| Understanding User Centred Design (UCD) for People with Special Needs | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1-17 | |
| Harold Thimbleby | |||
| "User centred design" (UCD) has become a central, largely unquestioned, tenet of good practice for the design of interactive systems. With the increasing recognition of the importance of special needs in influencing design, UCD needs to be re-examined, in particular to be clear about the difference between using its methods, which may not suit special needs, and achieving its objectives. This paper introduces a simple two-category classification of special needs, to which UCD applies very differently and which are heavily affected by developments in technology; in other words, the role of UCD, particularly with respect to special needs, will continue to change and demand close scrutiny. | |||
| Introduction to the Special Thematic Session: Human-Computer Interaction and Usability for Elderly (HCI4AGING) | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 18-21 | |
| Andreas Holzinger; Kizito Ssamula Mukasa; Alexander K. Nischelwitzer | |||
| Industrialized countries are faced with severe demographical and social
changes. Consequently, areas including Ambient Assisted Living are of
increasing importance. The vision is to provide technologies for supporting
(elderly) people in their daily lives, allowing them to stay longer within
their own home aiming at living independent and self-determined. User
Interfaces in such systems are mostly multimodal, because standard interfaces
have limited accessibility. Multimodal user interfaces combine various input
and output modalities (including seeing/vision, hearing/audition,
haptic/tactile, taste/gustation, smell/olfaction etc) which are classical
research areas in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability Engineering
(UE). One of the advantages of multiple modalities is increased usability: the
weaknesses of one modality are offset by the strengths of another. For example,
on a mobile device with a small visual interface and keypad, a word may be
quite difficult to read/type, however very easy to say/listen. Such interfaces,
in combination with mobile technologies, can have tremendous implications for
accessibility and can be a benefit for people. An important issue is that
interfaces must be accessible, useful and usable. Traditionally, HCI bridges
Psychology/Pedagogy and Informatics, while UE is anchored in software
technology. Together, HCI&UE provide the emerging potential to assist the
daily workflows in the realm of AAL. This special thematic session is devoted
to promote a closer collaboration between Psychologists, Pedagogues and
Computer Scientists. Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction; Usability Engineering; User Interfaces; Older
Adults | |||
| An Investigation on Acceptance of Ubiquitous Devices for the Elderly in a Geriatric Hospital Environment: Using the Example of Person Tracking | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 22-29 | |
| Andreas Holzinger; Klaus Schaupp; Walter Eder-Halbedl | |||
| In this study, we investigate the acceptance of radio frequency
identification (RFID) technology for localizing elderly people, suffering from
dementia. We discuss how, and to what extend, we can balance economic and
humanistic interests versus patient privacy and other libertarian concerns. We
used specifically developed questionnaires and guided interviews and
investigated the opinions, attitudes and beliefs of both medical professionals
and patients. For this purpose, one of the most modern equipped geriatric
clinics has been examined: the Albert Schweitzer clinic of the Geriatric Center
Graz. The findings showed that RFID technology provides enormous economic
benefits for both medical professionals and patients, whilst at the same time;
these invasive surveillance technologies threaten our patients' privacy. Most
astonishing was that almost all of the people involved, were unaware of both
opportunities and problems of such ubiquitous devices. Similar to many new and
emerging technologies, it has the potential to both benefit and harm society. Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction; Usability; Acceptance; Ubiquitous Computing;
Hospital; Older Adults; Person localization | |||
| Adaptive Interfaces for Supportive Ambient Intelligence Environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 30-37 | |
| Julio Abascal; Isabel Fernández de Castro; Alberto Lafuente; Jesus Maria Cia | |||
| The Ambient Intelligence paradigm offers an excellent way to define Ambient
Assisted Living systems for all kind of users. In addition, people with
physical, sensory or cognitive restrictions are expected to particularly
benefit from the support of intelligent environments. Nevertheless, the huge
diversity of users' characteristics makes very difficult to develop interfaces
that are adequate for all of them in order to successfully interact with the
environment. Even if a "Design for All" approach is assumed and adaptive
interfaces are adopted, it is almost impossible to fulfill the diverse, and
frequently contradictory, requirements of the different users. This paper
presents an experience of designing adaptive interfaces oriented to the needs
of the elderly people living in an intelligent environment. These interfaces
are integrated in an architecture destined to build complex Ambient Intelligent
environments that share resources -- mainly hardware and heterogeneous networks
-- and knowledge. Keywords: Adaptive Human-Environment Interfaces for Elderly People; Ambient
Intelligence; Ambient Assisted Living | |||
| Natural Interaction between Avatars and Persons with Alzheimer's Disease | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 38-45 | |
| Eduardo Carrasco; Gorka Epelde; Aitor Moreno; Amalia Ortiz; Igor Garcia; Cristina Buiza; et al | |||
| In this paper a natural human computer interaction paradigm is proposed for
persons with cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer's Disease. The paradigm
consists of using a realistic virtual character, rendered on a common
television set, to play the role of a virtual personal assistant that shows
reminders, notifications and performs short dialogues with the user. In this
paradigm, the television remote control is used as a return channel to capture
the user's responses. To test this concept, a functional prototype was built
and then validated by a group of 21 persons with Alzheimer's Disease ranging
from mild to moderate. For this validation two simple dialogues were developed
that consisted of simple Yes/No type questions. The test results showed that
with both dialogues all users engaged naturally with the avatar. All of the
users understood the information conveyed by the avatar and answered
successfully by means of the TV remote control. Keywords: Natural Human-Computer Interaction; Interactive TV; Conversational Avatars;
Alzheimer's Disease; Assistive Aids for the Elderly and the Cognitively
Impaired | |||
| Exploring the Role of Time and Errors in Real-Life Usability for Older People and ICT | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 46-53 | |
| Sergio Sayago; Josep Blat | |||
| We explore herein the role of time and errors as usability measures in
real-life usability for older people and ICT, drawing on observation and
conversational data collected over a 3-year ethnographic study of the usability
and accessibility of ICT for older people. The results show that time has
little or no practical value in real-life usability, except for expected
complains about slower PCs and Internet connections, unlike making the least
number of errors. This finding is independent of educational levels and
previous experience with ICT, and grounded in three factors: (i) desire of
independency, (ii) extra efforts to overcome mistakes; (iii) using computers as
a hobby. Keywords: Real-life usability; older people; ethnography | |||
| An Acoustic Framework for Detecting Fatigue in Speech Based Human-Computer-Interaction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 54-61 | |
| Jarek Krajewski; Rainer Wieland; Anton Batliner | |||
| This article describes a general framework for detecting accident-prone
fatigue states based on prosody, articulation and speech quality related speech
characteristics. The advantages of this real-time measurement approach are that
obtaining speech data is non obtrusive, and free from sensor application and
calibration efforts. The main part of the feature computation is the
combination of frame level based speech features and high level contour
descriptors resulting in over 8,500 features per speech sample. In general the
measurement process follows the speech adapted steps of pattern recognition:
(a) recording speech, (b) preprocessing (segmenting speech units of interest),
(c) feature computation (using perceptual and signal processing related
features, as e.g. fundamental frequency, intensity, pause patterns, formants,
cepstral coefficients), (d) dimensionality reduction (filter and wrapper based
feature subset selection, (un-)supervised feature transformation), (e)
classification (e.g. SVM, K-NN classifier), and (f) evaluation (e.g. 10-fold
cross validation). The validity of this approach is briefly discussed by
summarizing the empirical results of a sleep deprivation study. Keywords: Acoustic Features; Assistive Technologies; Pattern Recognition; Fatigue;
Accident Prevention; Affective Computing | |||
| Visual and Auditory Interfaces of Advanced Driver Assistant Systems for Older Drivers | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 62-69 | |
| Martina Ziefle; Preethy Pappachan; Eva-Maria Jakobs; Henning Wallentowitz | |||
| Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS) are assumed to support drivers in
critical traffic situations. This is especially important for older drivers and
also drivers with disabilities, whose physical and cognitive resources are
limited. An electronic intersection assistant was developed and implemented in
a driving simulation setting. Independent variables were users' age and output
modality. The utility of visual and auditory interfaces was examined and
compared to a control group which was not assisted. Dependent variables were
speed control, accuracy of lane tracking and users' acceptance. Older adults
drove significantly slower, but equally accurate than younger drivers. When no
assistance was present, driving performance was superior than in both
assistance conditions. The visual interface had a lower detrimental effect than
the auditory ADAS which had the strongest distracting effect. In contrast to
performance outcomes, the auditory interface was rated as more helpful by older
drivers compared to the visual interface. Keywords: Advanced-Driver-Assistance; intersection assistant; cognitive load; driving
performance; older drivers | |||
| Eye Tracking Impact on Quality-of-Life of ALS Patients | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 70-77 | |
| Andrea Calvo; Adriano Chiò; Emiliano Castellina; Fulvio Corno; Laura Farinetti; et al | |||
| Chronic neurological disorders in their advanced phase are characterized by
a progressive loss of mobility (use of upper and lower limbs), speech and
social life. Some of these pathologies, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
and multiple sclerosis, are paradigmatic of these deficits. High technology
communication instruments, such as eye tracking, can be an extremely important
possibility to reintroduce these patients in their family and social life, in
particular when they suffer severe disability.
This paper reports and describes the results of an ongoing experimentation about Eye Tracking impact on the quality of life of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients. The aim of the experimentation is to evaluate if and when eye tracking technologies have a positive impact on patients' lives. Keywords: Eye tracking; Experimentation; Quality of Life; ALS patients | |||
| Participative Approaches for "Technology and Autonomous Living" | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 78-81 | |
| Ulrike Bechtold; Mahshid Sotoudeh | |||
| This contribution aims to identify which conditions are to be met in
accordance with social needs and users' perspectives on technical solutions
facilitating autonomous living. In the following, different participative
approaches will be proposed for improving the user friendliness of assistive
technologies. To achieve this it is important to know what areas of life are
affected by Assistive Technologies (AT) and who should be involved at what
stage of the research and (product) development process. Consequently, this
paper investigates ways of shaping the information and knowledge transfer
between technology users as people with special needs and technology
developers. Keywords: Ambient Assistive technologies; Ageing; Participation; Perspective-taking
ability | |||
| From Cultural to Individual Adaptive End-User Interfaces: Helping People with Special Needs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 82-89 | |
| Rüdiger Heimgärtner; Andreas Holzinger; Ray Adams | |||
| Culture heavily influences human-computer interaction (HCI) since the
end-user is always within a cultural context. Cultural and informational
factors correlate to jointly influence the look and feel of interactive
systems, e.g. widget position or information density. Every single individual
also develops a specific culture (eating style, walking style etc.), i.e.
characteristics and behavior as well as attitudes and values. Consequently,
individual adaptability can be essential to cover individual needs of the
culturally but uniquely imprinted end-users with special needs e.g. reducing
the workload by recognizing and knowing the individual expectances of the
end-user. This improves usability and leads to shorter training and improves
universal access. Keywords: Intercultural Human-Computer Interaction; Cultural Adaptive Information
Systems; Special Needs; Individual Adaptability | |||
| Effects of Icon Concreteness and Complexity on Semantic Transparency: Younger vs. Older Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 90-97 | |
| Sabine Schröder; Martina Ziefle | |||
| The semantic transparency of icons in mobile devices was investigated using
48 icons for 12 mobile phone functions. Icons included original ones as well as
icons specifically designed for experimental purposes. In order to determine
the impact of age, each 10 younger and 10 older adults were examined. Having
been acquainted with a reference function, participants had to decide for each
of four icons shown on a display as fast as possible whether they represented
the respective function. Speed and accuracy of responses were used as dependent
variables. Though older adults generally responded slower than younger ones,
the very same effects of icon concreteness and complexity showed up in both age
groups. Real phone icons did not yield a better performance indicating a
suboptimal design. Overall, use of icons in mobile devices in principle can be
recommended for users within a wide range of age, if icon design obeys
ergonomic rules. Keywords: Icon recognition; mobile devices; ageing; concreteness; complexity | |||
| Investigating Usability Metrics for the Design and Development of Applications for the Elderly | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 98-105 | |
| Andreas Holzinger; Gig Searle; Thomas Kleinberger; Ahmed Seffah; Homa Javahery | |||
| Metrics-based benchmarks are crucial for measuring usability, particularly
for special end user groups such as older adults. So far, usability metrics
that are accessible and useful for software developers are still missing.
Although usability standards are continually being developed and adapted to the
rapid change in both software and computing hardware, the increasing diversity
of elderly populations, both culturally and educationally, requires the
development of a specific set of criteria. This paper studies two different
aspects of usability for the elderly; passive and active interaction. It
explores the limitations of active interaction, its potential causes and
results. The long term goal is the development of new methods to counteract
potential negative bias with regard to passive interaction. More specifically,
we are investigating achievable metrics for the evaluation of passive
technology trustworthiness and usability while categorizing them according to
applicability for usability testing. Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction; Usability Engineering; Metrics; User Interfaces;
Older Adults | |||
| Design for All -- from Idea to Practise | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 106-113 | |
| Christian Bühler | |||
| Design for all (DfA) is on the agenda of research for more than 10 years. It
is to be seen as a complement to concepts like assistive technology and barrier
free accessibility in a continuum of solutions. After several national policy
actions around the globe, recently on international policy level, in the "UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities", reference has been
given to Universal Design, a concept closely related to DfA. However, the level
of take up of DfA in the design processes of industries and services stays
behind the expectations. The idea has obviously been welcomed as a good one,
but the implementation shows slow progress. The current development consists of
threats and challenges towards a successful implementation of DfA and the
market opportunities connected. "What are the key elements, what are the
actions needed, which could be the next steps" are the kind of questions to be
answered in order to conclude with a DfA roadmap and reflected in this paper. Keywords: Design for all; Universal Design; Inclusive Design; Design-for-all-process;
European 3-strategies approach; variety of user requirements; continuum of
solutions | |||
| User Modelling in Ambient Intelligence for Elderly and Disabled People | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 114-122 | |
| Roberto Casas; Rubén Blasco Marín; Alexia Robinet; Armando Roy Delgado; et al | |||
| Combining ongoing Ambient Intelligence (AmI) technological developments
(e.g. pervasive computing, wearable devices, sensor networks etc.) with
user-centred design methods greatly increases the acceptance of the intelligent
system and makes it more capable of providing a better quality of life in a
non-intrusive way. Elderly people could clearly benefit from this concept.
