We need to talk: Rediscovering audio for universal access (A panel)

Abstract

"In all the wonderful worlds that writing opens, the spoken word still resides and lives. Written texts all have to be related somehow, directly or indirectly, to the world of sound, the natural habitat of language, to yield their meanings." Only 22% of the human population accesses the Internet. The larger fraction of the world cannot read or write. Worldwide, 284 million people are visually impaired. And yet, there are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers, and their numbers are increasing. Much of the mobile work by HCI researchers explores a future world populated by high-end devices and relatively affluent users. This panel turns to consider the hundreds of millions of people for whom such sophistication will not be realised for many years to come. How should we design interfaces and services that are relevant and beneficial for them? © 2011 Authors.