!!! Click here to vote for your top 3 favorite innovations and share this link with your networks !!!

The voting will start on the 23rd of September and end on the 29th.

The result of the voting will be considered by the jury during their selection of the 12 finalists who will present their innovation on the e-pitching event on the 21st of October, from 3:00 to 5:30 pm (CET time).

If SUITCEYES becomes a finalist, this will not be positive just for the project, it will also highlight deafblindness at a totally different level.

Nasrine Olson, SUITCEYES Project Coordinator

The Innovation Radar is a European Commission initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation projects. Using intelligence gathered with the Innovation Radar method, the European Commission has, since 2015, been awarding the annual Innovation Radar Prize to the best EU-funded innovators.

The post SUITCEYES shortlisted for the Innovation Radar Prize appeared first on SUITCEYES.

New ways of inclusion

No vision and a long silence – this is how the 26-minutes documentary introduces the viewer to the situation of persons with deafblindness. The creators, four students from the media faculty at the Offenburg University conveyed a vivid impression of the everyday challenges of these persons. Moreover, it shows how in the EU- project SUITCEYES scientists from seven partners all over Europe are working together to develop communication tools that will seriously improve the lives of those affected.

Top marks under difficult conditions

The “SUITCEYES documentary” is the impressive result of a project work by Mübeyra Erkuş, Nico Levicki, Pascal Hoffmann and Tim Wenz in the Department of Media at Offenburg University under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Oliver Korn and Prof. Sabine Burg de Sousa Ferreira. The film was created throughout the summer term and under strict Corona regulations – including a flight to a partner in Sweden. Prof. Oliver Korn is extremely pleased with the result, which has now been published and can be watched on YouTube: “I am very impressed by the professional work of our media students. Under difficult circumstances, they have managed to document a complex international research project in a straightforward and touching way.”

The post Impressive Documentary about the Life of Deafblind Persons appeared first on SUITCEYES.

A Multimodal AAC Device for Individuals with Deafblindness

The concept for the Tactile Board emerged from co-creation sessions with members of the Deafblind community and aimed to support individuals with deafblindness in social interactions without the direct need of an intervener.

The handheld device is connected to a wearable that translates text messages and voice commands directly into haptic messages onto the upper back of the user. The messages sent through the Tactile Board can be sent to multiple devices at the same time, therefore allowing individuals with deafblindness to communicate with each other or send messages to a larger group of persons too.

If you are interested to read more about the Tactile Board, please follow the link to the published paper: https://doi.org/10.1145/3428361.3428465

The post Tactile Board presented at MUM 2020 appeared first on SUITCEYES.

On Monday, a demonstration of the Keep Your Distance system was presented to attendees. The system was a collaboration between Offenburg University and the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås. The haptic wearable was designed to be used in a navigation game where a person with deafblindness plays as a secret agent and another player is a suspect that should be followed. To win the game, the secret agent should follow the haptic signals provided on the belt area and keep an optimal distance of 1.5 meters from the other player.

We are glad to share that the Keep Your Distance demonstration was the most liked presentation at ASSETS 2020 and won the “People’s Choice Award” of the year. A special recognition was given during the conference’s closing ceremony. Congratulations to all the authors! You can check the video presentation here:

On Wednesday, our on-going work on exploring materials for making touchscreens accessible to users with deafblindness was also presented at ASSETS. The work explored the concept of creating accessible interfaces for pattern locks through rapid prototyping with materials easily found at home. Attendees were impressed by our raw quinoa braille prototype!

Overall, ASSETS 2020 gave us the opportunity to showcase our current SUITCEYES project results and discuss future research directions with a community of top researchers in the field of accessible computing. Looking forward to ASSETS 2021!

If you are interested in reading our work, please find the references for the conference proceedings below:

1. James Gay, Moritz Umfahrer, Arthur Theil, Lea Buchweitz, Eva Lindell, Li Guo, Nils-Krister Persson, and Oliver Korn. 2020. Keep Your Distance: A Playful Haptic Navigation Wearable for Individuals with Deafblindness. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), October 26–28, 2020, Virtual Event, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418048

• Lea Buchweitz, Arthur Theil, James Gay, and Oliver Korn. 2020. Exploring Low-Cost Materials to Make Pattern-Based Lock-Screens Accessible for Users with Visual Impairments or Deafblindness. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), October 26–28, 2020, Virtual Event, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418020 

The post SUITCEYES at ASSETS 2020 appeared first on SUITCEYES.

