Presentations and Achievements
Academic Publications and Presentations
December 2009 - March 2010, workshops by Phia Damsma introducing the All Abilities ePlayground to students of special schools and special education units of primary schools on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
17 December 2009, presentation for Rotary Club of Gold Coast Central, Queensland. Presenter: Phia Damsma.
14 November 2009, The Biennial Getting In Touch With Literacy Conference, California, USA. Presentation title: KinderBraille – Multi-media fun with Braille. Tim Connell, Quantum Technology, John Norgaard, Sonokids Foundation and Phia Damsma, Sonokids Foundation.
22 September 2009, Training and Development Seminar (TADS) 2009 organised by Disability Services Support Unit, Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts. Theme: Creative Teams – Creative Strategies. Title of presentation: 'Virtual All Abilities playground'. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Presenter: Phia Damsma.
14 July 2009, presentation and workshop 'RadaR the Eargame' by Phia Damsma at seminar organised by Disability Services Support Unit, Department of Education, Training and the Arts, Queensland, Australia.
5 - 10 July 2009, 7th European Conference of The International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI). Theme: Living in a Changing Europe.
Venue: Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Presenter: Rob Jones.
2 - 3 April 2009, VISCON: Conference for Teachers and Teacher's Aides of the Vision Impaired, hosted by the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) Renwick Centre, North Rocks, NSW, Australia. Presenter: Phia Damsma.
5 - 9 January 2009, SPEVI 2009 Biennial Conference of the South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment, Adelaide, Australia. Paper presentation titled Safe and Skilled Surfing through RadaR the Eargame - an e-learning program for children who are blind or vision impaired.
Phia Damsma, John Norgaard, Rob Jones.
October 2008, RadaR the Eargame Workshop by Phia Damsma for Vision Australia, Enfield, NSW, Australia.
August 2008, workshop for Viziris by Peter op ‘t Hof, regarding the use of Open Office.org for Linux and Windows. Utrecht, The Netherlands.
July 2008, workshop MaX, "Create Your Own Website" for teenagers who are JAWS users. Phia Damsma for Vision Australia, Enfield, NSW, Australia.
29 September 2007, 14th Deafblind International World Conference, Hosted by Senses Foundation (Inc), Perth, Western Australia.
Title of presentation: “Our Space – Building an Online Community for Deafblind People”. Presenter: Phia Damsma.
Recognising the potential benefits that social networking websites could bring to isolated individuals who are deafblind, Sense, the UK's largest organisation for children and adults who are deafblind, and Sonokids, joined forces in a unique project to enable people who are deafblind to create personal websites to encourage social interaction and the creation of an online inclusive community. Conference website: www.dbiconference2007.asn.au
21 – 22 September 2006, Shared Visions - Next Steps Conference. Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
Workshop on the Conference Theme: supporting inclusive communities:
‘MaX – blind web site creation’
Presenter: Phia Damsma
MaX, Sonokids accessible content management system and web creation tool, continues to evolve. Using MaX’s What you hear is what you see concept, blind and vision impaired users can independently create their own personal website which in its turn will also be accessible to blind and vision impaired visitors. Be inspired by a demonstration of how MaX works, showcased sites created by young blind and vision impaired users and user feedback which continues to improve the tool.
Conference website: www.iamevents.com.au/sharedvisions
20th - 23rd May 2006, Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Inc., “Realizing the Vision for Accessible Information: The Way Forward”. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Paper: Realizing the vision for accessible real-time information: ASK-IT or accessible travel information anywhere anytime. Authors: Phia Damsma (Sonokids) and Karel Van Isacker (e-ISOTIS). Presenter: Phia Damsma.
For the conference proceedings and the paper please see www.e-bility.com/roundtable/ (coming soon)
April 2006: Guest-lecture on web-accessibility issues by Phia Damsma. Venue: Bond University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. On request of Jan Jervis, School of IT
21-25 November 2005, OZCHI 2005, Canberra, Australia.
Annual conference for the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia.
Short Paper: Best Practices in an online community for blind, partly sighted and fully sighted children, Phia Damsma, John Norgaard and Rob Jones.
