Sylvia Janicki, Matt Ziegler, Jennifer Mankoff:
Navigating Illness, Finding Place: Enhancing the Experience of Place for People Living with Chronic Illness. COMPASS 2021: 173-187
When chronic illness, such as Lyme disease, is viewed through a disability lens, equitable access to public spaces becomes an important area for consideration. Yet chronic illness is often viewed solely through an individualistic, medical model lens. We contribute to this field of study in four consecutive steps using Lyme disease as a case study: (1) we highlight urban design and planning literature to make the case for its relevance to chronic illness; (2) we explore the place-related impacts of living with chronic illness through an analysis of interviews with fourteen individuals living with Lyme disease; (3) we derive a set of design guidelines from our literature review and interviews that serve to support populations living with chronic illness; and (4) we present an interactive mapping prototype that applies our design guidelines to support individuals living with chronic illness in experiencing and navigating public and outdoor spaces.
Hoffman, M., Kasnitz, D., Mankoff, J. and Bennett, C. l. (2020) 
“Occupational Therapy is Making'”: Design Iteration and Digital Fabrication in Occupational Therapy
The absence of tactile cues such as keys and buttons makes touchscreens difficult to navigate for people with visual impairments. Increasing tactile feedback and tangible interaction on touchscreens can improve their accessibility. However, prior solutions have either required hardware customization or provided limited functionality with static overlays. In addition, the investigation of tactile solutions for large touchscreens may not address the challenges on mobile devices. We therefore present Interactiles, a low-cost, portable, and unpowered system that enhances tactile interaction on Android touchscreen phones. Interactiles consists of 3D-printed hardware interfaces and software that maps interaction with that hardware to manipulation of a mobile app. The system is compatible with the built-in screen reader without requiring modification of existing mobile apps. We describe the design and implementation of Interactiles, and we evaluate its improvement in task performance and the user experience it enables with people who are blind or have low vision.