The post SUITCEYES on IHIET 2020 appeared first on SUITCEYES.

The conference usually draws more than 4,500 persons annually who attend sessions, visit the exhibition halls, and participate in affiliate meetings and informal gatherings. Given the current situation related to the coronavirus pandemic, some exhibitors and participants withdrew from participation in this year’s conference. However, Harpo attended the conference, presented SUITCEYES on the project stand during the whole event and shared further plans of SUITCEYES!

Harpo further took the opportunity to talk to a person with deafblindness (a participant of this conference), who pointed to the need of quick communication (direct, face-to-face) with a sighted person, e.g.

• a bus driver: to be able to ask him to indicate the stop where to get off
• a passerby: asking for directions, moving around the city

It was a very inspiring conversation to explore even more the way in which people with deafblindness can communicate immediately with sighted and hearing people.

Unfortunately, however, it was the last opportunity to share the results and experience of SUITCEYES with CSUN AT Conference visitors from around the world.

The post SUITCEYES on CSUN AT Conference 2020 in Anaheim, USA appeared first on SUITCEYES.

Mr Persson demonstrated The “Black Dress” of SUITCEYES and described the project. SUITCEYES aims for inclusion in society by interactive garments devoted for persons having deafblindness and is therefore about democracy which is within the realms of the Minister.

The post SUITCEYES presented to the Swedish Minister for Culture and Democracy appeared first on SUITCEYES.

One of the workshops held, was a co-creation session with Russ Palmer and Riitta Lahtinen. The goal of this session was to create gamified scenarios that can foster social interaction. Typical every day scenarios were acted out in role-playing games to spark this brainstorming process.

Furthermore, various prototypes such as the “Follow Your Partner” gamified scenario were tested by Russ Palmer. His and Riitta Lahtinen’s invaluable feedback have given us new ideas to help enhance this prototype for further testing and studies that will be conducted in 2020.

Another session dealt with the adaptation of Social Haptic Signs towards SUITCEYES actuator-based haptic patterns, while our final workshop focused on incorporating situational feedback, deemed to be useful or even necessary, from a user’s perspective. The results of these exercises are currently being evaluated and analysed.

We thank Russ Palmer and Riitta Lahtinen who travelled to Offenburg to take part in these discussions and workshops. Their expertise helped us tremendously to learn more on the issues that individuals with deafblindness deal with every day. Their insights have sparked new ideas on topics such as haptic communication and navigation.

Finally, we would like to thank all the consortium partners for these constructive two days and we look forward to intensifying our collaboration efforts as the project heads into its final year!

The post Consortium meeting in Offenburg appeared first on SUITCEYES.

“Na Tak meetings” are a series of international conferences organized by the Na Tak Association and the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Harpo was the strategic partner of the conference. This year the conference was attended by 252 persons. Among the guests of the conference were special educators, therapists, physiotherapists, carers and assistants of people with disabilities, as well as students, parents and volunteers.

As every year “Na Tak meeting” took under consideration issues of living with disability from many perspectives. Visitors of the conference could hear different lectures presented by academic lecturers, practicing therapists and physiotherapists, successfully working with people suffering from profound and multiple disabilities, who shared with the audience their knowledge, experience and working methods.

There was also an exhibition during the conference. The exhibitors presented specialised electronic devices and supporting technologies necessary for the therapy and education of people with different disabilities. Technologies dedicated to individuals with disabilities allow to take part in social life, increase independence and make everyday life easier. We hope that SUITCEYES will contribute to existing solutions and add them a whole new quality.

The SUITCEYES project was promoted by Harpo, at our design stand. We presented the poster and distributed promotional materials, and discussed the goals of the project with visitors. We also reported the progress and current stage of SUITCEYES. We had many visitors, who were very interested and curious to see final results of the project, and the product ready to use.

The post SUITCEYES on Na Tak conference in Poznań appeared first on SUITCEYES.

The post The Gamification Study in a Local Magazine appeared first on SUITCEYES.