Publication statistics
Pub. period:1988-2006
Pub. count:15
Number of co-authors:17
Co-authors
Number of publications with 3 favourite co-authors:
Peter C. Wright:2Stephen A. Brewster:2Jerome I. Elkind:1 Productive colleagues
Alistair Edwards's 3 most productive colleagues in number of publications:
Stephen A. Brewste..:108Elizabeth D. Mynat..:71Peter C. Wright:33
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Alistair Edwards
Has also published under the name of:
"Alistair D. N. Edwards" and "A. D. N. Edwards"
Publications by Alistair Edwards (bibliography)
Edwards, Alistair, McCartney, Heather and Fogarolo, Flavio (2006): Lambda: a multimodal approach to making mathematics accessible to blind students. In: Eighth Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies 2006. pp. 48-54.
“The study of mathematics is all but precluded to most blind students because of the reliance on visual notations. The Lambda System is an attempt to overcome this barrier to access through the development of a linear mathematical notation which can be manipulated by a multimodal mathematical editor. This provides access through braille, synthetic speech and a visual display. Initial results from a longitudinal study with prospective users are encouraging.”
© All rights reserved Edwards et al. and/or ACM Press
Fiore, Salvatore, Wright, Peter and Edwards, Alistair (2005): A pragmatist aesthetics approach to the design of a technological artefact. In: Bertelsen, Olav W., Bouvin, Niels Olof, Krogh, Peter Gall and Kyng, Morten (eds.) Proceedings of the 4th Decennial Conference on Critical Computing 2005 August 20-24, 2005, Aarhus, Denmark. pp. 129-132.
Zajicek, Mary and Edwards, Alistair (2004): Universal usability revisited. In Interacting with Computers, 16 (3) pp. 403-410.
Edwards, Alistair (1998): Reflections: Surfing and Driving Don't Mix. In Interactions, 5 (3) p. 80.
Stevens, Robert, Edwards, Alistair and Harling, Philip A. (1997): Access to Mathematics for Visually Disabled Students Through Multimodal Interaction. In Human-Computer Interaction, 12 (1) pp. 47-92.
“Mathematics relies on visual forms of communication and is thus largely inaccessible to people who cannot communicate in this manner because of visual disabilities. This article outlines the Mathtalk project, which addressed this problem by using computers to produce multimodal renderings of mathematical information. This example is unusual in that it is essential to use multiple modalities because of the nature and the difficulty of the application. In addition, the emphasis is on nonvisual (and hence novel) modalities. Crucial to designing a usable auditory interface to algebra notation is an understanding of the differences between visual and listening reading, particularly those aspects that make the former active and the latter passive. A discussion of these differences yields the twin themes of compensation for lack of external memory and provision of control over information flow. These themes were addressed by: the introduction of prosody to convey algebraic structure in synthetically spoken expressions; the provision of structure-based browsing functions; and the use of a prosody-based musical glance based on algebra earcons.”
© All rights reserved Stevens et al. and/or Taylor and Francis
Stevens, Robert D. and Edwards, Alistair (1996): An Approach to the Evaluation of Assistive Technology. In: Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies 1996. pp. 64-71.
“A valid criticism of many innovations in assistive technology is that they have not been evaluated. However, there are obstacles which make this form of technology difficult to evaluate according to conventional paradigms. The reasons behind this are discussed. A particular evaluation which endeavoured to circumvent those problems is described. The item evaluated was Mathtalk, a program to make mathematics accessible to blind people.”
© All rights reserved Stevens and Edwards and/or ACM Press
Brewster, Stephen A., Wright, Peter C. and Edwards, Alistair (1995): Parallel Earcons: Reducing the Length of Audio Messages. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 43 (2) pp. 153-175.
