Speakers of all languages gesture, but there are differences in the gestures that they produce. Do speakers learn language-specific gestures by watching others gesture or by learning to speak a particular language? We examined this question by studying the speech and gestures produced by 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English and Turkish (n = 20/language), and comparing them wit...

Cross-modal plasticity refers to the recruitment of cortical regions involved in the processing of one modality (e.g. vision) for processing other modalities (e.g. audition). The principles determining how and where cross-modal plasticity occurs remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate these principles by testing responses to auditory motion in visual motion area MT+ of congenitally blind...

This study investigates the haptic identification of incomplete raised-line drawings (i.e., pictures with a missing element) by sighted and early visually impaired children aged 9-10 years. Incomplete pictures have already been used in the visual modality to assess perceptual reasoning in children, but not yet under the haptic modality. We found that success at identifying incomplete raised-lin...

Limited sensory information about a new environment often requires people with a visual impairment to rely on sighted guides for showing or describing routes around the environment. However, route descriptions provided by other blind independent navigators, (e.g., over a cell phone), can also be used to guide a traveler along a previously unknown route. A visually impaired guide can often descr...

Informal learning opportunities that complement formal education with diversity and flexibility are abundant in our daily lives. While sighted people take advantage of such learning and may take it for granted, people with visual impairment are sometimes excluded, due to their sight loss, from accessing informal learning, social interaction, and civic engagement. In this sense, they are not equ...

Internships play an important role within education by providing on-the-job experiences to students prior to graduation. The consensus in the literature is that meaningful internships should be based upon formal learning objectives. However, shortage of information systems workers, especially in rural areas as well as those smaller and start-up companies which have difficulty competing with lar...

Effective multimodal graphing tools can be beneficial to both sighted and visually impaired students and scientists. However, before this can become a reality, considerable research is required on the auditory graphing components. We suggest mappings, polarities, scaling, context, and training be studied in particular. We point to previous work in these areas and make suggestions for expanded r...

In this study we evaluate how the use of audio-based technology can facilitate school integration of blind learners through the interaction with a science videogame. This experience consisted of designing and implementing The Natomy’s Journey Game to be played by blind and sighted middle school students. The use of the videogame and its impact on the integration of blind learners into mainstrea...

Game elements like points and levels are a popular tool to nudge and engage students and customers. Yet, no theory can tell us which incentive structures work and how to design them. Here we connect the practice of gamification to the theory of reward shaping in reinforcement learning. We leverage this connection to develop a method for designing effective incentive structures and delineating w...

Concepts, ideas, and analyses are commonly presented as graphics that are optimized for visual consumption. Does that mean blind students and professionals are out of luck? Not anymore. This presentation demonstrates best practices for multimodal visualizations for blind users of the iPad and other touchscreen mobile devices. Multimodal visualizations allow blind users to interactively explore ...