In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits
of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other
populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products.
Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor
Adding Reinforced Corners:
Designing Interactive
Technologies for Children
with Disabilities
Meryl Alper
University of Southern California | malper@usc.edu
Juan Pablo Hourcade
University of Iowa | hourcade@cs.uiowa.edu
Shuli Gilutz
Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya | shulig@idc.ac.il
November + December 2012
interactions
There is growing global interest in
designing technologies for children
with disabilities, as evidenced by the
recent workshop we organized on
this topic at the annual Interaction
Design and Children conference [ 1].
We recognize that in one sense,
disability exists at an individual
level, be it a temporary, degenera-
tive, or permanent disability, occur-
ring at birth or later in life. But while
disability has a distinct medical
basis that affects individuals, it is
also shaped by cultural, societal,
and familial norms. Impairments
can be made more pronounced in
some social situations, be a tre-
mendous advantage in certain
other environments, or make no
difference at all. Disability is not an
isolated issue, intersecting with age,
gender, race, class, and geographic
location. For example, formal
schooling for a child with a dis-
ability in one country may involve
local mainstream and special-needs
schools, while in another region
boarding schools may be the norm.
