ClassInFocus: Enabling Improved Visual Attention Strategies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students
Anna C. Cavender, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Richard E. Ladner · 2009 · Assets '09: Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/1639642.1639656
Summary
This paper presents ClassInFocus, a system designed to help deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students manage the demanding visual attention requirements of modern multi-modal classrooms. DHH students face a unique challenge: while hearing students can simultaneously listen to the instructor and look at slides, DHH students must serially switch their visual attention between multiple concurrent information sources — the instructor, a sign language interpreter or captions, presentation slides, whiteboards, classmates, and their own notes. This "visual dispersion" means DHH students inevitably miss information that changes outside their current visual focus. ClassInFocus addresses this by consolidating classroom components (instructor video, interpreter video, captions, and slides) into a single customizable screen, and by providing automatic visual notifications when important changes occur, such as slide transitions or new speakers. The system was built using Adobe Flash Collaboration Services and evolved from an initial prototype test and focus group with eight DHH students at the University of Washington's Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing. Three notification techniques were designed based on perceptual attention theory and research on visual interruptions: Border (window border turns yellow for 1.5 seconds), Lightswitch (window dims by 75% then fades back), and Wiggle (window bounces twice with 20-pixel vertical motion). All were designed to be anchored animations that suggest rather than demand attention, placed near the area of interest to avoid requiring a two-step search process.
Key findings
A user study with six DHH students and one instructor using a pre-recorded university lecture with Tobii eye tracking revealed two distinct groups: five students who liked the notifications (average preference rating 4.8/5, SD=0.4) and two who did not (rating 3 or below). Students who liked notifications were significantly more likely to look at them (57.9% of the time vs. 16.7% for the other group, F(1,3) = 15.19, p < 0.05) and showed a near-significant positive effect on content question correctness (F(1,3) = 85.62, p = 0.07). Eye tracking data showed highly individualized visual strategies — students spent the majority of time watching either the interpreter or captions, with only 12.2% on the teacher and 18.1% on slides on average (consistent with prior research showing 16% and 22% respectively). Crucially, students who distributed their gaze across multiple sources performed better on content questions — frequency of looking at slides had a significant positive effect on scores (t(5) = 9.97, p < 0.0001), particularly notable since only 2 of 39 questions contained information found only on slides. There was no clear winner among notification types: Border was rated most favorably overall, but preferences were highly individual, with some participants strongly preferring Wiggle. Overall reactions to ClassInFocus were very positive, averaging 4.7/5 for classroom value and 4.4/5 as a study tool.
Relevance
This research addresses a fundamental but often overlooked accessibility challenge in education: the cognitive and attentional burden placed on DHH students in mainstream classrooms. While much accessibility work focuses on providing access to information (e.g., adding captions or interpreters), this paper recognizes that providing multiple accessible alternatives simultaneously creates its own usability problem — visual overload. For accessibility practitioners, several insights are directly applicable. The finding that distributed visual attention correlates with better learning outcomes suggests that accessibility accommodations should be designed not just to provide information access, but to support efficient attention management. The notification design principles — place cues near the content, avoid layout changes, suggest rather than demand attention, use anchored rather than moving animations — are transferable to any interface where users must monitor multiple information streams. The highly individual nature of both layout preferences and notification responses underscores the importance of customization in accessible technology. This work also has relevance for modern remote learning and video conferencing, where DHH users face similar challenges juggling interpreter windows, captions, shared screens, and speaker video in platforms like Zoom or Teams.
Tags: deaf and hard of hearing · classroom accessibility · visual attention · notifications · eye tracking · sign language interpretation · real-time captioning · education