Turning 18th century shipping records – written in cursive pen on faded paper – into modern data sets is understandably tricky. (read more)
https://www.ucd.ie/discovery/storiesofdiscovery/alumnistoriesdiscoverytodownunder.html
Turning 18th century shipping records – written in cursive pen on faded paper – into modern data sets is understandably tricky. (read more)
https://www.ucd.ie/discovery/storiesofdiscovery/alumnistoriesdiscoverytodownunder.html
The interaction challenges presented by touch-screen enabled devices for blind and visually impaired people has been addressed extensively in the literature. However, the emergence of wrist-worn devices with small screens, the so-called smartwatches, exacerbates such challenges. This paper presents an evaluation of text entry methods for smartwatches, covering three existing approaches—Voice Input and two QWERTY methods: GBoard, and A4Keyboard—and three Braille input methods proposed by the authors. Nine blind users and a low-vision participant composed sentences with the six methods. Speed and error rates are presented and preference data are analyzed, showing the approval of two Braille methods and a positive reception to one of the QWERTY methods, followed by the Voice Input. Each modality has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, which suggests room for improvement before the widespread adoption of smartwatch text entry as a reliable and accessible method for blind people.
Feb 2022
ACRA is an informal alliance of The Australian National University (ANU) School of Computing, The University of Melbourne School of Computing and Information Systems, University of New South Wales School of Computer Science and Engineering, and The University of Sydney School of Computer Science.
This alliance encourages publication of quality peer-reviewed research, in both conferences and journals. The ACRA group aligns with the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics.
This alliance advocates practical and robust approaches for evaluating research, aligned to those of DORA. Venue impact factors and rankings are not measures of the scientific quality nor impact of an article’s research. We strongly discourage inclusion of such rankings in job applications, promotion applications, and other career(-progression) and evaluation processes. We acknowledge that such rankings may serve as a guide for early career researchers, or newcomers to a research area, towards finding quality publications. However, venue rankings have limited value in comparing one research area with another, they do not discriminate specialist from generalist venues, nor the distinct values of different venues, and they often replicate information contained in standard bibliometric tools.
This ACRA grouping proposes that career processes support academics and assessment panels in:
To assist our colleagues in transitioning, we advocate that research leaders offer specific support for writing research quality and impact cases. As an example first step, the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) proposes consideration of the importance of the research problem solved, the approach taken and properties of the solution, the output describing such an approach, and how the approach in the research output has been built on or applied, including concrete evidence of impact.
Proposed wording for announcements and documentation includes: “Applicants are actively encouraged not to include conference/journal/venue rankings, but should instead focus on the impact of their research outputs in describing the excellence of their research”.
I have been appointed the technical program chair (TPC) for the ACM EICS conference on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems 2022, which is devoted to engineering usable and effective interactive computing systems.
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors for which I was General Co-Chair, had over 5100 delegates making it the largest conference ever held in the field of HCI.– https://chi2021.acm.org
This year I was delighted to join the UNSW crew who joined the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival parade.
“[It’s] actually a skill everyone needs, from children in school, to older people who are using this to make decisions about who they’re going to vote for,” he says.
In other words, we need a world where everyone thinks more carefully about the information they find on the internet.
Imagine that.
I received an ACM SIGCHI Recognition of Excellent Service that I gave to the UIST – ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.