Thanks to smart environments, they can experience considerable enhancements,
giving them an opportunity to live more independently and for longer in their
home rather than in a health-care centre. However, to implement such a system,
it is essential to know for whom we are designing. In this paper, we present an
intelligent system with a monitoring infrastructure that will help mainly
elderly users with impairments to overcome their handicap. The purpose of such
a system is to create a safe and intuitive environment that will facilitate the
achievement of household tasks in order to preserve independence of elderly
residents for a while longer. Pursuing this goal, we propose to use the persona
concept to help us build a user model based on the personas' aptitudes. The
practice of user modelling emphasizes the importance of user-centred techniques
in any AmI system development and highlights the potential impacts of AmI for
certain targeted groups -- in this case, the elderly and people with
disabilities. Keywords: User models; Ambient Intelligence; elderly people; assistive interfaces;
impairments | |||
| Design for All in the Ambient Intelligence Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 123-129 | |
| P. L. Emiliani; M. Billi; L. Burzagli; F. Gabbanini | |||
| An Information Society described by the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) paradigm
is emerging, due to the ongoing technological developments. The paper aims to
show that a designed for all AmI environment can have a positive impact on
people with activity limitations in the long term and that the technology made
available for the implementation of the AmI concepts can offer new integration
possibilities for them in the short/medium term, reintroducing innovation in
Assistive Technology. Keywords: Ambient Intelligence; Design for All; Assistive Technology | |||
| Creating Innovative Partnerships with Users in Developing Assistive Technology | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 130-137 | |
| Norman Alm; Alan Newell | |||
| We have been exploring a number of new ways to improve requirements
gathering for new developments is assistive technology. In this paper we report
on using participant observation, insights from conversation analysis and the
use of actors, in order to gain a better understanding of the needs and wants
for technology of people with physical and cognitive impairments. Keywords: Requirements gathering; assistive technology; augmentative and alternative
communication; dementia; computers and older people | |||
| Public Signs Sight Assessment for Low Vision through Eye Tracking | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 138-141 | |
| Hisayuki Tatsumi; Yasuyuki Murai; Iwao Sekita; Masahiro Miyakawa | |||
| Using eye tracking technique we examine experimentally ease of finding out
public signs in the streets and indoor of public buildings by low vision
people. We found that they are hardly noticing the public signs while walking
around such places under clear weather condition. We suggest that eye tracking
is helpful for the further visibility study of low vision. Keywords: eye tracking; recognition; public sign; low vision | |||
| Visual Tools for Accessible Computer Supported Collaboration | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 142-149 | |
| Antti Raike; Joanna Saad-Sulonen; Jürgen Scheible; Roman Suzi; Tarmo Toikkanen | |||
| This paper discusses device-agnostic technologies and the use of visual
mashups in augmenting accessibility in computer supported collaboration. The
principles of Design for All (DfA) could be easily taken into software
development if participants are allowed to contribute with whatever devices
they have at their disposal or are able to use. However, device-agnostic
services should rely on open standards, agile development and accessibility
guidelines to allow participation of diverse user communities. We present three
cases for further considerations of DfA in software development. We aim to
promote the learning dimension of the visual tools; the ability of peers to
learn and let colleagues learn, collaborate and innovate. Keywords: Accessibility; Agile Development; Co-Design; Collaboration; Design for All;
Map mashup | |||
| Supporting Industry in the Development of Design for All Curriculum | | BIBA | Full-Text | 150-155 | |
| Yehya Mohamad; Stefan Carmien; Carlos A. Velasco | |||
| There are very few sources of information about industry needs in regard to the required Design for All knowledge and skills for designers and engineers. A common finding of many studies, besides technical feasibility and commercial viability, is the lack of awareness among suppliers and users on DfA. In this paper, some of the results of a series of workshops organized by Fraunhofer FIT under the scope of some EU-financed projects will be presented. We claim the need to create common guidelines on teaching DfA, which should not be limited to curriculum at universities but also for training employees within the companies. The guidelines should contain topics like: what to teach, whom to teach, how to teach and where to teach. | |||
| European Developments in the Design and Implementation of Training for eInclusion | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 156-161 | |
| Gill Whitney; Suzette Keith | |||
| Information and communication technologies offer an important opportunity
for social, political and economic engagement of older and disabled people. The
successful implementation of a policy on eInclusion is dependent on
understanding the principles, practicalities and processes of a 'design for
all' programme. The aim of this paper is to describe those activities of the
European Sixth Framework Programme IST Coordination Action "Design for All @
eInclusion" which focus on training and education. The paper will focus on the
need for students of ICT to learn more about the requirements of older and
disabled users, the training needs with respect to higher and vocational
education and the diverse ways in which those needs are being meet around
Europe. The paper will describe a selection of case studies of best practice
teaching in this area. Keywords: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT); Design for All; Learning
Outcomes; Training | |||
| Users with Disabilities and Standards | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 162-165 | |
| Christian Bühler | |||
| Industrial standards are accepted practice for ensuring safety, quality,
compatibility and interconnectivity but also as frameworks for products and
services and business opportunities. Very often they are only considered as a
matter of pure technology and only for industry with little direct relevance to
the users. However, in case of missing standards or bad standards the relevance
to users becomes pretty obvious. Therefore, consumer organisations have started
to recognise that they have a role in standardisation. Nevertheless, there
seems a broad gap separating users from participation in standardisation. In
principle, the standardisation process is open and transparent for
participation. Reality is often different. This paper gives an introduction to
this issue and deals with the relevance of standards to users with disabilities
and the relevance of users with disabilities for the standardisation. It
presents an approach for user participation in the standardisation process. Keywords: Standardisation; user participation; user involvement; assistive technology;
universal design | |||
| AT and DfA Standardisation: What Is Currently Going on? | | BIBA | Full-Text | 166-169 | |
| Jan Engelen | |||
| At several occasions in the past details of ongoing standardisation activities in the field of Assistive Technology and Design for All have been reported at the ICCHP conference. In this contribution several recent important changes and additions are brought under the attention of this year's ICCHP delegates too. | |||
| Using Public Procurement to Ensure That Accessible ICT Products and Services Are Available for All European Citizens (ETSI HF STF 333) | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 170-177 | |
| Richard Hodgkinson | |||
| Developments in the USA, Canada and Australia have proved the value of using
the purchasing power of public procurement to influence the accessibility of
ICT products and services for all citizens, not only those who work for
government organisations, or use government services.
In late 2005 the EC adopted Mandate M/376 and the main European standards organisations, ETSI and CEN/CENELEC were instructed to prepare for the work. Phase 1 of M/376 requires ETSI to review and report on current ICT accessibility legislation, policies, procurement requirements and standards, and CEN/CENELEC to review and report on conformity assessment for accessible ICT. This paper describes the work of the work carried out by ETSI in Human Factors Specialist Task Force (HF STF) 333 -- European Accessibility Requirements for Public Procurement of Products and Services in the ICT Domain - EC Standardisation Mandate M/376, Phase 1. Keywords: Standards; accessibility; elderly; disabilities; public procurement;
legislation; Europe; Mandate M/376; Section 508; ETSI; CEN; ISO; IEC; JTC 1;
SWG-A | |||
| Accessibility: Education for Web Design and E-Learning Introduction to the Special Thematic Session | | BIBA | Full-Text | 178-181 | |
| Jenny Craven; Joachim Klaus | |||
| There is a clear role for accessibility assessment tools, standards and guidelines to help web designers, application developers and those who use and support web-based services. However, some aspects of web accessibility cannot be objectively tested by automated tools or by simple adherence to standards and guidelines. The application of expert judgment is required and thus accessibility needs to be addressed through more formal education and training. Programmes exist which advocate, and raise the profile of accessibility but most of these are only offered locally, with widely differing scope and complexity. There is a lack of a common European or even international curriculum in the vital area of education and training for web accessibility and design. Therefore, this Special Thematic Session will bring together stakeholders such as educators, e-Learning providers, and researchers to share their knowledge and expertise. | |||
| Joint Study Programme on Accessible Web Design | | BIBA | Full-Text | 182-189 | |
| Barbara Hengstberger; Klaus Miesenberger; Mario Batusic; Noura Chelbat; et al | |||
| This paper presents an international study programme on accessible web design which is under development in the framework of an EU -- Erasmus Project. The paper will discuss the strong need for a Europe-wide academic training programme on accessible web design, the curriculum, the teaching and eLearning tools, the accreditation and the additional benefit of the programme. | |||
| Design of a 10 Credit Masters Level Assistive Technologies and Universal Design Module | | BIBA | Full-Text | 190-193 | |
| Mike Wald | |||
| The paper reports on the design and evaluation of a 10 credit module that has been designed and taught for the first time to 35 full time Computer science and software engineering Masters students. | |||
| Experiential Coe-Tutoring: A Report on Taiwan's OpenStudy Project That Seeks Innovative Accessible E-Learning Methodologies | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 194-197 | |
| Arrmien M. Chou; Yaoming Yeh; Shumei Keng; Chenchuan C. Chen; Tingyu Huang | |||
| This paper will report on the accessible OpenStudy e-learning project that
aims to narrow the digital divide of people with disabilities in Taiwan. Not
only does the project deploy accessible e-learning infrastructure and service,
it also applies an innovative experiential coe-tutoring technique in order to
fulfill the objectives and the challenges of multi-cultural and multi-scenario
e-learning. We also describe the methodologies that we use, and some of the
results. Keywords: e-learning; e-tutor; coe-tutor. accessible; experiential; efly | |||
| Using a Computer Aided Test to Raise Awareness of Disability Issues amongst University Teaching Staff | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 198-206 | |
| John Gray; Gill Harrison; Jakki Sheridan-Ross; Andrea Gorra | |||
| A computer-based test has been created as a training tool to raise awareness
among university academic staff of some common experiences faced by people with
visual, mobility, hearing and cognitive difficulties when using a computer.
This test simulates experiences of disabled students who use computers and take
computer-based tests, and provides advice and guidance to university teaching
staff on how they may best cater for the needs of such students. The paper
discusses the reasons for creating such a tool in such a format, its structure
and content, and the outcome of its presentation to several groups of
participants. Feedback from students with disabilities is to be used in the
future development of the test. Keywords: Disability; staff training; Computer aided test | |||
| The Impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Diverse Students and Teachers at Second Level | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 207-214 | |
| Cara Nicole Greene | |||
| This paper investigates the use of existing Information Communication
Technologies (ICTs) by Irish secondary school teachers and students. Secondary
Schools in Ireland are inclusive with a mix of students with diverse abilities
in the classroom, including special needs students with learning and literacy
difficulties, such as dyslexia. This papers looks at the use of three types of
ICTs in particular: general-purpose ICTs such as word processors, focused
special needs ICT tools like text-to-speech systems and online ICT
curriculum-focused materials. Mainstream teachers and students and learning
support teachers and students were surveyed on their use of ICT. They then
undertook to use chosen tools for three months to complement their curricula
and carry out software/tool reviews and evaluations. They then completed survey
questionnaires on their usefulness and their impact on teaching and learning
methods. Keywords: ICTs; Questionnaires; Software Reviews; Post-primary school; Learning
support | |||
| Round Peg, Square Hole: Supporting Via the Web Staff and Learners Who Do Not Fit into Traditional Learner-Teacher-Institution Scenarios | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 215-218 | |
| Simon Ball; Alistair McNaught | |||
| Increasingly learners are acquiring their learning in settings that do not
feature a traditional learner-teacher-institution scenario. It is important if
we are to meet our obligations of inclusive practice and education
opportunities for all that we cater effectively for these learners. This may
involve modifying the way we offer learning, or offering something completely
new. This paper describes some of the key considerations in adapting learning
or learning techniques to better suit those learners. Keywords: accessibility; online learning; e-learning; inclusion; support | |||
| Distance Learning of Graphically Intensive Material for Visually Impaired Students | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 219-225 | |
| Donal Fitzpatrick; Declan McMullen | |||
| Historically the conveying of graphical materials to visually impaired
students has been difficult to achieve. Various methods have evolved that aim
to solve the problem, ranging from those based on technology to the
construction of models which the learner, relying on tactile representations,
can employ. The various methods used to depict graphically intensive data
assume the presence of a teacher, or the inclusion of Braille labels. If a
learner is operating in a distance-learning environment, or cannot read Braille
there is little to no access to graphical material.
This paper highlights the various methods used to convey diagrams to blind people. It outlines the perceived problems with applying these techniques to a distance-learning environment, and describes solutions which have been devised as part of the EU-sponsored project AHVITED (Audio Haptics for Visually Impaired Training and Education at a Distance) [1]. Keywords: distance education; blind students; tactile diagrams | |||
| M-Learning Accessibility Design: A Case Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 226-233 | |
| Marco Arrigo; Gaspare Novara; Giovanni Ciprì | |||
| In the last few years the number of colleges and universities which provide
courses and degree programs via distance education has been growing
dramatically. People with special needs will benefit from these online
opportunities as long as the information and activities posted to internet
sites are appropriately accessible with adaptive technology. This paper
presents some research regarding the accessibility design for a mobile learning
experience carried out at the Italian National Research Council -- Institute
for Educational Technologies. In particular, we introduce some considerations
about the methodology and the design steps used to build some educational tools
on mobile devices which are fully accessible for students with special needs
using a compact screen reader (on a Smartphone). Briefly, we outline the common
problems of accessing an online learning management system through a Smartphone
(services and information), then we introduce the test phase of the designed
tools for visually impaired users. Keywords: mobile learning; accessibility; design for all; inclusion; ubiquitous
learning; multimodal interface | |||
| Accessible Content Processing Introduction to the Special Thematic Session | | BIBA | Full-Text | 234-237 | |
| David Crombie; Jan Engelen | |||
| The Special Thematic Session (STS) on Accessible Content Processing (ACP) is intended to provide a focus for different but related activities that can be described as having an emphasis on process rather than product. The European Accessible Information Network (EUAIN) was established to bring together the different stakeholders in the accessible content processing chain and to build on common concerns. The parallel PRO-ACCESS project seeks to build on this work and provide ISO 9001 industry-faced guidelines. The papers in this STS address many of the issues addressed by these initiatives and the breadth of interest demonstrates the need for further applied research in this area. | |||
| Automated Drug Information System for Aged and Visually Impaired Persons | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 238-241 | |
| Géza Németh; Gábor Olaszy; Mátyás Bartalis; Géza Kiss; Csaba Zainkó; Péter Mihajlik; et al | |||
| Aged and visually impaired persons belong to those groups of people, who can
get information about drugs not so easily, as others. Although in Hungary
lately Braille prints (containing the name of the medicament) are placed on the
boxes of the drugs, but getting detailed information about the drug, i.e. to
access the content of the written Patient Information Leaflets (PIL), is
complicated. The Medicine Line (MLN) service may help in solving this problem.
