Research

Researchers listed alphabetically by surname

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Researchers listed by subject index

Z

Dr Betsy A. Zaborowski, Psy.D.
Jernigan Institute, National Federation of the Blind, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, MD 21230, United States of America.
Tel: +1 410 659 9314
Fax: +1 410 685 5653
Email: Online form can be filled out at http://www.nfb.org/contactus.htm
Web: www.nfb.org

Current & recent projects

The National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute, often referred to as the nation's center of innovations in education, employment, and adaptive technology for the blind, is the first of its kind developed and operated by an organization of blind people. Dr Zaborowski, in close consultation with the leadership of the NFB, supervises the staffing, equipping, and rollout of programs in the new Institute.

Projects of the Institute include:

the NFB Science Academy-a dynamic science education project in partnership with NASA
online courses-designed to educate teachers, parents, and technologists about blindness
the development of the first handheld reading machine for the blind-the Kurzweil National Federation of the Blind Reader
outreach to seniors losing vision
early childhood projects
access technology training, testing, and evaluation
research collaborations
development of the Jacobus tenBroek Library in the Institute
Consumer Electronics Initiative-activities designed to assist blind people in finding appliances, entertainment electronics, and other devices that can be accessed nonvisually
a multi-year plan to engage the engineering community around the country to develop the nonvisual interface for a vehicle blind people can drive.

Last updated: 24/02/2006

Dr. Wolfgang L. Zagler
Institute "integrated study" - TU Vienna, fortec/Research Group for Rehabilitation Technology, Favoritenstrasse 11/029, A-1040 Wien/Vienna, Austria.
Tel: +43 1 58801 42900
Fax: +43 1 58801 42999
Email: zagler@fortec.tuwien.ac.at
Web: www.is.tuwien.ac.at/index_en.html (english version)
Publications

Current & recent projects

AUTONOMY - an Assistive System for Everyday-Life
Co-workers: C. Beck; H. Deisenhammer; C. Flachberger; P. Panek; C. Rettinger; G. Seisenbacher
Developement of a multifunctional technical assistive system to support independence and self determination of motor- and multiple-impaired persons in everyday life. The basic functions are: environmental control, alternative and augmentative communication, computer access and security functions.

RESORT - Remote Service of Rehabilitation Technology
Co-workers: C. Beck; P. Panek; C. Rettinger; G. Seisenbacher
RESORT provides telematic remote service facilities for IT based Rehabilitation Technology. The RESORT prototype system establishes a telecommunications link between the client (a disabled user or a care person) and his/her service provider. Whenever support is needed, the user activates his/her RESORT software which automatically establishes the necessary multimedia connection for receiving telehelp and tele assistance from the service provider. An evaluation kit is available and a Resort Interest Group (RIG) has been set up.

SILC: Supporting Independently Living Citizens
Co-workers: G. Edelmayer; P. Mayer; W. Zagler
The main objective of the SILC-project is to develop an innovative alarm system to increase safety and independence of elderly and disabled citizens. In contrast to existing alarms SILC will make use of integrated biometric sensors to trigger the alarm in critical situations.

MORE: Mobile Rescue Phone
Co-workers: G. Edelmayer; R. Grünfelder; P. Mayer
The main objective of the MORE-project is to redesign existing mobile phones and simplify the user interface to meet the manifold needs of elderly and disabled people and make mobile phone services accessible for them. Efficient access to emergency services, i.e. provide a foolproof and failsafe operating procedure and integrate GPS-localization will also be realised.

POVES: Portable Opto-electronic Vision Enhancement System
Co-workers: G. Edelmayer; R. Grünfelder; P. Mayer; F. P. Seiler; G. Zenz
POVES will tackle visual impairments, e.g. night blindness, decrease of the visual field, colour blindness and impairments in contrast perception, light sensitivity and visual acuity, which cannot be compensated by conventional optical methods. The aim is to porduce a battery operated, portable image processing system consisting of a head worn spectacle part carrying CCD cameras and LCD displays and a pocket part containing the image processor, the power supply and the controls.

RELIEF - Hardcopy Graphics for Blind Persons
Co-workers: H. Deisenhammer; G. Ehrenfels; R. Grünfelder; F. P. Seiler; G. Seisenbacher
The goal of the project was to develop a practicable system for automatic production of tactile hardcopy graphics. Besides a PC, RELIEF consists of three main components: a CAD-like drawing programme, an NC-machine to produce the wooden 3D-model and an deep-drawing equipment for manufacturing foils.

MOVEMENT - Modular Versatile Mobility Enhancement Technology
Co-workers: G. Edelmayer; P. Mayer; P. Panek; W. L. Zagler
MOVEMENT aims at the development of a modular versatile mobility enhancement system. The core is formed by an intelligent mobile (robotic) platform which can attach to a user definable selection of application modules (e.g. chair, manipulator, ICT Terminal) which are more or less inconspicuous mainstream articles but will become powerful assistive devices when the mobile platform attaches to them. All three dimensions of personal mobility - MOVEMENT of People - MOVEMENT of Objects - MOVEMENT of Information - are comprehensively addressed.

FASTY: Faster Typing for Disabled Persons
Co-workers: C. Beck; G. Seisenbacher; P. Panek; W. Zagler
The objective of FASTY is the creation of a system for increasing the text generation rate of disabled persons by Predictive Typing and dedicated advanced input devices. The system will be useable for most European languages (focusing on highly inflected languages) and assist motor, speech, learning and language impaired persons to produce texts faster and with less physical/cognitive load.

