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- NSF is making a transition to a new form of electronic distribution of news materials. We will eventually replace the current "listserve" with a new Custom News Service. From the toolbar on NSF's home page, (URL: http://www.nsf.gov), you can sign up to receive electronic versions of all NSF materials (or those of your own choosing). NSF is an independent federal agency responsible for fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of about $3.3 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states, through grants to more than 2,000 universities and institutions nationwide. NSF receives more than 50,000 requests for funding annually, including at least 30,000 new proposals. Also see NSF news products at: http://www.nsf.gov:80/od/lpa/start.htm, 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. ---------------------------------- 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. ---------------------------------- 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. ---------------------------------- 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. ---------------------------------- 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). ---------------------------------- 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.