This automatic telephone information system was developed and put into
operation in Hungary in December 2006. The computer system speaks and
understands Hungarian, so the aged and visually impaired can get the
information about the drug by voice. Adaptation to other languages is also
possible. As we know, no such system is available in the European Union. Keywords: Speech based automatic drug information; Medicine Line; speech recognition
for drug names; TTS for pharmaceutical texts | |||
| A Semi-automatic Support to Adapt E-Documents in an Accessible and Usable Format for Vision Impaired Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 242-249 | |
| Elia Contini; Barbara Leporini; Fabio Paternò | |||
| Electronic material (e-documents, e-books, on line resources, etc.)
represents an essential tool for continuous learning for print-impaired people,
provided it is well-structured. To obtain accessible and usable e-content,
specific requirements should be applied from the early beginning or used when
adapting existing electronic formats. In this paper we present a method, and a
first associated prototype, for making e-documents in a format, which is
accessible and usable for vision impaired users. The resulting environment is
composed of various transformations, with different degree of automation, and
applies a number of guidelines that have been defined for this purpose. Keywords: accessible publishing; e-books; accessibility; tool | |||
| Accessibility for Blind Users: An Innovative Framework | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 250-257 | |
| Elisa Rubegni; Paolo Paolini; Alberto Terragni; Stefano Vaghi | |||
| Accessibility, i.e. the possibility for users with specific disabilities to
access Web resources, has received specific attention by the W3C consortium
that has produced guidelines for web developers. These guidelines are, mostly,
technical recommendations and a few very generic tips about how to design for
accessibility. The main thesis of this paper, which focuses on blind users, is
that technical recommendations (as those of the W3C) are not sufficient to
guarantee actual accessibility, that we define as the possibility for the users
of "reading" the website and "navigating through it" in an effective manner. A
consequence of our approach is the emphasis on design, as a way to achieve
actual accessibility, and on usability (by blind users,) as the main evaluation
criterion. The paper presents a framework, "AURA", which encompasses issues
from design, to architecture, and proposes a solution for blind users based on
reading strategies, i.e. a planned way of "listening to" web pages. Keywords: usability; accessibility; blind users; reading strategy; oral application | |||
| User Testing: How to Involve Users in Technical Web Development Cycles as a Natural Evolution in the Creation of Inclusive Technologies and Accessible Content | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 258-263 | |
| Joshue O. Connor | |||
| The web is constantly evolving and as it does web designers and developers
need a way of being able to interact with people with disabilities and users of
AT and observe them interacting with their web interfaces. User testing is an
excellent bridge between developers and users of AT but this paper asks if user
testing is currently an elitist exercise undertaken by developers who are
already well disposed towards best practice and how this can be changed. Keywords: (e)Accessibility and Usability; Assistive Technology; Design for All;
eGovernment and eServices; eInclusion and Policies | |||
| Accessibility Standards Are Not Always Enough: The Development of the Accessibility Passport | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 264-267 | |
| Simon Ball; John Sewell | |||
| The Accessibility Passport has been developed to enable a dialogue between
the specifier, developer, tester (including teacher/tutor) and user (student)
of software or learning objects in development. By stating the original brief,
the specifier can express what accessibility requirements were, or were not,
expected to be included. The developer can outline any accessibility features
built in and any user testing undertaken. Crucially users of the software or
learning object (teachers and learners) can communicate their experiences back
into the development process for future modifications or adaptations. Keywords: accessibility; passport; software; learning objects; feedback | |||
| DAISY -- Universally Designed? Prototyping an Approach to Measuring Universal Design | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 268-275 | |
| Miriam Eileen Nes; Kirsten Ribu; Morten Tollefsen | |||
| The DAISY system is currently used as the alternative reading format for
print-disabled students in Norway. DAISY is denoted by many as universally
designed. This is an important claim, ensuring suited learning opportunities
for all students. Thus, to be able to determine this aspect of DAISY is
important -- as is the case for many information systems. However, methods for
evaluating whether a software product is universally designed are lacking. This
text builds on previous work investigating the use of DAISY in Norwegian
primary- and secondary education, now looking into strategies to evaluate
whether DAISY is universally designed. We argue that the term universally
designed needs to be more strictly defined in order to become applicable to
systems development. Further, we propose two related methods that measure to
what degree DAISY is universally designed, using feature analysis methodology. Keywords: DAISY; universal design; evaluation; feature analysis | |||
| A System for Dynamic Adaptation of Web Interfaces Based on User Interaction Requirements | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 276-283 | |
| Javier Gonzalez-Pisano; Maria Rodriguez-Fernandez; Martin Gonzalez-Rodriguez; et al | |||
| This article makes the proposal for a software architecture that allows
dynamic adaptation of Web interfaces depending on user interaction
requirements, giving special attention to individuals who have any kind of
disability. This task is achieved through several transformations on visual
aspects of the Web pages such as changes on the sizes of objects, colors,
relative position of the elements or navigation device used.
The system separates the functionality of a Web site and its interface at runtime to customize later some of the elements of the interface according to the characteristics of the individual, taking advantage of the widespread use of Web standards such as CSS so that it is not necessary to use any additional platform for the specification of the interface. User information will be updated continuously through the use of interface autonomous agents that store data about navigation process, performing corrective actions to allow dynamic adaptation to the changing conditions of the user. Keywords: Web accessibility; interface adaptability; customization | |||
| Modern Digital Libraries, the Case of the Audio-Book Boom | | BIBA | Full-Text | 284-290 | |
| Jan Engelen | |||
| This contribution focuses on the relatively new phenomenon of the purely commercial availability of audiobooks, sometimes also called "spoken books", "talking books" or "narrated books". Having the text of a book read aloud and recorded has been for a very long time the favourite solution to make books and other texts accessible for persons with a serious reading impairment such as blindness or low vision. Specialised production centres do exist in most countries of the world for producing these talking books. But now a growing number of commercial groups have found out that there is a booming market for these products as people slowly get used to leisure listening to books instead of reading them. Some companies claim already having over 40.000 titles in spoken format in their catalogue. Major differences and possible synergies between the two worlds are discussed. | |||
| Xerte -- A User-Friendly Tool for Creating Accessible Learning Objects | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 291-294 | |
| Simon Ball; Julian Tenney | |||
| In order to meet our obligations to provide an accessible learning
experience for all students, including those with impairments, it may sometimes
be appropriate to create accessible learning objects. This can be readily
achieved with Xerte, a freely available tool developed by the University of
Nottingham, designed to prompt creators of learning objects about issues such
as alternative text, and creating learning objects that are keyboard navigable
and with a font/background colour/size change facility. The JISC TechDis
template for Xerte brings some of the key aspects of Xerte to a non-technical
user interface to enable any teacher or tutor to easily create Accessible
Learning Objects. Keywords: accessibility; learning objects; template; user-friendly; inclusion | |||
| GATE to Accessibility of Computer Graphics | | BIBA | Full-Text | 295-302 | |
| Ivan Kopecek; Radek Ošlejšek | |||
| This paper presents a framework for integrating current information technologies into a platform enabling the blind and visually impaired people to access computer graphics based on the annotated SVG format. We also present a technique enabling the conversion of any graphical object to the annotated SVG format and easy annotation supported by OWL based ontology. This approach is not limited to vector graphics only, but enables also the flexible annotation and application of raster graphics (e.g. photographs). We briefly describe the architecture of the GATE (Graphics Accessible To Everyone) project, which contains the corresponding implemented modules. As an illustration, we provide an example showing how the blind can access the annotated graphics. | |||
| CONTRAPUNCTUS Project: A New Computer Solution for Braille Music Fruition | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 303-309 | |
| Giuseppe Nicotra; Antonio Quatraro | |||
| Braille music syntax is very complex and even "anti-musical" in some
aspects. CONTRAPUNCTUS wants to help students approach the world of Braille
music syntax gradually, with the help of computer aids. Keywords: Music; Braille; didactics; blind | |||
| BMML: A Mark-Up Language for Braille Music | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 310-317 | |
| Enrico Bortolazzi; Nadine Baptiste-Jessel; Giovanni Bertoni | |||
| The need of an interchange format for music notation led to several XML
encoding initiatives and among them to MusicXML, a de facto standard format
supported by market leaders. The result is that music scores can be shared
between applications and between users, delivered through the web and/or
archived independently by the application that generated them. Braille music is
a specific music notation for blind users, written in linear format, character
by character. Traditionally Braille scores in electronic format are archived or
shared as text files, with only character information dependent on some
translation table. The available XML formats for music notation are not
suitable to cover this specific notation. We present our approach to the
problem and the key design concepts behind Braille Music Mark-up Language,
developed as an open format by the EU funded CONTRAPUNCTUS[1] project. Keywords: Braille music; music notation; XML; BMML | |||
| Automated Book Reader Design for Persons with Blindness | | BIBA | Full-Text | 318-325 | |
| Lu Wang; Malek Adjouadi | |||
| This research introduces a novel automated book reader as an assistive technology tool for persons with blindness in the reading of books and other bound volumes. This design responds to the main concerns of (a) providing a method of image acquisition that maintains the integrity of the source, (b) overcoming optical character recognition errors created by inherent imaging issues such as curvature effects and lens distortion, and (c) determining a suitable method for accurate recognition of characters that yields an interface with the ability to read from any open book with a high reading accuracy nearing 98%. The theoretical perspective of this research relates to the mathematical developments to resolve both the inherent distortions due to the properties of the camera lens and the anticipated distortions of the changing page curvature as one leafs through the book. | |||
| Making Conference CDs Accessible: A Practical Example | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 326-333 | |
| Marion Hersh; Barbara Leporini | |||
| The PDF document format is increasingly being used, including for conference
CDs. This paper discusses the process of producing an accessible CD based on
PDF documents for a small assistive technology conference, CVHI 07. It also
analyses the accessibility features of the resulting PDF documents and the
results of a survey of the conference authors on their experiences of (trying
to) produce accessible PDF documents. The paper is introduced by brief
discussions of PDF accessibility and of the results of surveys of the
experiences of blind and visually impaired people of using PDF documents and
the accessibility of PDF documents produced by UK universities. It concludes
with a number of recommendations for conference organisers producing accessible
CDs, as well as suggestions for future work. Keywords: PDF; accessibility guidelines; conference CD; survey | |||
| Web Accessibility -- Automatic/Manual Evaluation and Authoring Tools | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 334-337 | |
| Helen Petrie; Christopher Power; Gerhard Weber | |||
| This paper provides an introduction to automatic and manual evaluation
methods for analysis of web accessibility. The first topic examines the recent
results in advances in authoring, including modifications to existing CMS
systems and new development toolkits. Next, the session explores the
accessibility of specialized content such as graphics and interface components.
The last topic in the session covers the results of the Web Accessibility
Benchmarking Cluster of European Union supported projects (WAB-Cluster).
