Atieh Taheri

Atieh Taheri, Hamza El Alaoui, Patrick Carrington et al.

Ableist microaggressions remain pervasive in everyday interactions, yet interventions to help people recognize them are limited. We present an experiment testing how AI-mediated dialogue influences recognition of ableism. 160 participants completed a pre-test, intervention, and a post-test across four conditions: AI nudges toward bias (Bias-Directed), inclusion (Neutral-Directed), unguided dialogue (Self-Directed), and a text-only non-dialogue (Reading). Participants rated scenarios on standardness of social experience and emotional impact; those in dialogue-based conditions also provided qualitative reflections. Quantitative results showed dialogue-based conditions produced stronger recognition than Reading, though trajectories diverged: biased nudges improved differentiation of bias from neutrality but increased overall negativity. Inclusive or no nudges remained more balanced, while Reading participants showed weaker gains and even declines. Qualitative findings revealed biased nudges were often rejected, while inclusive nudges were adopted as scaffolding. We contribute a validated vignette corpus, an AI-mediated intervention platform, and design implications highlighting trade-offs conversational systems face when integrating bias-related nudges.

Atieh Taheri, Ziv Weissman, Misha Sra

From colored pixels to hyper-realistic 3D landscapes of virtual reality, video games have evolved immensely over the last few decades. However, video game input still requires two-handed dexterous finger manipulations for simultaneous joystick and trigger or mouse and keyboard presses. In this work, we explore the design of a hands-free game control method using realtime facial expression recognition for individuals with neurological and neuromuscular diseases who are unable to use traditional game controllers. Similar to other Assistive Technologies (AT), our facial input technique is also designed and tested in collaboration with a graduate student who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Our preliminary evaluation shows the potential of facial expression recognition for augmenting the lives of quadriplegic individuals by enabling them to accomplish things like walking, running, flying or other adventures that may not be so attainable otherwise.