I am hearing impaired and have been enjoying the fact that the Internet
promotes communication by text at almost the speed of telephone calls.
I began to worry that this advantage of the Internet would disappear in
favor of voice communication. Indeed, in Star Trek episodes, people
communicate with computers strictly by voice and the computer has no lips
that can be read. So,
I published a paper about requirements for maintaining Web access for
hearing-impaired individuals, explaining what must be done to keep the
hearing impaired franchised on the Internet while working towards
enfranchisement of the sight impaired and the physically impaired.
<br>
Berry, D.M., ``Requirements for Maintaining Web Access for
Hearing-Impaired Individuals,'' <cite>Third International Workshop on Web Site
Evaluation (WSE'01)</cite>, pp. 33--41, Florence, Italy, 10 November 2001
<a href="FTP_SITE/reprints.journals.conferences/WSE_paper.pdf">
PDF preprint</a>

<p>
I am also trying to actively participate in two other projects in which my
experience adjusting the world's interaction with me gives me intuition that
can be useful:
<ul>
<li> a project led by <a href="http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~fickas/">
Steve Fickas </a>, McKay Sohlberg (Cog Rehab, UO), Alistair Sutcliffe
(CS, UMIST), and Gerhard Fischer (U Colorado) on customizable email
applications for those with cognitive impairments

<li> a multi-site project headed by Jay Black, John Mylopoulos, and Nick
Cercone, all in Canadian Universities, on computing for Alzheimer's disease
sufferers
</ul>