Authors discuss technologies needed for automatic as well as manual evaluation. Keywords: web accessibility; automatic and manual evaluation; authoring tools | |||
| A Software Solution for Accessible E-Government Portals | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 338-345 | |
| Dietmar Nedbal; Gerald Petz | |||
| The importance of e-Government web sites being accessible to people with
disabilities is rising within the European Nations. Several European programs
and state-laws are calling on governments and local government authorities to
build accessible web sites. The paper deals with the development of a web
content management system (CMS) that is already widely used by municipalities
in Central Europe in accordance with the guidelines of the Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI). The project methodology is presented, followed by a
discussion on the design of the database, the separation of layout and content
and the implementation of the web site with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Keywords: e-Government; accessible CMS; accessible software; WAI; triple-a | |||
| A Development Toolkit for Unified Web-Based User Interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 346-353 | |
| C. Doulgeraki; N. Partarakis; A. Mourouzis; C. Stephanidis | |||
| EAGER is a prototype development toolkit that allows embedding accessibility
and ease of use for all potential users into Web-based artefacts. Web-based
user interfaces developed by means of the EAGER toolkit incarnate the concept
of Unified User Interfaces and exhibit adaptation behaviour with respect to
diverse user abilities, requirements and preferences. Ultimately, the process
of employing EAGER is significantly less demanding in terms of time, experience
and skills required from the developer, than the typical process of developing
for the "average" user. Keywords: Unified User Interfaces; Adaptation; Design for All; User profiling | |||
| Automatic Creation of User Profiles for Achieving Personal Web Accessibility | | BIBA | Full-Text | 354-361 | |
| Markel Vigo; Amaia Aizpurua; Myriam Arrue; Julio Abascal | |||
| Automatic capture of the user's interaction environment for user-adapted interaction and evaluation purposes is an unexplored area in the Web Accessibility research field. This paper presents an application that collects user data regarding assistive technologies (be either software or hardware) in an unobtrusive way. As a result, CC/PP based profiles are created so that interoperability between components such as evaluation engines or server-side content adaptors can be attained. The implications that versioning issues and the potential user group of a given assistive technology have on the guidelines to apply are also remarked. The major benefit of this approach is that users can perform their tasks avoiding distractions while interacting with the World Wide Web. | |||
| Accessible Flash Is No Oxymoron: A Case Study in E-Learning for Blind and Sighted Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 362-369 | |
| Maria Krüger | |||
| Flash applications are widespread on the Internet, whether used for
streaming audio and video or for interactive games. Its critical perception
regarding accessibility is partly unjustified, as judging accessible Flash an
oxymoron has become obsolete. In fact, it is possible to enable people with
special needs to profit from interactive Flash applications. This paper
demonstrates the creation of such an accessible Flash application for both
blind and sighted users. Keywords: Accessible Flash; accessibility; blind; multimedia | |||
| Building Accessible Flash Applications: An XML-Based Toolkit | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 370-377 | |
| Paloma Cantón; Ángel L. González; Gonzalo Mariscal; Carlos Ruiz | |||
| The use of Flash as a web-based multimedia development tool has spread
lately. Although a big effort has gone into improving its accessibility, there
are still accessibility gaps requiring programming or purchase from another
supplier. This makes building an accessible Flash application an ad hoc,
complex and time-consuming task. With the aim of lightening the
accessibility-related workload, we have implemented a toolkit that helps to
create accessible multimedia Flash resources. This toolkit specifies the
accessibility features as XML configuration files. It includes a library that
works like a wrapper abstracting the logic layer of the different events and
iterations from the physical layer. This way, new functionalities can easily be
added. Additionally, it has been successfully used to build teaching and
teaching support systems. Keywords: E-learning; web accessibility; flash accessibility; education | |||
| Accessible Graphics in Web Applications: Dynamic Generation, Analysis and Verification | | BIBA | Full-Text | 378-385 | |
| Kerstin Altmanninger; Wolfram Wöß | |||
| Accessibility for graphics in web applications is still not only a shortcoming for visually impaired people but may also be a request of people with other special needs. In the Access2Graphics project SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is used to dynamically generate graphics that are adapted to the user's individual requirements in order to make them accessible for each user. Beside the users also the graphics designer (provider) need support to be able to offer accessible graphics. The focus of this paper therefore mainly is on introducing the analysis as well as the verification component of Access2Graphics. Both, reuse of existing graphics and verification with respect to defined guidelines should make the generation process of graphics more efficient regarding the development time and quality. | |||
| Analysing the 2D, 3D and Web User Interface Navigation Structures of Normal Users and Users with Mild Intellectual Disabilities | | BIBA | Full-Text | 386-393 | |
| Rita Mátrai; Zsolt T. Kosztyán; Cecília Sik-Lányi | |||
| Design questions of home pages are examined by numerous visual search experiments as well. However, in the majority of experiments only one target object has to be searched. On web pages and on 2D and 3D scenes often more objects, more information have to be discovered. Spatial placement of objects has influential role on reaction times, how soon an object will be found. In our work more objects had to be found on home pages and on skill-improving game programs by normal users and users with mild intellectual disabilities. We investigated the time and the sequence of finding targets in function of their location on the screen and their properties (e.g. size). We worked out a method for analysing navigation routes and discovering differences between the target groups, which can be used in further investigations as well. | |||
| The Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM) 1.2 for WCAG 1.0 | | BIBA | Full-Text | 394-401 | |
| Annika Nietzio; Christophe Strobbe; Eric Velleman | |||
| Checking of web accessibility can be carried out in several ways along the same international standards. The evaluation methodologies used by evaluation and certification organizations in several European countries (such as AccessiWeb in France, Technosite in Spain and AnySurfer in Belgium) are different in subtle but meaningful ways, even though they are usually based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0). The Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM) is developed by European expert organisations and offers test descriptions to evaluate WCAG 1.0 conformance covering level AA, a clear sampling scheme, several reporting options, including score cards and other instruments to help communicate the results of evaluations. The aim is to establish the UWEM as the basis for web accessibility evaluation, policy support and possible certification in Europe. | |||
| The BenToWeb Test Case Suites for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 402-409 | |
| Christophe Strobbe; Johannes Koch; Evangelos Vlachogiannis; Reinhard Ruemer; et al | |||
| This paper presents work carried out under the umbrella of the EU-funded
project BenToWeb to develop XHTML test case suites for three drafts of WCAG 2.0
(June 2005, April 2006, May 2007). These suites of test cases demonstrate pass
and failure examples for WCAG 2.0 and its accompanying Techniques document. The
test cases were validated during the BenToWeb project and are currently being
migrated to the WAI Test Sample Development Task Force, where the work will be
continued. Keywords: web accessibility; test case; test suite; Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines; WCAG; BenToWeb | |||
| Monitoring Accessibility of Governmental Web Sites in Europe | | BIBA | Full-Text | 410-417 | |
| Christian Bühler; Helmut Heck; Annika Nietzio; Morten Goodwin Olsen; Mikael Snaprud | |||
| Web accessibility is an important goal of the European i2010 strategy. Several one-off surveys of eAccessibility have been conducted in the past few years. In this paper, we describe an approach to supplement the results of such surveys with automated assessments, that can easily be repeated at regular intervals. The software basis is provided by the European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO). We analyse how the data collected by EIAO can be compared to other surveys. | |||
| Proposal for a Structure Mark-Up Supporting Accessibility for the Next Generation (X)HTML-Standards | | BIBA | Full-Text | 418-425 | |
| Gerhard Nussbaum; Mario Batusic; Claudia Fahrengruber; Klaus Miesenberger | |||
| The layout of most web pages consists of several logical blocks or page areas which reflect the global structure of the page content. The recommended and published standards HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 do not support an adequate global structuring in the mark-up which leads to accessibility and usability problems. The upcoming new standards HTML 5 and XHTML 2 introduce some structure mark-up. It is feared that this new mark-up does not improve the accessibility significantly due to the flexibility in applying it. This paper will critically examine this new structure mark-up regarding accessibility. Furthermore it proposes an alternative mark-up definition for the global page structure which should help to improve accessibility significantly. | |||
| Improving Web Form Accessibility Using Semantic XForms for People with Cognitive Impairments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 426-429 | |
| Amin Anjomshoaa; Muhammad Shuaib Karim; A. Min Tjoa | |||
| The Internet as the widest medium for business and communication can be
effectively adapted to the requirements of differently-abled people. Large
portion of Internet advances owes the human-computer interaction and data
exchange via web forms. The current complex Internet applications are not easy
to use for people with cognitive impairments and they usually use the Internet
as a publication platform. To change this state, the web forms, as the basic
block of Internet applications, should be made accessible for people with
varying levels of cognitive abilities, especially for severely challenged users
in this category. New technologies such as the Semantic Web and XForms can be
combined to make the Web applications more accessible for these people. In this
short paper, the possible application of XForms in combination with the
Semantic Web technology is explored and a solution model for providing
accessibility for people with cognitive impairments is presented. Keywords: Accessibility; Cognitive impairments; Semantic Web; Ontology; XForms; Web
Applications | |||
| Improving the Accessibility of Wikis | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 430-437 | |
| C. Taras; O. Siemoneit; N. Weißer; M. Rotard; T. Ertl | |||
| During the last years wikis have become important information portals.
Nevertheless, research in wiki accessibility is an often neglected topic. This
paper takes a basic analytical and systematic step inside this new and complex
area, explores the peculiarities, possibilities and limitations of wiki
accessibility. Wikis give rise to certain accessibility limitations but also do
offer new ways and concepts to improve accessibility. We present basic concepts
and extensions to the wiki markup that are to our minds inevitable for
improving the accessibility of wikis. It is pointed out, that wiki
accessibility is not something totally new but mostly a complex conjunction of
yet separated classical discussions. However there are also wiki specific
accessibility aspects. Keywords: Accessibility; Wiki editing; Wiki viewing; Wiki markup | |||
| Requirements of Users with Disabilities for E-government Services in Greece | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 438-445 | |
| George Margetis; Stavroula Ntoa; Constantine Stephanidis | |||
| E-government services are a main concern for bringing administrations closer
to citizens and businesses. Accessibility to people with disabilities is one of
the main characteristics of such services which is necessary in order to
achieve wide public acceptance. This paper discusses a requirements elicitation
survey for the development of accessible e-government services carried out in
Greece in the context of a national project co-funded by the European Social
Fund (ESF) and the Hellenic Ministry of Interior. The main survey results are
presented and discussed. Keywords: e-government; requirements elicitation; accessibility | |||
| Tools for Deaf Accessibility to an eGOV Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 446-453 | |
| Stavroula-Evita Fotinea; Eleni Efthimiou | |||
| This paper focuses on design and implementation of deaf accessibility tools
currently integrated in a portal environment intended to serve communication of
disabled citizens with the Hellenic State. Deaf accessibility is supported by a
sign language terminology glossary, while interaction with the portal is
supported by the use of a virtual finger-spelling and digit keyboard. In order
to facilitate overall interaction of users with the portal environment, a
manual-like facility has been developed in the form of fully accessible
courses, which direct the unfamiliar user and cover all aspects of the portal's
services and use of accessibility tools. Keywords: Sign Language; Deaf communication; HCI; Web accessibility | |||
| Using Web Content Management Systems for Accessibility: The Experience of a Research Institute Portal | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 454-461 | |
| Laura Burzagli; Francesco Gabbanini; Marco Natalini; Enrico Palchetti; et al | |||
| A vast number of guidelines have been set up to regulate accessibility and
conformance to standards of web pages. However, it is a fact that the
percentage of fully accessible web sites is still low. When designing
accessible web portals, knowledge of technologies and a good familiarity with
interpreting guidelines are certainly required, but other factors have to be
considered. This paper describes the process of implementation of the web site
of the e-Inclusion Lab research group, using an Open Source Web Content
Management System, and hopefully offers an overview and constitutes an example
of good practice in how accessibility can be made mainstream in a research
portal. The experience revealed that key factors for mainstreaming
accessibility also include the acceptance of the overall solution by content
authors and the system administrators. Keywords: accessibility e-Inclusion web WCMS | |||
| Accessible Online Shops for the Older Generation and People with Disabilities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 462-465 | |
| Michael Stenitzer; Maria Putzhuber; Sascha Nemecek; Fabian Büchler | |||
| Because of their limited mobility elderly and disabled people can benefit
from online shopping to a great extent. At the same time they suffer from
poorly built online shops that are focused on internet affine users. User
testing helped to identify major barriers and to deduce design guidelines for
accessible web shops. Keywords: Accessibility; older adults; disabilities; web shops; e-commerce; usability | |||
| WebGen System -- Visually Impaired Users Create Web Pages | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 466-473 | |
| Ludek Bártek; Jaromír Plhák | |||
| The aim of the WebGen system is to allow visually impaired users to create
web presentations in a simple and natural way by means of dialogue. This paper
describes the basic methods and principles used in the system Web-Gen,
especially the system structure and the dialogue interface. An illustrative
example of a dialogue is included as well as the resulting web page. Keywords: web creation; dialogue; accessibility | |||
| An Accessible Media Player as a User Agent for the Web | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 474-481 | |
| A. Mourouzis; N. Partarakis; C. Doulgeraki; C. Galanakis; C. Stephanidis | |||
| This paper presents webLection,a tool that aims at increasing the uptake of
the Web by a variety of potential users. With WebLection Web content is locally
rendered into standard audio formats, and, ultimately, manipulated just like
music employing the playing list behaviour as an intuitive interaction
metaphor. Although webLection originates from research for blind Web users,
significant benefits emerge for other types users too, including Web
developers, since it can be used, on the one hand, to easily transform and make
Web content available through its audio equivalent, and on the other hand to
inspect the accessibility and usability of Web pages for users of screen
readers. Keywords: Web accessibility; mobility; usability; non-visual interaction | |||
| Usability and Accessibility on the Internet: Effects of Accessible Web Design on Usability | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 482-489 | |
| Wolfram Huber; Peter Vitouch | |||
| Despite the overlapping scope and aims of web-usability and
web-accessibility (such as problems in using the web and the barriers in
accessing the web) there are only few studies which analyse the connections
between the two areas. The present study investigates the relationship between
web-accessibility and web-usability. To analyse this relationship we have
designed an online test environment. We developed three complete internet
presences (testportals), each one with a different level of accessibility. 131
test users were recruited viewed these three testportals and rated their
usability. The instrument to evaluate usability was an especially modified and
reduced version of the Web Usability Index (WUI) which was made available
online in the form of a questionnaire. The central question this study sought
to answer was: is there a difference in the usability ratings between websites
with different levels of accessibility? The findings resulting from the central
question were clear. The mean values show a significant difference in the
usability ratings of the three portals. Other question our study sought to
answer were the influences of the disability and the age factors. These
influences are partly significant. Keywords: Human Computer-Interaction; Usability; Accessibility; Age; Disabilities | |||
| Exploratory Case Study Research on Web Accessibility | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 490-497 | |
| Marie-Luise Leitner; Christine Strauss | |||
| Various technical studies have been conducted on web accessibility
evaluation; research on its business and managerial benefits has been covered
sparsely so far due to reservations regarding its business pay-off. This paper
aims at resolving these reservations and suggests a research design for an
exploratory, business-oriented analysis of web accessibility and presents a
conceptual framework for the execution of case study research in four major
industry sectors. The reapplication of this methodology to any real world case
results in a case study collection that can be extended continuously and
therefore represents an important basis for further quantitative and
qualitative research. Keywords: web accessibility; case study research; business approach; research design;
economic web issues | |||
| Web Accessible and Mobile: The Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines | | BIBA | Full-Text | 498-501 | |
| Alan Chuter | |||
| Online services are increasingly important in everyday life and services are increasingly delivered using mobile devices. Accessibility for people with disabilities is a priority and often an obligation. Mobile access is a business priority and sometimes mandatory. While much effort has been dedicated to accessibility, many providers must now also provide inclusive access from mobile devices. This can dramatically increase development, deployment and maintenance costs. This paper introduces recent work in the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative and Web Accessibility Initiative on the overlap and synergies between these aspects. | |||
| Making Business Software Usable for Handicapped Employees | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 502-509 | |
| Annett Hardt; Martin Schrepp | |||
| The accessibility of business software is a prerequisite for the successful
integration of disabled persons into the labor market. But because of the
dynamic and complex nature of business applications it is often difficult to
reach a satisfying level of accessibility and usability for disabled users. A
special problem for business software is that it is not sufficient to make all
functions of the product accessible to disabled users. It must also be
guaranteed that disabled users can work efficiently with the product. We
demonstrate these problems on the example of a CRM business web application. Keywords: Accessibility; Business Web Applications; Efficiency; Usability for disabled
users | |||
| Quality Processes and Milestones for the Development and Monitoring of Business Software in the Area of Accessibility | | BIBA | Full-Text | 510-517 | |
| Dewi Gani; Urte Thölke | |||
| Once a company has defined and documented all requirements in a standard for accessibility, what is the best way of making sure that development teams observe them as intended? Which factors can require revisions to be made to the Accessibility Standard? What are the key milestones for the planning of all development activities around the standard? What areas have to be tested to have a quality assurance and how can the result be given to the customer to serve legal and individual requirements? In this presentation you will get an overview about quality processes and milestones for the development and monitoring of business software in the area of accessibility at SAP. | |||
| Accessibility of Educational Software: From Evaluation to Design Guidelines | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 518-525 | |
| Serenella Besio; Elena Laudanna; Francesca Potenza; Lucia Ferlino; Federico Occhionero | |||
| Although researches, guidelines and laws have been elaborated during the
last years about the accessibility of software, many educational products on
the Italian market are still difficult or impossible to be used by students
with disabilities. An evaluation grid, designed from the end-user's point of
view, has been used with 70 educational software to test the real usability of
these products with AT devices. Results show how the problem of accessibility
is not yet understood by developers and producers. The purpose of this study
was also to rise awareness in teachers about the accessibility topic it should
be deleted, so that they increase the request of accessible software that can
be used by students with different types of disability. This information is
also related to disability issues, to AT devices and to the actual Italian Law. Keywords: Software accessibility; evaluation grid; methodology | |||
| How Can Java Be Made Blind-Friendly | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 526-533 | |
| Norbert Markus; Zoltan Juhasz; Gabor Bognar; Andras Arato | |||
| The widely used and highly popular Java programming language is proved to be
a great tool for developing platform independent applications. Everyday users
mostly encounter them when using portable devices (mobile phones, PDAs, etc).
