Congratulations to Cagatay Goncu, Kim Marriott and John Hurst who have received an Honourable Mention in the 2012 Touch of Genius awards, National Braille Press, for their work on GraVVITAS!
You can see the full announcement at here. The text of the award is copied below.
Honorable Mention
A $5,000 Honorable Mention was awarded to the team of Cagatay Concu, Kim Marriot, and John Hurst for their submission of “GraVVITAS: Graphics Viewer using Vibration, Interactive Touch, Audio and Speech.” GraVVITAS is a multi-modal presentation device which uses touch screen and haptic feedback technologies to provide access to graphics for blind people. A data glove equipped with vibrating motors provides haptic feedback when the finger is over a graphic element on the tablet computer. GraVVITAS also provides speech and 3D non-speech audio feedback to help the user with navigation.
Dr. Cagatay Goncu, Prof. Kim Marriott, and Assoc. Prof. John Hurst began this project in 2008 as part of Goncu’s PhD studies, collaborating with domain experts from Vision Australia and conducting usability studies with blind participants. Gonchu, a research fellow at Monash University, focuses on universal accessibility, multi-modal human computer interaction, tactile graphics, and information visualization. Marriott leads the Monash Adaptive Visualisation Lab (MArVL) at Monash University and inspired this project after realizing how important accessible graphics were in education for a blind second year university student. Hurst is an adjunct associate professor at Monash University whose passion is helping students in their learning processes and researching into technology-supported learning.