“This paper describes a method of presenting structured audio messages, earcons, in parallel so that they take less time to play and can better keep pace with interactions in a human-computer interface. The two component parts of a compound earcon are played in parallel so that the time taken is only that of a single part. An experiment was conducted to test the recall and recognition of parallel compound earcons as compared to serial compound earcons. Results showed that there are no differences in the rates of recognition between the two groups. Non-musicians are also shown to be equal in performance to musicians. Some extensions to the earcon creation guidelines of Brewster, Wright and Edwards are put forward based upon research into auditory stream segregation. Parallel earcons are shown to be an effective means of increasing the presentation rates of audio messages without compromising recognition rates.”
© All rights reserved Brewster et al. and/or Academic Press
Edwards, Alistair, Mynatt, Elizabeth D. and Thatcher, J. (1994): Interface Modeling Issues in Providing Access to GUIs for the Visually Impaired. In: First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies 1994. p. 157.
“Research in providing access to graphical interfaces for people who are blind has been ongoing for a number of years. After significant work, screen readers for three commercial graphical environments (Macintosh, Windows, OS/2) are now available, and steps to make X Windows accessible are underway. But many issues about how a blind person might want to interact with an accessible graphical interface are still unresolved. Are concepts such as drag and drop, iconified windows and direct manipulation appropriate for nonvisual interfaces? If so, how can they be effectively conveyed to people who have never experienced working with graphical interfaces? At the heart of the matter is the question: What is the model of the user interface that the screen reader is providing access to? Even the name "screen reader" implies a certain way of thinking about the graphical interface. A number of different approaches have been utilized in various commercial screen access systems and research prototypes. These systems have opened some doors for nonvisual interaction with a graphical interface, but other doors remain closed. In this session, we will not discuss underlying implementation strategies, although these are interesting in their own right. Rather, we will focus on the designer's conceptual model of the graphical interface, and how this model is conveyed to the (blind) user of the nonvisual interface.”
© All rights reserved Edwards et al. and/or ACM Press
Brewster, Stephen A., Wright, Peter C. and Edwards, Alistair (1993): An Evaluation of Earcons for Use in Auditory Human-Computer Interfaces. In: Ashlund, Stacey, Mullet, Kevin, Henderson, Austin, Hollnagel, Erik and White, Ted (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 93 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 24-29, 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. pp. 222-227.
“An evaluation of earcons was carried out to see whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured bursts of sound and that musical timbres were more effective than simple tones. A second experiment was then carried out which improved upon some of the weaknesses shown up in Experiment 1 to give a significant improvement in recognition. From the results of these experiments some guidelines were drawn up for use in the creation of earcons. Earcons have been shown to be an effective method for communicating information in a human-computer interface.”
© All rights reserved Brewster et al. and/or ACM Press
Edwards, Alistair (1993): Report on the CHI'91 Workshop: HCI and Users with Special Needs. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 25 (2) p. 24.
Pitt, Ian J. and Edwards, Alistair (1991): Navigating the Interface by Sound for Blind Users. In: Diaper, Dan and Hammond, Nick (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers VI August 20-23, 1991, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. pp. 373-383.
“The increasing reliance on visual forms of communication in modern computer interfaces poses severe problems for blind users. A possible solution is to make greater use of auditory communication. Speech has obvious applications, but is slow and hence not useful in situations where immediate feedback to the user is essential, such as when locating items using a mouse. Experiments have been carried out in order to ascertain the best way in which to use non-speech sounds to guide the user in locating such targets. The guiding principle has been to modulate the sounds in a manner which is as natural as possible, so that people can exploit their every-day listening skills. Some success has been achieved, particularly through the use of stereo sounds to give two-dimensional spatial sound guidance.”
© All rights reserved Pitt and Edwards and/or Cambridge University Press
Edwards, Alistair (1989): Soundtrack: An Auditory Interface for Blind Users. In Human-Computer Interaction, 4 (1) pp. 45-66.
