SlidePacer: Improving Class Pace for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students
Alessandra Brandao · 2015 · ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility · doi:10.1145/2700648.2811325
Summary
This short paper from Rochester Institute of Technology introduces SlidePacer, a prototype tool designed to synchronize PowerPoint slide transitions with sign language interpretation in university classrooms. The paper addresses a fundamental challenge for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students in mainstream education: the need to divide visual attention among multiple simultaneous information sources—the instructor, presentation slides, and sign language interpreter. Because interpreters necessarily lag behind the speaker, slides and interpretation frequently fall out of sync, forcing students to either miss slide content while watching the interpreter or miss interpretation while reading slides. SlidePacer consists of two components connected via Bluetooth: a PowerPoint add-in used by the instructor and an Android application used by the interpreter. When the instructor presses to advance slides, the PowerPoint add-in signals the interpreter's app (displaying a red button) rather than immediately changing the slide. The interpreter taps the button when finished signing the current content, triggering the slide change for students while the instructor's screen updates a few seconds later. This workflow ensures DHH students have time to process both the interpretation and the new slide content before the lecture continues.
Key findings
A formative evaluation was conducted with two instructors and three interpreters at RIT, yielding generally positive responses with constructive concerns. All three interpreters agreed that adapting classroom pace would benefit DHH students and noted it could also help hearing students when slides contain dense information. However, interpreters emphasized that their classroom presence should be as unobtrusive as possible, and the visible app button could distract students—prompting investigation into smartwatch-based haptic feedback as an alternative. The two instructors (both experienced with mixed hearing/DHH classes) acknowledged potential benefits but expressed concern that forced pacing might disrupt their lecture rhythm and flow of thought. One instructor with ASL skills noted he already attempts to wait for interpretation to finish before changing slides, demonstrating existing awareness of the issue among some educators. This is early-stage work presenting the system concept and initial stakeholder feedback. No student evaluation or learning outcome measurement has been conducted yet—the paper explicitly identifies this as essential future work to validate whether SlidePacer actually improves comprehension for DHH students without negatively impacting hearing peers.
Relevance
SlidePacer addresses a specific but important accessibility gap in higher education: the coordination problem between lecture pacing and sign language interpretation. The underlying issue—split attention across multiple visual information sources overloading working memory—is well-established in multimedia learning research but rarely addressed through technological intervention in interpreted classrooms. For accessibility practitioners working in educational settings, this paper highlights that providing accommodation services (interpreters, captions, note-takers) does not fully solve information access problems for DHH students. The temporal coordination between different information channels matters, and instructors are often unaware of the cognitive demands placed on DHH students. The stakeholder feedback reveals practical implementation challenges: any solution must fit seamlessly into existing classroom dynamics without disrupting instructors or drawing attention to interpreters. As a short paper presenting work-in-progress, the contribution is primarily conceptual—demonstrating the feasibility of coordination tools rather than proving effectiveness. The research originated from RIT's Center for Accessibility and Inclusion Research, which has significant expertise in deaf education given RIT's proximity to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
Tags: deaf accessibility · sign language interpreters · education · classroom accessibility · multimedia learning · visual attention · split attention · higher education · presentation tools
Standards referenced: IDEA