Accessibility and Assistive Technology
With Emphasis on the Global South
The work on accessibility at MSR India has spanned the range from spatial audio with HoloLens to the use of feature phones to reach children with vision impairments and a spectrum of tangible toys to enhance numeracy for them, to a quiz platform for the Deaf or Hard of Hearing community, with an overarching new methodology called Ludic Design for Accessibility.
Most of this work has been focused on the people with disabilities (PwDs) in the Global South and firmly rooted in the lived experience of PwDs by strong partnerships with disabled peoples organizations. The interdisciplinary nature of the work needed to address the complex challenges has naturally attracted a diverse set of people to work on these projects.
The following are the currently active projects with details in the respective links.
Ludic Design for Accessibility is a novel methodology that puts play and playfulness at the center of any design for accessibility. The key idea is that a solution for accessibility designed with this methodology will be in the form of an engaging and inclusive game. By extended and joyful play with the game the players will acquire the designed in skills purely as a side effect.
SEEDS (opens in new tab), Scalable educational experiences with digital scaffolding, is a project that builds on top of the work over the past four years with Vision Empower Trust (opens in new tab), a DPO that has now reached about a100 schools for the blind across a dozen states of India, codesigning the solutions with us and taking them to the end users. The goal of the project is to introduce digital technologies to children in schools for the blind from the primary stage onwards.
Sign Language Inclusive Play is a broad effort to apply the ludic design principles to create solutions for the DHH community.
SPICE-IN
Disability and Gender
The following are projects that are no longer active.
Project AVARE: Audio-Augmented virtual and real environments is a project with a goal of empowering VIPs to experience rich multi-modal interactions in everyday activities ranging from work and social interactions to entertainment and exploration.
Project CodeTalk: CodeTalk is a VisualStudio plugin that systematically addresses barriers in discoverability, navigability, alertability and glanceability.