Monday 30 January 2023

Back to the Blog

 Well, when I said that I was going to take a hiatus from blogging, I hadn't envisaged that it last four years! Still, here we are. It's been a busy few years. First I got sick, so I had a load of catching up to do in the first three quarters of 2019, then I got sick again, then I came back to work and ten weeks later the whole world got sick and COVID closed everything down. After that it's been a process of moving teaching online, then moving to teaching hybrid, then moving teaching back into the classroom. Along with that, there's been trying to finish the SUITCEYES project up (which we did, though it has to be the most frustrating end to a project on haptics - where you can't actually get other people to feel the work you've been doing!) and get the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures project started (we started in January 2020 - so we had two years of largely talking theory). 

But we're back. Teaching is in person, research visits are happening - all the pent up pressure is finally being released! Busy times! But it also means that with some of the backlog clearing, and things to actually write about, it seemed a good time to get the blog back online. I've been meaning to do it for a while, but I'd promised myself that this year I'd try to do at least one blog post a month (even if it's just "Month in Review" posts). And the deadline for January is... tomorrow! And I'm due to travel then, so... I guess that leaves today!

I won't bore you with the details of the last four years, but here are my research highlights from 2022:

1) I attended the Brocher Workshop on Affective Technotouch in June. It was ace, and I need to get my thoughts written up properly.

2) Attended the Towards Access for All – Inclusion through Multisensory Interactions symposium.

3) Visited Russ Palmer to test out some haptic navigation prototypes.

4) Co-organised a workshop on "Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Designing Accessible Systems for Users with Multiple Impairments: Grand Challenges and Opportunities for Future Research"

Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now, and hit publish to get the blog back on the go...