EASI Equal Access to Software and Information is excited to pass along this
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Norman coombs nrcgsh@rit.edu
Subject: NSF EFFORT TO INCREASE ACCESS TO THE WEB.....
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Media contact: October 22, 1997
Beth Gaston NSF PR 97-64
(703) 306-1070/egaston@nsf.gov
Program contact:
Gary Strong
(703) 306-1928/gstrong@nsf.gov
NSF EFFORT TO INCREASE ACCESS TO THE WEB
BY PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
The National Science Foundation, with cooperation from the
Department of Education's National Institute for Disability and
Rehabilitation Research, has made a three-year, $952,856 award to
the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative to
ensure information on the Web is more widely accessible to people
with disabilities.
Information technology plays an increasingly important role
in nearly every part of our lives through its impact on work,
commerce, scientific and engineering research, education, and
social interactions. However, information technology designed
for the "typical" user may inadvertently create barriers for
people with disabilities, effectively excluding them from
education, employment and civic participation. Approximately 500
to 750 million people worldwide have disabilities, said Gary
Strong, NSF program director for interactive systems.
The World Wide Web, fast becoming the "de facto" repository
of preference for on-line information, currently presents many
barriers for people with disabilities.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), created in 1994 to
develop common protocols that enhance the interoperability and
promote the evolution of the World Wide Web, is working to ensure
that this evolution removes -- rather than reinforces -
accessibility barriers.
National Science Foundation and Department of Education
grants will help create an international program office which
will coordinate five activities for Web accessibility: data
formats and protocols; guidelines for browsers, authoring tools
and content creators; rating and certification; research and
advanced development; and educational outreach. The office is
also funded by the TIDE Programme under the European Commission,
by industry sponsorships and endorsed by disability organizations
in a number of countries.
"I commend the National Science Foundation, the Department
of Education and the W3C for continuing their efforts to make the
World Wide Web accessible to people with disabilities," said
President Clinton. "The Web has the potential to be one of
technology's greatest creators of opportunity -- bringing the
resources of the world directly to all people. But this can only
be done if the Web is designed in a way that enables everyone to
use it. My administration is committed to working with the W3C
and its members to make this innovative project a success."
"The World Wide Web Consortium realizes the critical
importance of the Web for people with disabilities, and is
committed to making the Web Accessibility Initiative a success,"
said Judy Brewer, new director of the W3C International Program
Office. "We are proud to host this unique partnership. Through
the International Program Office, we will be coordinating with
industry, government, and disability communities to ensure that
needs related to accessibility are addressed throughout the
consortium's work, and that the message of an accessible Web is
carried as broadly as possible."
"Computers can be a vital tool to remove barriers for people
with disabilities," said NSF's Gary Strong. "If designers take
into consideration that people have varied needs, the payback can
be tremendous."
NSF-funded basic research in computer science and
engineering can have countless applications for people with and
without disabilities, he said.
"Such research will help move the nation toward an age where
powerful, networked computers provide useful information in a
usable format for all citizens," Strong said.
Issues of accessibility are timely this month: October is
National Disability Employment Awareness Month; the Access Board
will soon be releasing its guidelines for accessibility of
telecommunications products under Section 255 of the
Telecommunications Act; and, the National Research Council
report, "More Than Screen Deep," addressing the issue of every
citizen interfaces, has recently become available.
-NSF-
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including at least 30,000 new proposals. Also see NSF news
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http://www.eurekalert.org/, and http://www.ari.net/newswise
FACT SHEET
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION-FUNDED PROJECTS RELATING TO PERSONS
WITH DISABILITIES
Gary Strong, program director
Interactive Systems
(703) 306-1928/gstrong@nsf.gov
Larry Scadden, senior program director
Programs for Persons with Disabilities
(703) 306-1636/lscadden@nsf.gov
The National Science Foundation funds a number of programs and
projects relating to persons with disabilities. The following
are examples of some projects. To conduct a key word search of
the NSF grants award database, see:
http://www.nsf.gov/verity/srchawd.htm The following grants may
be searched by entering the grant number listed.
----------------------------------
ú 9726645
Ronald Cole
Oregon Graduate Institute
Small Grant for Exploratory Research: Bringing Spoken Language
Systems to the Classroom for Learning Training with Hearing
Impaired People
Cole and his colleagues will evaluate the potential of their
electronic-based spoken language systems to improve learning,
language skills and creative expression in profoundly deaf
children. Students attending the Tucker-Maxon Oral School will
use the integrated speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis
and an artificial talking head developed at the Oregon Graduate
Institute's Center for Spoken Language Understanding.
ú 9701803
Dimitri Metaxes
University of Pennsylvania
Towards American Sign Language Recognition from Visual Input
The objective of this research is the development of methods for
the automatic recognition of American Sign Language (ASL)
utterances using as input the 3D shape and motion parameters of a
subject's face, hands and arms. These parameters are extracted
based on the use of computer vision techniques on relevant image
sequences. The final goal of this research is to demonstrate the
feasibility of building an automated robust system with high
recognition accuracy (recovery of sign sequences at the sign
level) that is capable of handling the inflectional and
derivational properties of ASL.
ú 9612682
Ivan Sag & Herbert Clark
Stanford University
Language Generation for a Speech Prosthesis
This project is developing a novel approach to natural language
generation, applying it to computer-aided text and speech
generation for people with physical disabilities. Many people
who cannot speak because of physical disability use text-tospeech
generators as prosthetic devices. However, users of speech
prostheses often have more general loss of motor control, and
despite aids such as word prediction, text entry is slow and
difficult. The main focus of this research is investigating
techniques to improve rates sufficiently for more natural
conversation to be possible, without sacrificing flexibility of
content.
ú 9528985
Carol J. Neidle
Boston University
SignStream: A Multimedia Tool for Language Research
The project's objectives are: 1) development of "SignStream," a
database tool for analysis of linguistic data captured on video;
2) use of SignStream for creation of a large database of
utterances from American Sign Language, consisting of raw video
and fine-grained linguistic transcription; 3) development of an
interactive format for linking electronic documents to SignStream
databases (allowing direct access from texts to video, encoded
data and SignStream tools transcription).
ú 9416916
Kathleen F. McCoy
University of Delaware
An Exploratory System to Teach English as a Second Language to
Deaf Students with ASL Competency
The long-term goal of this work is to develop a writing tool for
native users of American Sign Language (ASL). Envisioned is a
computer system that will take a piece of text written by a deaf
user, analyze that text for errors, engage that user in a
tutorial dialogue, and generate appropriate corrections to the
text.
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