Accessible Embodied Interaction (AEI) was the main topic of the two-day workshop that took place at LASIGE, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa.

The Training School was organized by LASIGE’s Carlos Duarte, integrated member, and took place on March 16 and 17, 2023.

On the first day, students from Spain, Poland, Portugal, Moldova, and Kosovo had a chance to listen to four lectures by invited speakers: Gilberto Bernardes (Universidade do Porto, Portugal) presented Open Minds: Designing for radical inclusion, introducing the open minds deck of cards to support brainstorming tasks to recognize difficulties of people with disabilities and design for inclusion.; Krzysztof Krejtz (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland) presented “Mobile eye tracking method and practice”, where he presented the basics of eye tracking with a special focus on mobile eye tracking; Chris Hughes’s (Salford University, UK) lecture “Virtual Environments: Developing accessible presence within an XR environment” demonstrated the practicalities of rapid prototyping XR tools using accessibility to break down traditional barriers to communication and interaction. Luís Aly (Universidade do Porto, Portugal) presented “How to use biosignals in music perception research?” highlighting biosignals as a robust and accurate means of designing embodied interactions with the digital realm.

The second day of the workshop belonged to the students. Their task was to plan and conduct research using the equipment presented on the first day. The participants, who worked in groups, explored the potential of these technologies to combat phobias or to measure music-induced physiological responses, for example.