Federal / Regulatory

A mental scanning paradigm was used to examine the representation of nonspeech sounds in working memory. Participants encoded sonifications – nonspeech auditory representations of quantitative data – as either verbal lists, visuospatial images, or auditory images. The number of tones and overall frequency changes in the sonifications were also manipulated to allow for different hypothesized patterns of reaction times across encoding strategies. Mental scanning times revealed...

Users interact with mobile devices through menus, which can include many items. Auditory menus have the potential to make those devices more accessible to a wide range of users. However, auditory menus are a relatively new concept, and there are few guidelines that describe how to design them. In this paper, we detail how visual menu concepts may be applied to auditory menus in order to help develop design guidelines. Specifically, we examine how to optimize the designs of a new contextual...

The world's population is aging dramatically and in most countries the cost of care is rising rapidly. We need a system which helps to minimize the onset of chronic conditions which are costly to treat and diminish quality of life, rather than one primarily directed towards the care of the sick. Innovative use of new technologies may be the only way to provide care affordably in future and to scale that care to far greater numbers as our societies adapt to change. Ambient Assisted Living...

Natural disasters and other public emergencies can leave people stranded for days, cause breaks in communication networks, and make streets and walkways impassable. What will you do to ensure your safety during those critical first days of an emergency in your community? Presented here are guidelines for preparing for emergency situations and a checklist for building an emergency kit.

Access to and use of mobile wireless technology has become critical to social and economic participation for people with disabilities. As the technology increases in power and sophistication, these customers increasingly rely on mobile devices and software for functions previously available only through dedicated ‘assistive technology’. Successfully serving this large and growing population has become a market imperative as well as a legislative mandate for the wireless industry...

Access to and use of wireless consumer technology (e.g., mobile devices like cellphones and tablets, software and services) has become critical to social and economic participation. This is especially true for people with disabilities. This article presents data from the Survey of User Needs (SUN) conducted by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC) from September 2012 through April 2013. The SUN focuses on wireless use among people with...

 People with disabilities are generally more vulnerable during disasters and publicemergencies than the general population. Physical, sensory and cognitive impairments may result ingreater difficulty in receiving and understanding emergency alert information, and greater difficulty intaking appropriate action. The use of social media in the United States has grown considerably inrecent years. This has generated increasing interest on the part of national, state and localjurisdictions in...

Access to and use of wireless consumer technology (e.g., mobile devices like cellphones, smartphones, tablets, software and services) has become ever more critical to social and economic participation, particularly for people with disabilities. Rates of ownership of wireless devices among people with disabilities have risen considerably in recent years, narrowing substantially the gap in ownership rates with the general population. But what do people with disabilities actually do with their...

This paper examines possible reasons why technology may not be living up to its promise for some people with disabilities (including poor policy implementation, low accessibility, cost, disinterest, lack of awareness, prejudice) and describes preliminary results from the first round of a futures-oriented Delphi survey.

Decades of technological development have not guaranteed compatibility between cellphones and hearing aids. Federal regulations have attempted to reduce the variability in interoperability between these two types of devices by requiring cellphone handset manufacturers and wireless service providers to offer a certain percentage of their devices with sufficiently reduced electromagnetic radiation (meeting American National Standards Institute’s M3 and T3 ratings for acoustic and...