School of Computer Science and Software Engineering

Providing Access to Technology for People with Disabilities

Time: 11am Friday June 11

Computer Science & Software Engineering

Seminar Room 1.24

Speaker:
Iain Murray

Abstract:

The talk will cover the research we are undertaking at Curtin in providing access to technology and presentation/delivery of elearning to the vision impaired. This is followed by a general overview of the other projects we are undertaking. Finally, I will discuss ways UWA & Curtin could cooperate in research along the lines of these developments.

About the Speaker:

Iain Murray has worked in the area of Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology for 23 years, specialising in the area of sensory disabilities (i.e. Vision and hearing disabilities). A significant proportion of that time was spent as the Technical Officer for the Association for the Blind (WA) where his duties included the development of systems to aid in independent living and employment placement of vision-impaired clients. Developments have included both software (Voice output databases for vision impaired call centre workers, wheelchair control for paraplegics) and hardware (Optical Braille scanner), Wireless headset for concurrent synthesised speech and telephony, a handheld device for currency identification and several other commercial devices. He has supervised many honours undergraduate and research postgraduates in the area of rehabilitation engineering. He is currently enrolled in a PhD titled "Multimodal and Haptic Human Computer Interfaces for the Vision Impaired". He graduated from Curtin University of Technology with a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Systems Engineering) in 1998 and is now employed as a lecturer in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Research Seminar - July 11, 2004