However, the ordinary Java applications are inaccessible for the blind in
general. Even the most used screen readers can only be enabled to handle GUI
elements of a Java application by an additional adaptation package (e.g. access
bridge for Jaws). Even with this, only a portion of existing Java programs that
use swing classes may be made partially accessible for the blind. The solution
offered eliminates the need of any screen reader. Keywords: Accessibility for the Blind; Java programming; Education | |||
| Requirements for a Method of Software Accessibility Conformity Assessment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 534-541 | |
| Fernando Alonso; José L. Fuertes; Ángel L. González; Loïc Martínez | |||
| Given the current trend of public procurement of accessible products and
services, including software, there is a need for the suppliers to demonstrate
that a software product conforms to accessibility requirements. This is called
software accessibility conformity assessment. Today, the evaluation process,
and the techniques and tools required to do this, is not as well defined as it
is in other contexts, such as web accessibility. Based on our experience in
evaluating accessibility, this paper outlines a set of requirements for a
method of software accessibility conformity assessment. These requirements will
apply across the four conformity assessment functions: selection,
determination, review and attestation, and, finally, surveillance. Keywords: Software accessibility; conformity assessment; accessibility evaluation | |||
| Towards Generalised Accessibility of Computer Games Introduction to the Special Thematic Session | | BIBA | Full-Text | 542-544 | |
| Dominique Archambault; Roland Ossmann; Klaus Miesenberger | |||
| This is the fourth time that a Special Thematic Session on accessible
entertainment has been organised at ICCHP and we are beginning to see progress
in the field. A decade ago most work focused on how to play computer games with
alternative devices; today we are starting to talk about the accessibility of
mainstream games.
People with disabilities probably make up the single group benefiting the most from Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Not only does ICT improve their ability to do things which could be done another way, but it makes a real difference to independent living: with the support of Assistive Technology (AT) they are actually able to do things they had no chance of achieving before and this in an independent way. This positively affects many situations in their daily lives, at school as well as at work or home and concerns mobility and other issues. | |||
| Profiling Robot-Mediated Play for Children with Disabilities through ICF-CY: The Example of the European Project IROMEC | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 545-552 | |
| Serenella Besio; Francesca Caprino; Elena Laudanna | |||
| This paper, from the description of the research activities of the ongoing
European project IROMEC, discusses the potential role of the brand new version
Children and Youth of ICF (International Classification of Functioning and
Disability) as an useful resource in the design development and outcomes
evaluation of robotic toys used as play mediators in educational and therapy
settings with children with physical and/or cognitive impairments. ICF-CY has
been used as a methodological framework in users' needs assessment, in building
appropriate task analysis of play activities, in robot requirements definition
and in outcomes analysis will be examined. Further and deeper researches are
needed to better understand strengths and weaknesses of such an approach. Keywords: ICF-CY; robotic toys; play mediators; play scenarios | |||
| MP3 Players and Audio Games: An Alternative to Portable Video Games Console for Visually Impaired Players | | BIBA | Full-Text | 553-560 | |
| Alexis Sepchat; Simon Descarpentries; Nicolas Monmarché; Mohamed Slimane | |||
| Both the evolutions of technologies and the increase of the Web download market have led to a democratisation of digital audio players throughout the world. Smaller and lighter, this media has become the best companion to listen his (her) favorite music everywhere. Indeed, thanks to the improvement of their performances, currently, they can be used to watch videos, to store data, etc. Among these new applications, it is imaginable to use them as a portable audio games console. Audio games are still the main solution for visually impaired players to play computer games. This paper introduces our contribution to elaborate an audio games console, accessible for visually impaired players, based on digital audio players. | |||
| Non-visual Gameplay: Making Board Games Easy and Fun | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 561-568 | |
| Tatiana V. Evreinova; Grigori Evreinov; Roope Raisamo | |||
| In this paper we report the results of a study on an evaluation of a game
and techniques which allow playing board games in the total absence of visual
feedback. We have demonstrated that a camera mouse can be used for blind
navigation within a game field. Snapping a position of the virtual pointer to
the regions of interest as well as audio-haptic complementary mapping
significantly reduce the cognitive load and facilitate mental matching and
integration of overview sound sequences. Keywords: board game; tabular data; non-visual game; overview cues; audio-haptic
mapping; camera mouse | |||
| An Accessible Viewer for Digital Comic Books | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 569-577 | |
| Christophe Ponsard; Vincent Fries | |||
| In many countries, "comic books" are very popular and are sometimes are
referred to as the ninth art. The most common form of access to comics still
remains the paper form. Despite its reading comfort, this media does not fit
the use the navigational needs of a number of people with special needs, for
example: motor-impaired people, low-sighted people and mobile users.
In this paper, we explore how an electronic version of comics can be accessed optimally using a computer based interface. Among the reading modes supported, an automated mode provides a segmentation-based detection of panel boundaries and their display in the right reading order. This enables accessibility with minimal user interaction and maximal image size. Validation was carried out in a number of operational contexts such as a PC controlled through voice, a TV controlled through a remote and a mobile device. Keywords: comics; accessible; motor-impaired; low-sighted; mobile users; image
processing | |||
| Flexible and Simple User Interfaces in Entertaining Software | | BIBA | Full-Text | 578-584 | |
| Morten Tollefsen; Are Flyen | |||
| The first version of the electronic picture book application was designed in 1998. The target group was visually impaired adults with sighted children. It was soon clear that the application had a much broader target group than was originally thought: visually impaired children, persons with motor disabilities, children with mental disabilities and even those without disabilities. With this in mind work was initiated in 2006 to improve the universal design of the application and the electronic book structure. The result is a user interface which is still simple and with flexibility not typically found in entertaining software. | |||
| A Computer Game Designed for All | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 585-592 | |
| Roland Ossmann; Klaus Miesenberger; Dominique Archambault | |||
| Computer games are one of the most challenging applications concerning
accessibility and usability for people with disabilities. There are only a few
games available, which are accessible and most of the time only for a special
group of people with specific needs, e.g. games for blind people. Due to this
designing games for all and implementing accessibility in mainstream games is a
rather new challenge. This paper presents a game designed for all and will
discuss the benefits of different accessibility features to several groups of
people with disabilities. Keywords: Games Accessibility; Design for all; Mainstream Games Accessibility | |||
| Artificial Ants and Dynamical Adaptation of Accessible Games Level | | BIBA | Full-Text | 593-600 | |
| Alexis Sepchat; Romain Clair; Nicolas Monmarché; Mohamed Slimane | |||
| Designing a relevant artificial intelligence engine for video games does not always consist in finding a best solution (best opponent, best path, etc.), it can sometimes consist in providing the player with the best gaming experience, and this can be a compromise between being strong enough to give an interesting challenge, and not being too strong so that the player can never win. This game tuning is particularly prominent in case of games for impaired children: they need to be encouraged more than others, and their tiredness can occur quickly within a game that does not fit to their level. In this paper, we focus on self adaptation abilities of ant colonies in order to test if this kind of behavior can be an efficient way to deal with the game level adaptation problem. | |||
| Accessibility Issues in Game-Like Interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 601-604 | |
| Roland Ossmann; Dominique Archambault; Klaus Miesenberger | |||
| This is a short position paper which invites to put game accessibility on
the agenda of accessibility and assistive technology research. Games are
important for social inclusion and concepts of game interfaces enter into
standard HCI and web interfaces. This makes game accessibility subject to
standard software and web accessibility and asks for according R&D
activities. New tools and interfaces have to be developed to bring games
accessibility into the mainstream games. Keywords: Game-Like Interfaces; Mainstream Games Accessibility; Design for all | |||
| Human Computer Interaction and Communication Aids for Hearing-Impaired, Deaf and Deaf-Blind People: Introduction to the Special Thematic Session | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 605-608 | |
| Hans-Heinrich Bothe | |||
| This paper gives an overview and extends the Special Thematic Session (STS)
on research and development of technologies for hearing-impaired, deaf, and
deaf-blind people. The topics of the session focus on special equipment or
services to improve communication and human computer interaction. The papers
are related to visual communication using captions, sign language,
speech-reading, to vibro-tactile stimulation, or to general services for
hearing-impaired persons. Keywords: Captions; sign language; speech-reading; lip-reading; vibro-tactile
communication; hearing-impaired; deaf; deaf-blind | |||
| EnACT: A Software Tool for Creating Animated Text Captions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 609-616 | |
| Quoc V. Vy; Jorge A. Mori; David W. Fourney; Deborah I. Fels | |||
| Music in captioning is often represented by only its title and/or a music
note. This representation provides little to no information of the intended
effect or emotion of the music. In this paper, we present a software tool that
was created to enable users to mark emotions in a script or lyrics and then
render those marks into animated text for display as captions. A pilot study
was conducted to collect initial responses to, preferences and understanding of
the animated lyrics of one song by a deaf and hard of hearing audience.
Participants were able to identify the animated lyrics as belonging to a song
and found that the animations helped them understand the portrayed emotions.
They also identified the shaking style of animation portraying fear as least
preferable. Keywords: Music visualization; kinetic text; animation | |||
| Captioning Multiple Speakers Using Speech Recognition to Assist Disabled People | | BIBA | Full-Text | 617-623 | |
| Mike Wald | |||
| Meetings and seminars involving many people speaking can be some of the hardest situations for deaf people to be able to follow what is being said and also for people with physical, visual or cognitive disabilities to take notes or remember key points. People may also be absent during important interactions or they may arrive late or leave early. Real time captioning using phonetic keyboards can provide an accurate live as well as archived transcription of what has been said but is often not available because of the cost and shortage of highly skilled and trained stenographers. This paper describes the development of applications that use speech recognition to provide automatic real time text transcriptions in situations when there can be many people speaking. | |||
| Extracting Pointing Object with Demonstrative Speech Phrase for Remote Transcription in Lecture | | BIBA | Full-Text | 624-631 | |
| Yoshinori Takeuchi; Ken Saito; Ayaka Ito; Noboru Ohnishi; Shigeyoshi Iizuka; et al | |||
| In this research, we propose a system to extract the object which is pointed by the instructor with a demonstrative speech phrase. The system extracts audio features from a speech signals of the instructor and calculates the likelihood of the demonstrative speech phrase. The system also extracts video features from the video camera and calculates the likelihood of the pointing gesture. Then, the system combines the likelihood of audio and video features to decide whether the instructor points the object with demonstrative speech phrase. We conducted an experiment using a real lecture, which has shown the effectiveness of the proposed method. | |||
| A Study on Demonstrative Words Extraction in Instructor Utterance on Communication Support for Hearing Impaired Persons | | BIBA | Full-Text | 632-639 | |
| Ayaka Ito; Ken Saito; Yoshinori Takeuchi; Noboru Ohnishi; Shigeyoshi Iizuka; et al | |||
| Remote transcription system is one of the communication support systems for hearing impaired students in a lecture. Because the remote transcription system requires several seconds from the utterance of the instructor to displaying the summarized text, hearing impaired students cannot associate the demonstrative word. In this paper, we analyze how demonstrative words appear in the utterance of instructor. About 75% of demonstrative words follow the pause and are uttered within 500ms after the pause. We propose a method for extracting demonstrative words based on acoustic features and conducted experiments. Experimental results show that the recall rate is more than 80% but the relevance rate is less than 20% in the cross validation test. | |||
| Development of a Web Type DVD Viewer Synchronized with Multilingual Captions for Existing DVDs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 640-646 | |
| Takaaki Okura; Yoko Hirose | |||
| We have developed the Web type DVD Viewer by which you can watch existing
DVDs synchronized with additional captions. We have applied it to our released
Japanese DVD about the supporting system in U.S.A. for the students with
difficulties. The results of questionnaires shows 1) it is effective for
watching a DVD which dose not have a subtitle of user's own language. 2) ease
of using is improved by removing setup of security options. Keywords: DVD; Caption; Web; Deaf and Hard of Hearing; e-Learning | |||
| Support Technique for Real-Time Captionist to Use Speech Recognition Software | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 647-650 | |
| Shigeki Miyoshi; Hayato Kuroki; Sumihiro Kawano; Mayumi Shirasawa; Yasushi Ishihara; et al | |||
| Deaf or hard-of-hearing students who attend lessons at university acquire
much less information than students with normal hearing. The captionist
(transcriptionist) listens to the teacher and "re-speaks" (repeats exactly what
is heard) what the teacher says. The clear and distinct speech that is repeated
by the captionist is sent to the automatic speech recognition (ASR) software
installed on a personal computer, which performs "speech-to-text conversion".