“Throughout the history of human-computer interface development, one aspect has remained constant: output from computers has been almost entirely visual. A continued and increasing reliance on visual communication has had a disadvantageous effect on users who have visual disabilities. A visual interface is of no use to a user who is completely blind; communication must use one of the other senses, and hearing is an obvious candidate. A number of human-computer interfaces have been developed and adapted into an auditory form, based on the use of synthetic speech. However, for modern interfaces that use more complex displays, synthetic speech is not sufficient. One attempt to adapt such a mouse-based interface into an auditory form, based on musical tones and synthetic speech is described. This project involved the development of a word processor, called Soundtrack, with an auditory interface. Evaluation of this application suggests that the approach is viable, but that it is difficult to use and there are significant research questions still to be addressed.”
© All rights reserved Edwards and/or Taylor and Francis
Edwards, Alistair (1989): Modelling Blind Users' Interactions with an Auditory Computer Interface. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 30 (5) pp. 575-589.
“Modern window, icon, menu and pointer (WIMP) systems represent a significant new obstacle to access to computers for people with visual disabilities. A project was carried out which demonstrated the possibility of adapting such highly visual interfaces into an auditory form so that even totally blind people could use them. This paper describes the development of a model of user's interaction with such an auditory interface. It is based on the approach applied by Card, Moran&Newell (1980; 1983) to modelling visual interfaces. The model concerns the time taken to locate an object within a screen which is defined by sounds. It states that: T{sub:position} = T{sub:think} + dT{sub:move}, where T{sub:think} is a constant, representing the time component during which the mouse is not moved, d is the distance to the target and T{sub:move} is the time to cross one object. Measurements taken yielded values of: T{sub:think} = 3.99s and T{sub:move} = 0.80s. The model does provide a good description of the behavior of most the test subjects. This work represents a first step towards expanding models of human-computer interactions to include auditory interactions. This should be of benefit not only to the development of interfaces for blind users, but also in the enhancement of interfaces for sighted users by the addition of an auditory component.”
© All rights reserved Edwards and/or Academic Press
Griffith, Douglas, Gardner-Bonneau, Daryle Jean, Edwards, Alistair, Elkind, Jerome I. and Williges, Robert C. (1989): Human Factors Research with Special Populations will Further Advance the Theory and Practice of the Human Factors Discipline. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 33rd Annual Meeting 1989. pp. 565-566.
“The advent of Public Law 99-506 (ensuring access to electronic office equipment by individuals with disabilities) is causing an increasing number of human factors professionals to examine what the field of human factors has to offer the design of equipment for special populations. Historically the involvement of human factors people in these efforts has been small. So, a reasonable proposition to examine is the title for the panel discussion: Human factors research with special populations will advance the theory and practice of the human factors discipline. One possible view of this proposition is negative; namely, that the involvement of human factors professionals with special populations will benefit neither the discipline nor the population. If a positive view is taken, then there are both weak and strong forms of the proposition. The weak form argues that there is a need to expand human factors methodologies to handicapped populations because there are significant numbers of people who would benefit and that the human factors data base would be significantly expanded. The strong form maintains that the basic theory and practice of human factors will be advanced to the ultimate benefit of the nonhandicapped population.”
© All rights reserved Griffith et al. and/or Human Factors Society
Edwards, Alistair (1988): The Design of Auditory Interfaces for Visually Disabled Users. In: Soloway, Elliot, Frye, Douglas and Sheppard, Sylvia B. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 88 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference June 15-19, 1988, Washington, DC, USA. pp. 83-88.
“Recent developments in the design of human-machine interfaces have resulted in interfaces which make access to computer-based equipment more difficult for visually disabled people. The aim of this project was to explore whether it is possible to adapt such interfaces so as to make them usable by people who cannot see a screen. The approach adopted was based upon two principles: the replacement of visual interface entities by auditory analogues and appropriately constraining the resultant interface. Two forms of sound were used to embody the auditory interface: musical tones and synthetic speech. In order to test the principles a word processing program was implemented which demonstrated that a visual program might be adapted to be accessed through such an interface.”
© All rights reserved Edwards and/or ACM Press
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