Follow the links below to information about Trace Center projects and programs, including current and past work. If you have questions about this work, don't hesitate to contact us.
Trace Programs
- Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Telecommunications Access
- A comprehensive research and development program to advance accessibility and usability of existing and emerging telecommunications products for people with all types of disabilities.
- Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Interface and Information Technology Access
- A comprehensive research and development program to increase access by people with all types of disabilities to information technologies and to interfaces used by electronic technologies in general.
- Trace Center Training Program
- Industry and university training activities for the purpose of increasing the available expertise related to design of more accessible standard information and communication technologies (ICT).
- The Harry J. Murphy Catalyst Award
- The Trace Center's award program to honor people who inspire action and foster the achievements of others in the field of technology and disability.
Trace Projects
- ATM/ITM Accessibility
- Past work on techniques for built-in, cross-disability accessible teller machines and other public information and transaction systems.
- Augmentative Communication
- Trace’s pioneering work in the 1970’s and 1980’s on development of electronic communication aids and systems for people with severe disabilities that impair speaking and writing.
- Brain-Computer Interface Study
- New work exploring ways people can control the movement of a computer cursor using brain signals.
- Computer Access
- Extensive past work on design of more accessible computers and software, including guidelines, standards, operating system accessibility features, and information resources developed by Trace.
- Digital Talking Books
- Current work, in partnership with HumanWare, the National Federation of the Blind, and Battelle, on design and testing of a new digital talking book reader for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
- Disability and Interface Characterization and Measurement
- A new study to develop generalizable methods and cross-disability functional metrics to facilitate identification of interface strategies that will improve the usability of technology devices for people with disabilities. The initial study is focused on movement disorders.
- EZ Access®
- Trace-developed interface enhancements which can be implemented in a variety of electronic systems and devices to make them more usable and accessible for people with disabilities and elders.
- Guidelines, Standards and Regulations
- Trace's past contributions to and ongoing involvement with development of guidelines, standards and regulations by industry and government for the purpose of increasing accessibility of information and communication technologies.
- Information Resource Projects
- Past work to develop innovative information resources for professionals working in the field of disability and technology, including the Trace Resourcebook, TraceBase, HyperABLEDATA, and CoNET (Cooperative Electronic Library on Disability).
- Modality Translation
- Past work to explore the potential for real-time, on-demand access to information across modalities, providing assistive services on demand. Includes information on Universal Design/Disability Access Project for Advanced Computational Infrastructure and the T-Trans experimental network-based text captioning service.
- Natural Language Interface
- Recent work, in partnership with Custom Technology, Ltd., to explore the feasibility of using a new approach for natural language control of electronic devices. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.
- Phone Design
- Work on how to design mass-market phones that are more usable and accessible for people with disabilities and elders. Includes reference designs and other resources.
- State-of-the-Science Conferences
- Information about the State-of-the-Science Conferences related to emerging information technology and telecommunication, including reports from past conferences.
- Universal Design Research
- Past work related to the practice of universal design, including identification of motivators and barriers in the ICT industry.
- Universal Remote Console
- Current work to develop the concepts, as well as simulations and toolkits for implementation of pluggable user interfaces and universal remote consoles, which allows individual users to substitute interfaces that are simple, more accessible and intuitive. Includes work supporting the INCITS/ANSI standards (V2 Working Group).
- Virtual AT
- New work to explore and model techniques that will ultimately lead to the ability of an individual to use any standard computer and Web browswers to invoke an assistive technology (AT) functionality provided via a Web-based server.
- VoIP and Total Conversation
- Current work to develop techniques by which communication via Internet Protocol (IP) may be done in a way that is accessible for people with hearing, speech, and vision impairments and more usable for everyone.
- Voting Accessibility
- Past work to develop solutions for making electronic voting systems more accessible and usable for people with disabilities and elders.
- Web Accessibility
- Work on techniques and tools for making web sites more accessible and usable for people with disabilities. Includes information and resources related to Trace's early work and its more recent work with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.