However, it is not easy to "re-speak". The results of the research suggest that
listening through headphones with superior sound-proofing features enables
captionists to sustain re-speak ability compared with listening directly. These
facts indicate that the recognition accuracy of existing ASR technologies could
be maintained. Keywords: deaf; hard-of-hearing; Real-Time captioning; Speech recognition | |||
| New Real-Time Closed-Captioning System for Japanese Broadcast News Programs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 651-654 | |
| Shinichi Homma; Akio Kobayashi; Takahiro Oku; Shoei Sato; Toru Imai; Tohru Takagi | |||
| A new real-time closed-captioning system for Japanese broadcast news
programs is described. The system is based on a hybrid automatic speech
recognition system that switches input speech between the original program
sound and the rephrased speech by a "re-speaker". It minimises the number of
correction operators, generally to one or two, depending on the difficulties of
the speech recognition, although four correction operators were needed in our
previous news system. Experiments show that the system could be used for
captioning typical news programs at local stations, which have fewer staff and
where simple operation is required. Keywords: real-time closed captioning; speech recognition | |||
| eRehabilitation: A Portal Framework for Aural Rehabilitation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 655-662 | |
| Dimitar Denev; Sion Morris; Carlos A. Velasco; Yehya Mohamad | |||
| This paper reports on the development of a prototype of an online rehabilitation support service ("eRehabilitation"). This service will provide long-term support to new users of hearing devices as they undergo the process of aural rehabilitation. The information service will be tailored to the situational and individual needs of patients. The development fits closely with the development of self-screening tests for hearing impairment that can be conducted over the Internet. Aural rehabilitation pathways can vary between European countries, not only in terms of language, but also in terms of procedures and regulations. This makes localization of such services a challenging task. | |||
| Multimedia Interfaces for BSL Using Lip Readers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 663-669 | |
| Faramaz Eyasim Joumun; Paul Gnanayutham; Jennifer George | |||
| This paper deals with mainly the profoundly deaf people who are beginning to learn the British Sign Language (BSL) as their first language for communication. These beginners could be children, teenagers or even adults who have hearing problems. There are already quite a few BSL learning websites and Lip Reading software available on the market. However, there is no such software that associates the two associated problems although there might be BSL users who can benefit from Lip Reading. This could help them not only for communication but also enable them to interact more with people with a normal hearing range, who as a matter of fact, form a major part of the society we live in. The artifact aims to be run on most computers making it easier for people to access and use it without the need for any additional costly features. | |||
| A System to Make Signs Using Collaborative Approach | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 670-677 | |
| Mohamed Jemni; Oussama Elghoul | |||
| The generation of gestures is essential for the creation and the development
of applications dedicated to deaf persons, in particular the illiterates. In
most cases, these application need to store gestures codification/description
in data bases or dictionaries in order to process sign language, to translate
text from or to sign language, to play sign in a 3D scene and so on. The system
WebSign we have developed in our laboratory during the last years, is a
translator from written text to sign language. It is based on a multi-community
approach to respond to the needs of the locality of sign language. To do so,
our system allows using specific dictionary for each community and a common
dictionary shared by all communities. In this context it is fundamental to
define an expressive language which allows describing signs. In order to
facilitate the addition of new words without any programming skills, we have
developed a web based human-software interface which allows the generation of
words described by the defined language. Keywords: Avatar animation; collaborative approach; 3D animation; sign language;
dictionary of sign | |||
| Application System of the Universal Sign Code -- Development of the Portable Sign Presenter -- | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 678-681 | |
| Tsutomu Kimura; Masanori Katoh; Atsushi Hayashi; Kazuyuki Kanda; Daisuke Hara; et al | |||
| We have developed an ubiquitous sign presentation system using the portable
game machines and the mobile phones. An application for this system is supposed
to be a guide at a shop or at a museum, and a movie dictionary for sign
learning. The system reads the USC proposed by us through a bar-code reader or
by a camera, and it indicates a signing movie corresponding. The movie is
located in the memory in the system. If the corresponding movie does not exist
in the memory of a mobile phone system, it is downloaded from the web server to
play it. Keywords: Universal Sign Code; Mobile Phone; Portable game; Sign Presenter | |||
| Body-Braille System for Disabled People | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 682-685 | |
| Satoshi Ohtsuka; Nobuyuki Sasaki; Sadao Hasegawa; Tetsumi Harakawa | |||
| This paper introduces the Body-Braille system which has been developed as a
new communication channel for deaf-blind people using 6 micro vibration motors
to present a Braille character and describes the support system using the
Japanese mobile communication system combined with Body-Braille. Body-Braille
has several advantages compared to other Braille systems. The control device of
Body-Braille is named "B-brll" and has several interfaces including RS-232C and
DTMF. Some basic experiments to measure the speed of reading Braille were
performed and the mean reading time for one Braille cell was 0.5-1.4 seconds,
which is fast enough for some useful applications. Using Body-Braille, a
Tele-support system was developed as an application and good results were
obtained. Furthermore, a newly developed idea which presents Braille character
using only 2 points instead of 6 points and new equipment corresponding to this
idea which has significant possibility for a very practical products, are
described. Keywords: deaf-blind people; daily support; Braille; mobile phone | |||
| Dialog Support for Deafblind Persons by Conveying Backchannels through Vibration | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 686-689 | |
| Misako Nambu; Akira Okamoto; Shigeki Miyoshi; Masatsugu Sakajiri | |||
| We conducted an experiment using vibration system, by which a deafblind
participant, communicating through an interpreter, could directly receive
back-channel feedback from a conversational partner. Statistical analysis of
the interaction structure showed that the back-channel vibration increased his
turn-taking and interactivity of communication. And, from a qualitative
analysis of video data, we found that the experience of receiving back-channel
feedback caused a change in his haptic behavior in usual communication. Our
results indicate that low mental workload and learnability of this vibration
system allow deaf-blind persons to improve their communication. Keywords: Deafblind; Communication; Vibration Information; Back-channel; Mental
Workload | |||
| People with Specific Learning Difficulties: Easy to Read and HCI | | BIBA | Full-Text | 690-692 | |
| Andrea Petz; Bror Tronbacke | |||
| Off the beaten tracks of technically focused accessibility and usability regulations lies a field of research -- almost undiscovered by mainstream accessibility and usability discussions that has the potential to serve people with Specific Learning Difficulties as well as other possible target groups best: How to provide information, tools, services and structures that is readable, understandable and usable for the biggest possible user group. | |||
| Using Expert System to Assist Mouse Proficiency Assessment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 693-699 | |
| Chih-Ching Yeh; Ming-Chung Chen; Yao-Ming Yeh; Hwa-Pey Wang; Chi-Nung Chu; et al | |||
| This paper described how to use expert system to assist conducting mouse
proficiency assessment. The expert system was based on neural network approach.
The current study shows the result of analyzing cursor measurement between
able-bodied and cognitive disability users. The result of evaluation indicated
that this expert system may be an available solution for clinical professional
to propose the suggestion for selecting suitable device or adjusting user
environment conditions. The authors also provided some suggestions for the
future research. Keywords: neural network; cursor movement; expert system | |||
| Naming Game -- An Automated Tool for Analyzing and Practicing Rapid Serial Naming on Dyslexic Persons | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 700-704 | |
| Jyrki Rissanen | |||
| Most of the recent research on dyslexia agrees on that the speed of rapid
serial naming (RSN) is an important correlate of reading acquisition. The
reason for its importance lies in the fact that serial naming and reading
depend partly on the same processes. Traditionally, rapid automatized naming
(RAN) tests have been conducted manually without the help of computer programs.
Because of the many limitations related to such method, we have developed a
tool called Naming Game to automatize measurement and practicing of the rapid
serial naming. Our aim is not only to create a versatile research tool for the
researchers of RSN but also to offer an easy-to-use tool for health care
professionals who need to carry out these kind of assessments. Keywords: Dyslexia; Rapid Serial Naming; Serious Gaming | |||
| Cognitive Abilities of Functionally Illiterate Persons Relevant to ICT Use | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 705-712 | |
| Sabine van Linden; Anita H. M. Cremers | |||
| The present study investigates the proficiency levels of functionally
illiterate persons regarding a number of cognitive skills (language processing
skills (reading, writing, listening), visual organizational and visual memory
skills, mental spatial orientation, speed of cognitive processing, vigilance,
divided attention and perceived self-efficacy), which are necessary when using
ICT. The results provide insight into how specific (cognitive) limitations can
potentially be relieved by specific user interface elements. The findings will
serve as guidelines for the design of a new user interface for an Automated
Teller Machine (ATM), which is better adapted to the abilities of illiterates. Keywords: Automated teller machines; user interface; user centered design; cognitive
abilities; illiterate persons | |||
| User-Centered Design with Illiterate Persons: The Case of the ATM User Interface | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 713-720 | |
| Anita H. M. Cremers; Jacomien G. M. de Jong; Johan S. van Balken | |||
| One of the major challenges in current user interface research and
development is the accommodation of diversity in users and contexts of use in
order to improve the self-efficacy of citizens. A common banking service, which
should be designed for diversity, is the Automated Teller Machine (ATM). This
paper describes the various user-centered design techniques to involve the
future users of an ATM for illiterate persons, and reports the results of
applying the techniques to a group of six Dutch functional illiterate persons.
First, it has resulted in a set of user requirements and promising redesign
concepts for the current ATM, relating to hardware, functionality, order of
actions, lay-out, interaction modalities, and the mental model of cash
withdrawal. Second, it has provided insight into how user-centered design
techniques should be applied to this specific, but heterogeneous, user group. Keywords: Automated teller machines; user interface; icons; avatar; speech;
user-centered design; participatory design; design method; functional
illiteracy | |||
| Analysis and Adaptation of Workplaces for People with Cognitive Disabilities Using Software Tools | | BIBA | Full-Text | 721-728 | |
| Alberto Ferreras; Alicia Piedrabuena; Juan Manuel Belda; Ricard Barberà; Alfonso Oltra; et al | |||
| This paper describes the results of a study in which software tools were used to analyse and adapt workplaces occupied by people with cognitive disabilities. To do this, the work and the workers were evaluated in order to identify the most relevant problems, using the ErgoDis/IBV method. This is a computer software intended for fitting workplaces to people with disabilities. Once evaluated the workplaces, some adaptations were proposed and implemented. One of the main measures adopted was the use of PDAs to help workers in performing their tasks. After the adaptation of the workplaces, an assessment process was carried out to evaluate the adequacy of the executed measures. The results of the study were implemented in a web page in order to provide information about real cases to professionals and users. | |||
| Tutor Project: An Intelligent Tutoring System to Improve Cognitive Disabled People Integration | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 729-732 | |
| J. Rubio; C. Vaquero; J. M. López de Ipiña; E. Irigoyen; K. L. de Ipiña; N. Garay; et al | |||
| Nowadays, the integration of people with cognitive disabilities, especially
in the work environment in a growing competitive market, is a difficult task.
The TUTOR project is addressed to the development and testing of an Intelligent
Tutoring System (ITS). The ITS runs on a handheld device and its aim is to
increase the autonomy of people with cognitive disabilities in labour and daily
life activities, therefore, improving the social and labour integration of this
collective and its quality of live. This paper describes the objectives of this
project, the methodology followed, some preliminary achieved results and the
future planned activities of this research group. Keywords: intelligent tutoring system; coaching; cognitive disabilities; autonomy
improvement | |||
| Adaptive Spell Checker for Dyslexic Writers | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 733-741 | |
| Tuomas Korhonen | |||
| Dyslexic writers make more spelling errors than non-dyslexic writers do.
There is some disagreement as to whether they display distinct characteristics
in their spelling errors or whether they make errors typical of a younger age
group while trying to use vocabulary that is of a level similar to that of
others their own age. We hypothesise that the spell checking needs of dyslexic
writers differ from those of non-dyslexic writers and that those needs are not
adequately met by existing spell checkers. We also hypothesise that spell
checkers may be adapted to better meet these needs and that such adaptation
would increase the ability of the spell checkers to both detect and correct the
spelling errors of dyslexic writers. In this paper, we examine two spell
checking methods, one, which can adapt to the writing style of the user and the
other, which uses phonetic information to predict the intended word. Keywords: dyslexia; spelling; spell-checking | |||
| Dyslexia: Study of Compensatory Software Which Aids the Mathematical Learning Process of Dyslexic Students at Secondary School and University | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 742-746 | |
| Corinna Freda; Silvio Marcello Pagliara; Fiorentino Ferraro; Francesco Zanfardino; et al | |||
| The disadvantage dyslexic students suffer at school is not limited to
reading and spelling, but it includes mathematical aspects too. The use of
assistive technologies may be particularly beneficial to students with learning
disabilities. However they do have application limits preventing them from
being utilized to help the study of scientific subjects. This paper introduces
a research idea in this field, which aims to realise a scientific editor which
allows for reading and writing mathematics with the support of a speech
synthesizer. Keywords: Assistive technology; dyslexia; access to learn | |||
| The Effectiveness of TriAccess Reading System on Comprehending Nature Science Text for Students with Learning Disabilities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 747-754 | |
| Ming-Chung Chen; Chun-Han Chiang; Chien-Chuan Ko | |||
| The major purpose of this paper was to explore the effectiveness of an
individualized reading system, TriAccess, for students with learning
difficulties to comprehend the nature science text. Twenty 5th and 6th grade
students with learning disabilities participated in the experiment. All the
students read the articles presented with and without multiple representations
on the TriAccees system. Six articles related to Endemic species in Taiwan
served as experimental material. The results of the experiment indicated that
the performance of reading comprehension was better when the participants read
with multiple representations. Keywords: students with learning disabilities; multiple representations; reading | |||
| Usable and Accessible Plain Language (Easy-to-Read) Network Service | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 755-758 | |
| Sami Älli; Kimmo Kyyhkynen; Marianna Ohtonen | |||
| Plain language is language with simplified content, vocabulary and
structures. These rules of plain language function quite well also in the web,
even though the publication environment differs from that of printed media for
which the principles of plain language were originally created.
