8:08 a.m., Nov. 5, 2009----Stephen Steward, a junior in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware, won second place in the undergraduate category of the SIGACCESS Student Research Competition held at the 11th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Computers and Accessibility held Oct. 26-28 in Pittsburgh, Pa.

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The conference explores the use of computing and information technology to help people with disabilities. The competition is sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Steward's entry, “Designing AAC Interfaces for Commercial Brain-Computer Interaction Gaming Hardware,” described his efforts at developing an interface to allow people who have severe motor and speech impairments to communicate using a computer and a low-cost gaming device. The gaming device, worn as a headband, reads biosignals -- as generated by such actions as glancing left -- and translates them into keystrokes on the keyboard. His interface could provide access to people cheaply and efficiently.

The student research competition was judged in several phases. First, written reports of projects were judged by a group of experts in the field. Students making it through this initial judging were given a $500 travel award to present their work in a judged poster competition at the conference.

A subset of these students went on to an additional round of judging involving an oral presentation to the conference participants. From these, conference winners were determined.

Winning students are now eligible to move into the ACM Grand Finals competition, which will be held in early 2010.