Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: design for accessibility
This project is built around the idea of designing hardware for accessibility. In the modern context, many accessibility solutions are built around software. While this allows for a lot of flexibility in terms of features and content, it is an imperfect approach to design for users of all abilities. In particular, blind and deaf-blind users are poorly accounted for in terms of hardware design. They are a user group that is highly limited by the inadequate features designed for their needs, and this project will demonstrate that users feel frustrated by these imperfect solutions to using a smartphone without sight. Not only will this project present its own accessory to accompany software accessibility features, but this project will also try to push first-party manufacturers to design and create their own hardware solutions. LOUIS is a refreshable braille display that magnetically attaches to a smartphone case. It will give braille users the tools they need to not only operate their phone through hardware, but read and write through braille. It includes a braille display that can read out on-screen information using existing software APIs. It also has Perkins brailler keys for users to compose texts, emails and other messages. It is packaged into a thin and highly-portable package that will allow users to continue to pocket their phones easily.