Special Issues

Call for Papers - Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) On

Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Guest Editors: Kathleen F. McCoy and Annalu Waller

Many people have some sort of disability that impairs their ability to communicate. Communication difficulties may run the gamut from difficulties in producing speech or writing, to difficulties in understanding spoken or written text, to difficulties in accessing information content when presented in particular modalities. The field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is concerned with providing strategies, techniques and devices to compensate (either temporarily or permanently) for the impairment and disability patterns of individuals with severe expressive communication disorders.

In some cases, AAC is designed for people who experience a speech disability caused by conditions such as Cerebral Palsy, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Stroke, or other Traumatic Brain Injury. In this case a person might use a speech generating device to communicate orally. Such speech disabilities may be accompanied by motor impairments making text input methods challenging. One of the most acknowledged problems in this area concern communication rates. Techniques for rate enhancement include word prediction, abbreviation expansion, message encoding, and enabling technologies for systems which play pre-stored messages.  However, communication rate is only one aspect of AAC design, especially for individuals who may have additional cognitive impairments or linguistic difficulties which make system design challenging. In such situations a mixed-initiative system might be used where the system plays an active role in constructing the desired message or in supporting interactive conversation.

Potential Topics encompass all areas of communication and include (but are not limited to):

• Intelligent AAC Systems (text and non-text based)
• Text Input Technologies
• Graphic-based Systems
• Rate Enhancement Systems
• Speech synthesis for speech generating devices
• Mixed-Initiative AAC Devices
• HCI Design Approaches within AAC

Submission process

Submissions should follow the journal’s suggested writing format (http://www.is.umbc.edu/taccess/authors.html) and should be submitted directly to the editors of this special issue (mccoy@cis.udel.edu).

Important dates:

• Full paper submission: 8^th June 2008
• Response to authors: 15^th August 2008
• Final version of papers: 30^th September 2008