Participant Support Costs - CHS: Medium: Next Generation Content Production Tools for People with Vision Impairments

The proposed work will establish a technical and conceptual understanding of the information and interaction needs required for accessible content production, and in turn, apply this knowledge to innovate and study accessible content production tools for individual and collaborative work. Research involves four interconnected phases of work: (1) understanding accessibility needs and practices; (2) designing, developing, and evaluating two new accessible content production systems; (3) implementing collaboration features to support and study mixed-ability teamwork; and (4) studying the effects of these systems at scale. The proposed work focuses on two prevalent forms of content production: text-based content created by blind journalists, creative writers, and bloggers; and audio created by blind podcasters, audio bloggers, audio engineers, and musicians. These forms of content production are pervasive online and naturally suited to non-visual interaction. We will assess our work through a comprehensive evaluation strategy that captures individual, group and societal level outcomes. Our existing partnerships with five organizations for people with vision impairments will facilitate participant recruitment and ensure the impact of our work.