[games_access] NSF grant for the development of an accessibleclient for secondlife

Tue Aug 7 04:46:35 EDT 2007

interesting -- kevin and i are collaborating and we didn't even know 
it! kevin -- wanna check what's going on at RIT and i'll check with 
UIUC and maybe we can get some accessibility input into this!

michelle

>By the way, just got this in:
>
>
>August 06, 2007
>
>Library of Congress announces grants for preservation of digital games
>
>Posted by Henry Lowood, category preservation
>
>The U.S. Library of Congress has 
><http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-156.html>announced the 
>recipients of a group of major grants in the new digital 
>preservation program called Preserving Creative America (PCA). This 
>program reprsents a new phase of the 
><http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/>National Digital Information 
>Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).
>
>The best news, for How They Got Game, is that we are part of this 
>project. We will be participating as one of four primary partners in 
>the "Preserving Virtual Worlds" project, led by the University of 
>Illinois. Project teams are at U. Illinois, the University of 
>Maryland, Rochester Inst. of Technology, and our group in the 
>Stanford Humanities Laboratory, in close collaboration with the 
>Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources. 
>"Preserving Virtual Worlds" will address three forms of game-related 
>interactive media: early digital games (see the Digital Game Canon 
>project for a list of likely candidates), electronic literature, and 
>virtual worlds (<http://secondlife.com/>Second Life).
>
>So, what are we going to do?
>
>A number of partners, from Linden Lab to e-fiction writers, will 
>join the university partners to develop generalizable mechanisms and 
>methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction, 
>working with several test cases from early game and electronic 
>literature collections and sample projects in Second Life.
>
>Major activities will include:
>
>1.	assessing the different types of preservation problems posed 
>by representative test cases Includes
>developing a beginning framework for characterizing game and 
>interactive fiction by preservation problem
>assessing methods and potential sources for preserving complex 
>interactive user-behavior
>2.	developing basic standards for metadata and content 
>representation, e.g.,
>determining what types of information should be preserved to support 
>future use of these content types, including emulation and migration 
>and supporting existing preservation policies
>developing recommendations for the use of existing wrapper formats
>3.	investigating real-world archiving issues by ingesting 
>several representative test cases into institutional repositories, 
>including
>implementation and testing of new metadata schema
>further assessment of preservation problems posed by different content types
>
>The main goal of the project is to help develop generalizable 
>mechanisms and methods for preserving digital games and interactive 
>fiction, and to begin to test these mechanism through the archiving 
>of selected test cases. Key deliverables include the development of 
>metadata schema and wrapper recommendations, and the long-term 
>curation of archived cases.
>
>Much of the Second Life work will be conducted at Stanford, and we 
>also expect that the Cabrinety Collection in the Libraries will 
>provide examples of game software that we will use for the 
>preservation tests. Second Life content participants include Life to 
>the Second Power, Democracy Island and the International Spaceflight 
>Museum.
>
>We are eager to enlist more partners interested in working with us 
>to solve the huge preservation problem faced by interactive media 
>such as games and virtual worlds.
>
>Henry
>
>Henry Lowood, Ph.D.
>Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections
>Curator for Germanic Collections; Film & Media Collections
>HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
>Stanford University Libraries
>Stanford CA 94305-6004
>650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:eelke.folmer at gmail.com>Eelke Folmer
>To: <mailto:games_access at igda.org>IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
>Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 4:09 AM
>Subject: [games_access] NSF grant for the development of an 
>accessibleclient for secondlife
>
>Hi folks,
>
>I just received a 90k SGER grant from NSF to explore developing a 
>blind-accessible client for Secondlife. A proposal I have been 
>working on for quite some time. This grant will allow me to hire 
>some more grad students and help us get a better insight in what can 
>make virtual communities/3d games more accessible to a variety of 
>disabilities.
>
>
>I've been secretly working on an accessible client myself the last 
>few months and I developed a prototype which can be controlled using 
>voice (its mac only for now) and provides some minimum voice output. 
>I will release a prototype within the next few weeks, and I'm hoping 
>you some of you can provide me with feedback.
>
>The NSF program director that I contacted prior to submitting my 
>proposal is very very nice and interested in games & accessibility. 
>His feedback & support was very helpful in securing the grant, and I 
>hope this proposal will open up opportunities for us all to submit 
>grants to NSF in the future; helping people with disabilities play 
>games & gain a better understanding of what exactly makes games 
>accessible. I think there is still lots to be discovered.
>
>
>Cheers Eelke
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Eelke Folmer                           Assistant Professor
>Department of CS&E/171
>University of Nevada              Reno, Nevada 89557
>Game interaction design        <http://www.helpyouplay.com>www.helpyouplay.com
>------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------
>
>
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