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Joseph Scheuhammer

ACCESSIBILITY SOFTWARE ARCHITECT
Head shot of Joseph, smiling Caricature by Taras Kowaliw
Caricature by Taras Kowaliw, 2001

Interests

My main interest is Java and accessibility: the accessibility of Java as a platform, and how it can be used to realize adaptive technologies. Here are a few things that I have done with Java, roughly in order of present to past:

  • Technical lead for the Web-4-All project. Developed with Industry Canada, it ensures that seniors, new Canadians, and people with disabilities or literacy challenges have computer access to services and information on the Internet. Web-4-All stores user preferences on a smartcard. The smartcard is used to configure a public access terminal and its adaptive technology.
  • Developing a player for the Barrier Free Broadband Learning Environments project. This project focusses on the accessibility of content delivered over broadband; specifically, how such content can be enhanced, on demand, for people with varying types of disability and/or learning styles. The player is written using Java/JFC and QuickTime for Java.
  • Project lead for an audio look and feel for Swing.
  • Member of the design team for the "accessibility prompt" tool; a tool that prompts authors to make their HTML more accessible. I partially implemented a version of the tool in Java, but that project is on hold at present.
  • Speech protonode for VRML. This was part of a larger project entitled "Accessibility and VRML".
  • Member of the JFC advisory council. I commented (and complained and cajoled) on the accessibility of Swing.
  • Long ago, I looked into UIML as a way of defining multiple user interfaces for a single application.
  • Co-designed a word prediction engine. 

The issue I constantly run into is how to design a user interface for persons with low vision, using audio and synthesized speech. However, what I am really interested in is how to represent the functionality of a given piece of software independent of how users actually interact with it. The idea is that once that functionality is defined in a way that does not presume any specific user interface, one can then define various kinds of user interface that use different senses, including GUI, voice recognition, audio/speech and haptics.

Musings

From time to time, I write down my thoughts on some topic or other. These documents can be found in the musings section of this site.

Personal

I am married to Judy and we have a ten year old son, Alistair, and a cat named Isaac.

Hobbies and other interests include fantasy role playing, jogging, juggling, and piano. I can juggle three.

For a more extensive biography, go to my biography page.

ASCII art; depicts a clown's head

Joseph Scheuhammer, Ph.D.
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre
Information Commons
University of Toronto
Seventh Floor
130 St. George St.
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M5S 3H1

TEL: (416) 946-3196
FAX: (416) 971-2896
EMAIL: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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