Designing Inclusive Technologies that Promote Collaboration, Playfulness, and Self-Efficacy

When we hear people talking about accessibility, it is common to observe an attempt to put a band-aid on a problem. Accessibility as an after-thought not only creates interactive systems that are not accessible from the beginning but also leads to “accessible” systems that are superficial and stereotypical, and no longer fit the purpose they were intended for. In these cases, people with disabilities tend to be presented with sub-optimal systems that limit their interactive experience. In this keynote, I will talk about our engagements with communities of people with disabilities to create interactive experiences that are playful, collaborative, and promote self-efficacy, in the contexts of inclusive learning, inclusive gaming, and human-robot interaction. This includes presenting research projects we have been working on in the last few years but also the different methodologies applied to get a deeper understanding of the communities we collaborate with, and the impact of our own interventions.

Tiago Guerreiro is Associate Professor at Universidade de Lisboa (Faculdade de Ciências) and a researcher at LASIGE. His main areas of expertise are Accessible Computing and Pervasive Healthcare. In these areas, he published 100+ peer-reviewed papers, and received awards for 10+ papers and an ACM Best of Computing award in 2016. He is Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, was the Web for All General and Program Chair, in 2016 and 2015,  ASSETS 2020 General Chair, and is ASSETS 2024 Program Co-Chair, among many other service roles. He was an invited expert supporting the European Commission in implementing the Web Accessibility Directive. He is the President of his institution’s Ethics Review Board, Vice-Director and past coordinator of LASIGE’s research line on Accessibility and Aging.