EMU: The Text Prediction System
Co-workers: C. Beck; G. Seisenbacher; W. Zagler
EMU is a spin off coming from FASTY. A totally new userinterface and an enhanced language component (coming from FASTY) is developed.

FACT - a small tool to change file and right settings on Windows(tm) platforms
FACT is a small tool that supports persons to alter the access rights of folders and files of Windows(tm) systems.

Neroaccessible
Provides an alternative user interface for the Nero(tm) burning software. With this tool visually impaired persons can burn CDs and DVDs using Nero and a screenreader.

Skypccess
Provides an alternative user interface for Skype(tm). With this tool visually impaired persons have full access to Sykpe using a screenreader.

Last updated: 31/10/2007

Pavel Zahorik
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9660, United States of America.
Tel: +1 805 893 2791
Fax: +1 805 893 4303
Email: zahorik@psych.ucsb.edu
Publications

Current & recent projects

Distance Perception Auditory/Visual Interactions

Last updated: 26/06/2000

Dr Mary Zajicek
School of Technology, Oxford Brookes University, Wheatley Campus, Oxford, Oxon OX33 1HX, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0)797 9964998
Fax: +44 (0)1865 484545
Email: mzajicek@brookes.ac.uk
Web: www.brookes.ac.uk/speech
Publications

Current & recent projects

Graphical Structure Semantic Markup Languages (GraSSML)
Co-workers: Professor David Duce and Zaineb Ben Fredj
Working with new web technologies in the area of high-level diagram descriptions for the web. The aim is to generate accessible and appropriate presentations dependent on both the user and hardware requirements. The project called Graphical Structure Semantic Markup Languages (GraSSML) aims at defining higher-level diagram description languages for the World Wide Web, which capture the structure and the semantics of a diagram and enable the generation of accessible and “smart” presentations in different modalities such as speech, text, and graphics. SVG is used as the graphical output renderer. GraSSML makes use of the activity of the Semantic Web area concerned with the expression of subject ontologies and relationships expressed over terms defined in ontologies.
Ongoing project.

BrookesJog - Handheld reminder system for older people
BrookesJog allows care providers to place reminders for care recipients on a database, which are then triggered at the appropriate time on a handheld PDA. The research focuses on the SALT based speech dialogue with the care recipient.

VABS - Voice Access Booking System for Age Concern Oxfordshire
This project aims to harness new Web technologies to enable older adults to use the Web without knowledge of computers. VABS uses VoiceXML to enable older adults to access a database by phone using a dialogue which features many design solutions which focus on ease of use for older adults and Design for All.

A Special Voice Web Browser for Older Adults
Co-workers: Wesley Morrissey
We are researching the needs of older visually impaired adults in a voice Web browser BrookesTalk, in terms of memory support and organisational support, especially for getting to understanding how the Web works. We have performed many experiments to determine the optimum design for BrookesTalk for older adults, and have built the system. We are now performing extended user trials.
Project start date: 01/08/1999
Project end date: 01/08/2002

BrookesTalk with Voice Help
BrookesTalk is a stand-alone Web browser for blind and visually impaired users. The Voice Help is for those with memory impairment. It talks users through their interaction. The system is designed to get older adults up and running on the Web. Members of the Speech project have been working for some time on Web access for visually impaired users. The work is currently focussed on Web access for older adults with memory impairment. Currently research into the optimum message length for the voice output on BrookesTalk with Voice Help is underway, so that users will be able to retain the maximum amount of information.
Project start date: 01/01/1997
Project end date: 01/12/2001

Last updated: 31/10/2007

Professor John S. Zelek
Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada.
Tel: +1 519 888 4567 Ext 2567
Fax: +1 519 746 4791
Email: jzelek@uwaterloo.ca
Web: http://stargate.uwaterloo.ca/~jzelek/

Current & recent projects

Research interests:

Wearable sensory substitution (touch via vibro-tactile stimulation for vision) for applications such as an aid for people who are visually impaired or blind or for augmentation where spatial localization is problematic
Haptics
Dynamic probabilistic computer vision techniques
Mobile robot navigation
Human-robot interaction

Last updated: 18/9/2006

Dr George J. Zimmerman
Faculty of Instruction and Learning, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, 4H32 Wesley Posvar Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, United States of America.
Tel: +1 412 624 7247
Email: gjz@pitt.edu
Web: www.education.pitt.edu/people/GeorgeZimmerman/index.asp
Publications

Current & recent projects

Research interests:

Enhancing spatial orientation skills of persons who are visually impaired
Microcomputer simulations and mental rotation of persons who are blind or visually impaired
Orientation and mobility for aged persons who are visually impaired
Optical device use by low vision persons
Use of interacting video disc technology in personnel preparation for orientation and mobility

Last updated: 18/9/2006

Professor E. Zrenner
University Eye Hospital Schleichstr. 12 D-72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Fax: +49 7071 295038
Email: ezrenner@uni-tuebingen.de

Current & recent projects

Subretinal Implant Project
Development of a chip, which can be implanted into the eye to replace the photoreceptors of the retina, thus restoring some impression of vision to patients suffering from photoreceptor degeneration as caused e.g. by the common eye disease "Retinitis Pigmentosa".

Last updated: 26/07/2000