Besides the rules concerning typography and content, publishing plain language material on Internet pages presents major requirements to the visual and organizational structures of the documents. The navigation structure and other structural elements have to facilitate the processes in which plain language users move around and find information in the network service. Existing research data on a suitable visual and structural design of documents which would be best suited for users of plain language have to be integrated with corresponding information on designing documents for cognitively disabled users. Additional information is also needed especially on designing navigation structures for these user groups. Keywords: plain language; easy-to-read; accessibility; cognitive disabilities | |||
| The Design of Talking Music Web Browser for Teaching Learning-Disabled Children: A Scaffolding Strategy to Aural Skills | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 759-762 | |
| Yu-Ting Huang; Chi Nung Chu; Yao-Ming Yeh; Pei-Luen Tsai | |||
| The goal of this study is to find an efficient solution on the World Wide
Web that would promote aural skills for the learning-disabled children through
scaffolding strategy. For the abstract mental model building of pitch
recognition and rhythm, there is a significance level for the learning effect
from traditional class learning with Talking Music Web Browser. The design of
Talking Music Web Browser with Vygotsky's concept of zone of proximal
development is developed according to the scaffolds of Chevé system,
music notation, solmization and melody to inspire the learning-disabled
children to get aural skills. The Talking Music Web Browser can recover the
learning-disabled children from a difficult position of no instruments to play
or out of tune in learning music. They can acquire a lot of learning supports
which comes in extremely handy. Keywords: Talking Music Web Browser; Chevé system; Scaffolding | |||
| Information Center on Accessible Information | | BIBA | Full-Text | 763-766 | |
| Kerstin Matausch; Birgit Peböck | |||
| Different legal bases such as the Federal Discrimination Act on People with Disabilities and the eGovernment law show the importance of web accessibility and it is well known that technical accessibility is not comprehensive without an adequate usability. Nevertheless, from the point of view regarding a comprehensive accessibility of information this will be too little especially with regard to people with learning disabilities. Little organizations currently are used to the realization of easy-to-read. This affects the production of print materials but also the offer of easy-to-read on the internet. Following this, it is meaningful to build up an information center giving support on these specific aspects. | |||
| Blind and Visually Impaired People: Human-Computer Interaction and Access to Graphics | | BIBA | Full-Text | 767-769 | |
| Ilvio Bruder; Gerhard Jaworek | |||
| Graphical interfaces for modern information and communication systems are state of the art in computer interaction. Graphical interfaces stand for fast, comprehensive, and flexible usage of computer in working as well as in private environments. Impaired people, especially visually impaired, have major problems using the graphical interface. These people can not use contemporary computer programs. That is one reason for comprehensive less number of visually impaired employees. Helping these people is a necessary, but difficult challenge. The introduced special thematic session "Blind and Visually Impaired People: Human-Computer Interaction and Access to Graphics" represents current research towards solutions for visually impaired and brings together researchers and practitioners. The STS represents topics from hard- and software user interfaces, screen reader, accessibility of specific applications, and e-learning and communication strategies. | |||
| Making the I-Maestro Music Learning Framework Accessible | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 770-776 | |
| Neil McKenzie; Benjie Marwick-Johnstone | |||
| In a climate where we are increasingly looking to technology to support our
learning processes, it important to make sure that technological advancement
isn't chosen over maximum inclusion. The two have to go hand in hand. This
paper presents the I-Maestro project and demonstrates how it attempts to bridge
the gap between music pedagogy and technology while keeping the learning
experiences accessible for the visually impaired. Keywords: Music; eLearning; Pedagogy; Braille; Accessibility | |||
| Voice Browser for Groupware Systems: VoBG -- A Simple Groupware Client for Visually Impaired Students | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 777-780 | |
| Makoto Kobayashi | |||
| A dedicated browser application named Voice Browser for Groupware systems
(VoBG) was developed. The target users are visually impaired persons who are
computer novices. This browser is a client application for a specified
groupware system named Garoon 2, which is one of the most popular groupware
system packages in Japan. The groupware is Web-based system and basically
accessible for the visually impaired users. However, the structure of each Web
page generated by the groupware server is too complicated to get information
exactly for beginners with visual impairment. To solve this problem, VoBG
reduces information of these pages using information of HTML tags, and
reconstructs each page to understandable format for the target users. Keywords: voice browser; groupware system; visually impaired person; computer novice | |||
| Making ProTools Accessible for Visually Impaired | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 781-788 | |
| Tomáš Zahradnický; Róbert Lórencz; Pavel Musil | |||
| ProTools, an industry standard audio edit and mix software, is not
accessible for visually impaired. Precisely, it was not accessible and this
paper presents how was ProTools access enabled with the help of ProAccess
application. ProAccess was created for this purpose and uses mach code
injection techniques to load an access enabling bundle into ProTools and
applies the method that was published 2 years ago. The paper also describes the
relationships in between ProTools, ProAccess, and VoiceOver technology and what
results we have obtained together with ProTools, timing of its learning process
for a visually impaired person. Keywords: Accessibility; ProTools; Visual impairment; VoiceOver | |||
| User-Interface Modelling for Blind Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 789-796 | |
| Fernando Alonso; José L. Fuertes; Ángel L. González; Loïc Martínez | |||
| The design of a user interface usable by blind people sets specific
usability requirements that are unnecessary for sighted users. These
requirements focus on task adequacy, dimensional trade-off, behaviour
equivalence, semantic loss avoidance and device-independency. Consequently, the
development of human-computer interfaces (HCI) that are based on task, domain,
dialog, presentation, platform and user models has to be modified to take into
account these requirements. This paper presents a user interface model for
blind people, which incorporates these usability requirements into the above
HCI models. A framework implementing the model has been developed and
implemented in an electronic speaking bilingual software environment for blind
or visually impaired people and in an educational system for children with
special educational needs. Keywords: human-computer interfaces; blind user interface model; accessible user
interfaces | |||
| Towards an Open Source Screen Reader: Screenreader Usability Extensions (SUE) | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 797-800 | |
| Andrea Gaal; Gerhard Jaworek; Joachim Klaus; Martina Weicht; Frank Zenker; Ilvio Bruder; et al | |||
| More and more educational institutions, authorities, and companies adopt
open source software, especially Linux. Unfortunately, at the moment, no Linux
based screen reader provides adequate and sufficient functionality as the ones
of Windows. This means that visually impaired people are disadvantaged in the
labour market. The focus of the project is the development of a screen reader
for the graphical interface using Linux. The screen reader will allow the
visually impaired to work with Linux for typical office tasks and the desktop
(GNOME) itself. A special training course will instruct teachers and pupils at
institutions for the blind and the partially sighted in using the screen
reader. The content of the programme is based on the 7 modules of the ECDL
(European Computer Driving Licence). Keywords: SUE; Screenreader Usability Extensions; structural analysis; task models;
training programme; ECDL; blind; accessibility; open source; GNOME; Linux | |||
| ZoomLinux: A Research Result Providing a Tangible Response to the Needs of Low Vision Students | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 801-808 | |
| Giovanni Paolo Caruso; Silvia Dini; Lucia Ferlino | |||
| This paper addresses the needs of low-vision students by examining the
development of ZoomLinux, a DVD containing specially selected open source
educational software products. The DVD was created in 2008 by a group of
researchers and professionals who have gained extensive experience in visual
impairment through studies conducted over many years. ZoomLinux differs from
similar products devoted to people with special needs by being "especially
normal": the software applications and the platform itself are readily usable
by each and every student in the classroom, thus satisfying the most important
requirement of e-inclusion. This approach offers new opportunities for
educational and methodological settings: the teacher can customize system and
software options in order to meet different special needs. For each educational
software, the DVD provides detailed informations about strengths, weaknesses
regarding use with low vision students, accessibility analysis and notes
explaining how teachers can customize the interface. Keywords: E-inclusion; Education; Low vision; Accessibility; Usability; Assistive
Technology; Opensource; DVD Live; Linux | |||
| An Analysis of Human-to-Human Dialogs and Its Application to Assist Visually-Impaired People | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 809-812 | |
| Takuya Nishimoto; Takayuki Watanabe | |||
| A prototype lunch delivery web system for visually impaired was developed
based on the analysis of human (a visually impaired who wants to order a lunch)
to human (a sighted person who helps the visually impaired to decide lunch by
reading aloud lunch menu) dialog. Based on the analysis, a prototype system was
developed, which consists of three steps: 1) rough selection, 2) selection of
favorites, and 3) final selection. The evaluation of the prototype system is
performed by the visually impaired only with synthesized speech and key-board.
The results showed that our system is effective and easy to use. Keywords: exploratory search; web application; dialog system; screen reader | |||
| Learning Support System Based on Note-Taking Method for People with Acquired Visual Disabilities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 813-820 | |
| Kazuyuki Itou; Baku Kato; Masaru Taniguchi; Toshio Otogawa; Kazuyuki Itoh; et al | |||
| This study is intended to produce a learning support system for middle-aged
people and elderly people with acquired visual disabilities. Our investigation
results related to tools of study show that the use of Braille and PCs has
decreased in the classes. The first reason is that the number of elderly
students has increased. Secondly, finger-reading is difficult for people with
diabetic neuropathy. Thirdly, the Japanese kanji transfer system makes the
keyboard operation of a PC difficult. We are developing new note-taking
systems. One is Braille-type system; the other is a pen-based system. We
produced prototypes. Our students used and evaluated them. We are planning to
establish a learning support system using these devices. Keywords: acquired visual disabilities; learning support system; note taking method | |||
| Dot Detection of Optical Braille Images for Braille Cells Recognition | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 821-826 | |
| Amany Al-Saleh; Ali El-Zaart; AbdulMalik AlSalman | |||
| Braille is a tactile format of written communication for people with low
vision and blindness worldwide. Optical Braille Recognition (OBR) offers many
benefits to Braille users and people who work with them. This paper presents a
new algorithm for detecting dots composing Braille characters in an image of
embossed Braille material obtained by an optical scanner. We assume that a
mixture of Beta distributions can model the histogram of a scanned Braille
document. The core of the proposed method is the use of stability of
thresholding with Beta distribution to initiate the process of thresholds
estimation. Segmented Braille image is then used to form a grid that contains
recto dots and another one that contains verso dots. Using segmented image,
Braille dots composing characters on both single-sided and double-sided
documents are automatically identified from those grids with excellent
accuracy. Keywords: Optical Braille Images; Dot Detection; Thresholding; Beta Distribution; OBR | |||
| Developing Multimedia-Game Software to Improve Space and Depth Perception | | BIBA | Full-Text | 827-834 | |
| Cecília Sik Lányi; László Galyas | |||
| Space perception is not a congenital faculty of human beings, but it evolves during the first few years of life. Experts are of the opinion that depth perception can be improved during the first 15-16 years of life. It is very important to help our up coming generation acquire good space perception as this is essential to be able to perform in a high number of occupations. We have developed a multimedia program with animations that were used by nursery school children to examine space perception. We developed test multimedia games with anaglyph technique to investigate the little children. If the kindergarten teacher realizes the child is not able to solve the task in the multimedia games she/he can send the child to the ophthalmologist just in time for complete examination. In this case eventually other problems will come to light in time. | |||
| Tactile Graphics Revised: The Novel BrailleDis 9000 Pin-Matrix Device with Multitouch Input | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 835-842 | |
| Thorsten Völkel; Gerhard Weber; Ulrich Baumann | |||
| We describe the novel BrailleDis 9000 pin-matrix device. The refreshable
device allows to present tactile graphics on a matrix of 60 times 120 pins. The
pin-matrix device is made up of a newly developed type of vertical Braille
module allowing for a compact assembly of all necessary components.
Additionally, the pin-matrix device is touch sensitive and capable of detecting
multiple points of contact. Using multitouch features, novel multimodal
interaction cycles can be realized with the Braille display, such as a
bi-manual sweep. Keywords: Tactile graphics; visually impaired; assistive technology; pin-matrix device | |||
| Sensitive Braille Displays with ATC Technology (Active Tactile Control) as a Tool for Learning Braille | | BIBA | Full-Text | 843-850 | |
| Siegfried Kipke | |||
| The Idea of a Sensitive Braille DisplayAccess to computers for blind users can be provided with speech and/or Braille output. A Braille display providing Braille output can interact with the computer. In order to be able to use a Braille display as an effective control unit for the computer is was the goal to create a sensitive Braille display which can detect the tactile reading position of the blind user. The research of how to detect the tactile reading position on a Braille display has lead to the invention of ATC (Active Tactile Control). New tools based on ATC for can be created for interactive learning, monitoring the learning process as well as assistance functions. | |||
| Dual Mode Fingertip Guiding Manipulator for Blind Persons Enabling Passive/Active Line-Drawing Explorations | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 851-858 | |
| Syed Muammar Najib Syed Yusoh; Yoshihiko Nomura; Naomi Kokubo; Tokuhiro Sugiura; et al | |||
| A fingertip guiding manipulator was developed as a haptic graphic display to
help the visually impaired create mental images of line drawings. The latest
model to be presented in this study equips dual mode fingertip-guiding function
allowing either passive or active exploration. When using this manipulator, the
person is assumed to pinch a knob by his/her fingertip: the knob is attached at
the end of the manipulator. In the active mode, the fingertip guiding
manipulator pulls his/her fingertip along line drawings. In the passive mode,
it provides a kind of selective compliance, and allows the persons freely to
move his/her fingertip in the only direction of the line drawings. For the sake
of the dual mode function, it is expected that efficiency would be improved a
lot comparing to the former model being equipped with the passive mode alone. Keywords: Haptic Device; Visually Impaired; Blind Persons | |||
| Toward Touching a Landscape in a Picture: Investigation of Groping Strategy about Tactile Images and Image Simplification Method | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 859-864 | |
| Takayuki Shiose; Yasuhiro Kagiyama; Kiyohide Ito; Kazuhiko Mamada; Hiroshi Kawakami; et al | |||
| In this paper, we propose a method for "touching a landscape in a
photograph." In concrete terms, it is an image processing to simplify images
and making images tactile by a stereo copying machine. How much we simplify
images depends on subject's groping strategy. Experiments are carried about
three images which they are different in their complexity of texture. The
results show that frequency of large hand movements correlate with complexity
of image texture. Keywords: tactile image; image processing; the blind; assistive technology | |||
| An Off-Screen Model for Tactile Graphical User Interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 865-872 | |
| Michael Kraus; Thorsten Völkel; Gerhard Weber | |||
| Screen readers enable visually impaired people to access information
provided by computer systems. They gather data from operation system and
applications, govern the data in an internal data structure (off-screen model),
and provide the information in an appropriate format to output devices.
