Issues in implementing awareness in collaborative software for blind people

Abstract

There is no doubt among the members of the CSCW community that awareness is a key issue in the design of successful collaborative software. In many systems awareness mechanisms have been implemented through displaying graphic information over the system's interface. However, this strategy does not apply when the end users of the system are blind people. In this work we report the problems we encountered when implementing a collaborative game for supporting the learning of music and sound by blind people when trying to develop effective awareness mechanisms. The preliminary results have helped us to be "aware" about some characteristics awareness mechanisms should have for blind people which are not as prominent and problematic for sighted people. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.