The OZCHI 2005 proceedings are part of the ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery) International Conference Proceedings Series under the ACM ISBN number:
1-59593-222-4. These proceedings are available at the ACM Digital Library (link: http:/portal.acm.org/dl.cfm
13 October 2005, Stuttgart, John Norgaard participated in the ASK-IT workshop organized by e-Isotis. Sonokids is associate member of e-Isotis. The aim of e-Isotis is to support people with disabilities and elderly people to overcome the existing barriers and to experience an Information Society Open to ImpairmentS (ISOTIS). See www.e-isotis.org
July 2005, HCI International 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Thematic area: Online Communities and Social Computing
Presentation by V. Evers of paper entitled ‘Bridging different sensory capabilities: building a virtual community for blind and seeing children’. Authors: Vanessa Evers, Christiaan Luteijn , Phia Damsma , John Norgaard.
HCII 2005 was one of the biggest ever organised in the fields related to Human Computer Interaction and Information Society Technologies, and attracted more than 2100 participants from 60 countries.
The Proceedings have been published on CD-ROM by Mira Digital Publishing (ISBN 0-8058-5807-5), and are structured in eleven volumes. This paper is published in the volume entitled: ‘Internationalization, Online Communities and Social Computing: Design and Evaluation’.
21 June 2005, Course and Workshop in Macromedia Flash accessibility for IBOS - The
Institute for The Blind and Partially Sighted in Denmark. John Norgaard presenting for IBOS Instructors and Consultants.
June 2005, Workshops about web-design for students of the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh, Scotland
20 April 2005, Presentation about webtool MaX and internetradio for Vision Denmark
Computer Camp in Oksboel, Denmark by John Norgaard, for teachers and students.
March 2005
Workshop webtool MaX in ‘Cyberclub’ for blind and vision impaired young people, on request of Visio Rotterdam, Netherlands. Visio is an organisation in The Netherlands aimed at supporting partially sighted and blind people to accomplish their wish for independent life, education and work.
2004 - 2005
Participated in the course Computer Human Interaction (guestlectures + case-study) at the request of Prof. Vanessa Evers, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Dept. of Social Science Informatics (SWI), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
23 November 2004
Presentation about webtool MaX and internetradio for ‘Visual Impairment Scotland’ and Scottish Sensory Center in Edinburgh, Scotland and subsequent workshops at the Royal Blind School Edinburgh, Scotland, for teachers, care-takers, students and other interested parties.
18-19 November 2004
Presentation by John Norgaard at the International Technology Conference Techshare 2004 organized by UK’s Royal National Institute for the Blind in Birmingham, UK. Presentation title: The successful development of an accessible web authoring tool in cooperation with its vision impaired and blind users. Authors: John Norgaard and Phia Damsma.
The event attracted around 300 delegates from about 17 countries.
October 2004: publication by Rob Jones in ICEVI-Europe European Newsletter, Volume 10 number 2.
ICEVI is a professional non-governmental organization recognized by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, by UNICEF and by UNESCO. ICEVI's mission is to promote educational opportunities for children and adults with visual impairment throughout the world. Read Rob Jones' article “Website Authoring Tool for Students with a Visual Impairment”.
10 September 2004, Presentation of the original Dutch version of ‘RadaR, the Eargame’ at seminar ‘Serious Games’, Utrecht, The Netherlands, organised by the Utrecht University, the School for Higher Education of the Arts Utrecht, Professional School of the Arts Utrecht and the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).
15 June 2004, International Conference on Virtual Communities in The Hague, The Netherlands.
Joint presentation with Prof. Vanessa Evers entitled ‘Beyond Physical and Cultural Barriers: The Development of an International Community Environment for Seeing and Visually Impaired Children’. www.infonortics.com/vc/vc04/slides/evers.pdf
12 June 2004, Annual meeting of FOVIG (Dutch Federation of Parents of Vision Impaired) at Bartiméus Institute for the Blind, Zeist, The Netherlands.
Presentation and performance of audioplay RadaR for parents and children and workshops internet-radio for children. The audience listens captivated during the 40 minutes audioplay. Young children lay down on the floor, listening to the adventures of Mo, Mik and Max. The SOS8 system assembled for this event was sponsored by Philips Research Eindhoven, the Netherlands
2004, Participation in the course human-computer interaction (guestlectures + case-study) at the request of Prof. Vanessa Evers, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Dept. of Social Science Informatics (SWI), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.