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The VISTA project brings together internationally recognised
organisations representing global excellence in their field.
They will combine state-of-the-art voice recognition, advanced
computer linguistics, 3D avatar animation, and vocal interaction
paradigms designed on the basis of user needs to offer visually
impaired and elderly viewers intuitive access to electronic
programme information on digital TV platforms.
The Independent Television
Commission (ITC) is the independent public body responsible
for licensing and regulating all commercially funded analogue
and digital television services provided in and from the UK.
It conducts research and development from it's Technology
Group. A significant focus of this research and development
is to find effective ways of increasing access to digital
TV.
British Sky Broadcasting
(BSkyB) is the operator of the UK's largest digital television
platform and a leading broadcaster of sports, movies, entertainment
and news. Sky is a member of the Broadcasters' Disability
Network (BDN). In May 2002 Sky launched an action plan to
work towards improving their understanding of how Sky impacts
upon the lives of disabled people. Sky has given a commitment
to improve access to its services, an objective served in
part by Sky's involvement in VISTA.
The Age and
Cognitive Performance Research Centre at Victoria University
of Manchester was set up in 1982 and is the longest running
longitudinal study of the cognitive changes observed in late
adulthood in the UK. The centre has a volunteer panel of over
3,000 local volunteers aged over fifty years who attend the
centre regularly to participate in a variety of studies. Recently,
much of the centre's applied research has focussed on various
information and communication systems with regard to optimising
their use by older people. In general these studies have emphasised
the methodologies associated with experimental cognitive psychology.
However, the 'real world' applications involved have necessitated
the use of a broad range of human factors methods. Since October
2002, VISTA's lead researcher at the ACPRU at Manchester has
been based at the Department
of Applied Computing, University of Dundee.
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University of East Anglia
- The School of Information Systems at the University of East
Anglia has research groups in many areas of artificial intelligence:
computer vision, data-mining, machine-learning, bio-informatics
and speech and language processing are the main ones. The
speech and language processing group has been active for over
ten years and has made significant contributions in the fields
of speaker adaptation, robust speech recognition, confidence
measures and speech synthesis.
City University: The
Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design is an independent
research centre established within the School
of Informatics at City University in 1991. The Centre
is London's largest HCI-related research group, with over
20 academic and research staff and a large number of PhD candidates.
The group researches the design of socio-technical systems,
with particular emphasis on: user-centred requirements engineering,
user diversity, with particular focus on disabled and elderly
users, interaction design and usability evaluation, and understanding
important aspects of design - creativity, communication and
negotiation.
Sensory is the world
leader in embedded speech technology. Sensory's speech technologies
include speech recognition, speaker verification, speech and
music synthesis, and animated speech. Sensory's ICs and embedded
software are used in consumer electronics, cell phones, PDA's,
internet appliances, interactive toys, automobiles, and other
applications where low cost and high quality are essential.
Televirtual is
an advanced entertainment technology company, with expertise
in the areas of digital animation, virtual reality characters,
motion capture and environments. Televirtual offers an advanced
independent motion capture studio as a service to animators,
video games designers and broadcasters.
Approximately 50% of the funding for the VISTA project is
being provided by a joint Department of Trade and Industry
(DTI), Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences
Council (EPSRC) funding initiative, PACCIT
(People at the Centre of Communication and Information Technologies).
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