of Stuttgart
        Access to graphical uiser interfaces

The web site for all of these abstracts is
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk:5000/~pjp/rank.html



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