However, current approaches for the construction of off-screen models are not
appropriate for tactile graphical displays. Within this paper we therefore
describe the composition of an alternative off-screen model appropriate for
storing and administrating information necessary for tactile graphical
displays. Keywords: Assistive technology; off-screen model; screen reader | |||
| Access to Mathematics and Science | | BIBA | Full-Text | 873-874 | |
| Arthur I. Karshmer | |||
| The task of entering into careers in math and science is one of difficulty for all students. For the visually impaired student, the task is even more daunting. In our STS, we will hear a number of excellent papers and see several exciting demonstrations concerning making math, and therefore science, accessible to the visually impaired. | |||
| Multimedia MathReader for Daisy Books | | BIBA | Full-Text | 875-878 | |
| Piotr Brzoza | |||
| The Paper presents multimedia Daisy Books browser accessible for visually impaired people which allows interactive voice reading of structural information like math formulas, lists, tables. DaisyReader supports new MathML Modular Extensions (2007) of Daisy standard. | |||
| Writing Mathematics by Speech: A Case Study for Visually Impaired | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 879-882 | |
| Cristian Bernareggi; Valeria Brigatti | |||
| Speech input has proven to be useful for entering text in electronic
documents, and seems to be a promising technique also for writing mathematical
expressions. Up to now, there is no evidence about the potential advantages of
speech input on blind persons who need to edit scientific documents. This paper
introduces a technique to enable blind persons to input mathematics by speech.
A system prototype has been developed, based on the LAMBDA mathematical editor
and the Dragon NaturallySpeaking™ software. An early assessment has been
undertaken with a group of blind users. The results of this evaluation will be
discussed in this paper and will be exploited to enhance the system prototype. Keywords: Speech input; mathematics; blind; multimodal interfaces | |||
| Universal Authoring System for Braille Materials by Collaboration of UMCL and Infty | | BIBA | Full-Text | 883-887 | |
| Toshihiro Kanahori; Dominique Archambault; Masakazu Suzuki | |||
| We are developing a universal authoring system for Braille materials by collaboration of UMCL and Infty. The UMCL provides conversion modules from MathML to various Braille notations. The Infty system is an integrated suite for scientific documents, which recognizes image or PDF files of a scientific document including mathematical expressions and provides easy interfaces to edit those documents. Combining these systems, we obtain the universal authoring system. Using the system, users can make mathematical materials in various Braille notations without any knowledge of those notations. | |||
| Assessing the Mathematics Related Communication Requirements of the Blind in Education and Career | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 888-891 | |
| Paul Stanley | |||
| Educational and career opportunities for the blind would be greatly expanded
if they could function in sighted environments. A sighted environment is
defined as a dialog involving non-trivial mathematics; which employs visual
renderings of the math discussed; and where no provision is made for blind
participants. After itemizing the common visual media found in the typical
classroom and workplace, this paper lists the minimum requirements necessary
for the blind to function in a sighted environment. The foremost challenges
will be 1) the conversion of all visual lines of math related communication
into blind accessible formats; and 2) performing those conversions fast enough
to provide synchronous communication between the blind user and his sighted
peers. Keywords: blind; visually impaired; mathematics; math; education; career; sighted
environment | |||
| New Features in Math Accessibility with Infty Software | | BIBA | Full-Text | 892-899 | |
| Katsuhito Yamaguchi; Toshihiko Komada; Fukashi Kawane; Masakazu Suzuki | |||
| The math OCR software, "InftyReader" can recognize properly printed math and scientific documents including many special symbols and technical notations such as math expressions. The recognition result can be converted to various accessible formats. The accessible math-document editor, "ChattyInfty" enables visually disabled people not only to read but also to author math documents with speech output. The current version of InftyReader can also recognize PDF files and achieves remarkable recognition rate for both of text and math parts. In the current version of ChattyInfty, user can customize various settings concerning speech output. A new function relevant to producing DAISY math books is also implemented. | |||
| Making Arithmetic Accessible | | BIBA | Full-Text | 900-906 | |
| John A. Gardner; Carolyn K. Gardner; Blake Jones; Elizabeth Jones | |||
| The authors discuss a truly universal learning system that will allow all children including blind and deaf children to do arithmetic using standard algorithms. This system uses the three main learning modalities, sight, sound and touch, allowing students to simultaneously use multiple senses when learning. The product was designed with a flexible user-interface so that students can receive and enter information in a variety of ways. This product makes use of scalable vector graphics and uses XForms to create input fields within graphics. | |||
| Learning Math for Visually Impaired Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 907-914 | |
| Thimoty Barbieri; Lorenzo Mosca; Licia Sbattella | |||
| Writing and reading formulas or perceiving the graph of a function stand in
the way of a blind student for an efficient and complete study of Math. We
propose an architecture made by different components that allows to a blind
user to face the study of the mathematics in total autonomy. The system allows
the formula editing, and the formula exploration. In case of the formula
represents a 2D function, the system innovatively supports the haptic and audio
exploration of the corresponding graph through a very cheap IO device. The
article describes the system architecture and the test results. Keywords: learning math; perception graphs; formulas; linearization; sonification;
haptic feedback; aural feedback; visual impairments | |||
| Manipulatives in the History of Teaching: Fast Forward to AutOMathic Blocks for the Blind | | BIBA | Full-Text | 915-918 | |
| Arthur I. Karshmer; Daryoush Farsi | |||
| The use of manipulative objects in the teaching of younger children has been a well know and accepted educational practice for over 200 years. The use of manipulative blocks have been valuable in the teaching of subjects such as the alphabet, linear and multidimensional measurements and early mathematics to name a few. In the current work, we present a brief overview of the traditional use of these tools as a basis for the discussion of the AutOMathic Blocks system -- a systems that integrates the physical manipulative object with a computer to deliver personal math instruction to young students with visual impairments. | |||
| Braille-Embedded Tactile Graphics Editor with Infty System | | BIBA | Full-Text | 919-925 | |
| Toshihiro Kanahori; Masayuki Naka; Masakazu Suzuki | |||
| We are developing a graphics editor to easily draw Braille-embedded tactile graphics for scientific documents including mathematical expressions with Infty specialized system. Each graphics embedded in a document is cut out and characters on the graphics are recognized by InftyReader. The recognized graphics can be edited with this graphics editor, which is based on scalable vector graphics. Since, in the editor, ordinary texts and mathematical expressions on the recognized graphics are presented by InftyEditor, users can easily edit them with its input interface. After completing the edit process, all texts and mathematical expressions are automatically translated into Braille by our original Braille translator, InftyBraille. Then, the edited graphics is output as an EMF file. Embossing out the EMF file, users even who do not know Braille codes can get a Braille-embedded tactile graphics. | |||
| Access to Mathematics in Web Resources for People with a Visual Impairment | | BIBA | Full-Text | 926-933 | |
| Martyn Cooper; Tim Lowe; Mary Taylor | |||
| This paper discusses issues in the representation of mathematics within web resources and how this affects access for people with a visual impairment. Firstly it outlines the distance and open learning context at the Open University and the needs of people with a visual impairment. The paper then describes and discusses different approaches to making maths online accessible to people with a visual impairment. Two key projects at the Open University are outlined and some reflections made on future directions for the work. | |||
| Multimodal Exploration and Manipulation of Graph Structures | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 934-937 | |
| Cristian Bernareggi; Christian Comaschi; Giancarlo Dalto; Piero Mussio; et al | |||
| This paper introduces a multimodal interactive system which aims to enable
blind and visually impaired persons to create, manipulate and explore graph
structures in a 3D space. An audio-haptic interaction paradigm has been
designed to ensure a non-visual experience of graph structures. Visual feedback
makes possible communication about graphs between non-sighted and sighted
users. The multimodal manipulation and exploration techniques are introduced
together with the system prototype. Early evaluation results are illustrated. Keywords: Haptic; graph; blind; visually impaired | |||
| The Development of a Universal Design Tactile Graphics Production System BPLOT2 | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 938-945 | |
| Mamoru Fujiyoshi; Akio Fujiyoshi; Nobuyuki Ohtake; Katsuhito Yamaguchi; et al | |||
| We introduce a new universal design tactile graphics production system:
BPLOT2. With BPLOT2, blind persons and sighted persons can share resources and
cooperatively draw tactile graphics to be utilized in braille textbooks and
teaching materials. Present tactile graphics design applications have only GUI
(Graphical User Interface) with the need for mouse operations and thus are not
usable by blind persons. Equally inconvenient, our self-supporting tactile
graphics production system for the blind, BPLOT, has only CUI (Character User
Interface), so BPLOT is not popular among the sighted. Therefore, we
implemented GUI on BPLOT and realized universal design on BPLOT2. Keywords: universal design; visually impaired; tactile graphics; GUI | |||
| Transnational Support to Visually Impaired in Scientific University Courses | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 946-952 | |
| Cristian Bernareggi; Barbara Hengstberger; Valeria Brigatti | |||
| Blind and visually impaired students seldom choose to attend university
technical or scientific courses. The major problems concern access to
scientific documentation, to scientific software and getting advantage of
attending lessons. Many solutions exist, but they are often available or known
at national level. This paper introduces the @science thematic network, which
aims at collecting and documenting practices and experiences at transnational
level to facilitate blind and visually impaired students to go through
scientific studies at university. Keywords: Science; accessibility; blind; visual impaired; higher education | |||
| Chemical Workbench for Blind People -- Accessing the Structure of Chemical Formula | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 953-960 | |
| Federsel Stephan; Klaus Miesenberger | |||
| This paper exposes some ideas how blind people can get better access to the
structure of chemical formulas. The first chapters outline the problems of
blind people, who work in chemical areas. A further part of this paper
discusses the state of the art in access to chemistry. Starting form this level
of information ideas on a new approach will be shown how a blind user can
navigate through chemical formulas. Keywords: blind people; chemistry; structure of chemical formula; navigate | |||
| E-Learning for Secondary School Teachers: Inclusive Science and Math Instruction for Students with Disabilities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 961-968 | |
| Robert L. Todd | |||
| The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is conducting a research
and development project to enhance the capacities of science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers to educate students with
disabilities. The project has conducted online surveys, focus groups and
longitudinal studies to discover the training and knowledge needs of teachers.
The ongoing research has identified significant gaps in teacher knowledge about
students with disabilities and the accommodations that can help them succeed.
In particular, there is a pervasive lack of understanding of the uses of
assistive technology, along with discomfort in the use of this technology.
Findings have been used in the creation of online training courses designed to
meet teacher needs in the classroom and laboratory environments. Further
research will investigate the use of project resources with teachers of
students with focused disability issues. Keywords: STEM; Science; Math; Education; Disability; Teacher Training | |||
| Accessible Tourism Introduction to the Special Thematic Session | | BIBA | Full-Text | 969-972 | |
| Franz Pühretmair; Dimitrios Buhalis | |||
| The Special Thematic Session is organized to provide a forum to discuss major issues related to Accessible Tourism, to identify existing barriers as well as technologies, strategies and approaches to promote Accessible Tourism. The more Information Communication Technologies and Assistive Technologies increase the potential to enable people with disabilities to take part in almost any area of life, the more eInclusion and eAccessibility become a common responsibility of the mainstream tourism industry. The European Commission appreciates this fact and therefore supports different activities to raise the awareness of the impact and the business opportunities that Accessible Tourism introduces. The forthcoming process of demographic ageing will lead to a growing number of tourists with needs for more accessibility and higher service quality also in tourism. | |||
| How to Inform People with Reduced Mobility about Public Transport | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 973-980 | |
| Christian Bühler; Helmut Heck; Josef Becker | |||
| The German project BAIM supports the active and independent participation of
people with reduced mobility in public transport. It focuses on the provision
of accessible and adaptable information services with target group oriented
information about suitable travelling options or potential barriers, before and
during the journey. The information is provided via internet and via an
interactive telephone service with speech-recognition. The system has been
implemented and tested in two integrated public transport systems,
Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund and Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Branden burg, covering a
population of 11 Mio. people, with a strong emphasis on user participation in
all project phases. Main parts of the system went public in January 2008. Keywords: accessible public transport; people with reduced mobility; information
service; barrier-free travelling | |||
| A Flexible Concept to Establish Accessibility Information in Tourism Web-Pages | | BIBA | Full-Text | 981-988 | |
| Franz Pühretmair; Wolfram Wöß | |||
| Accessible tourism that comprises the market of people with disabilities and elderly travelers is far away from being a niche market. Nevertheless it is characterized by missing, insufficient or inaccurate accessibility information on tourism objects. The presented approach demonstrates how it is possible to overcome this deficits and how this growing but neglected market can be supported. The fundamental idea is to aggregate up-to-date, trustable and comparable accessibility information in a central accessibility database. A service-oriented architecture enables information providers to flexibly access and query accessibility information stored in the database by the use of Web services. Consequently, the accessibility information delivered can be integrated in information portals and homepages, thus enabling a wide spreading of accessibility information which is the main focus of this paper. | |||
| (e-)Accessibility Research from the Perspective of the Tourism, Sport and Leisure Industries -- Selected Project Results and Future Focus of the e-Motion Competence Centre | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 989-996 | |
| Markus Lassnig; Mark Markus; Kerstin Matausch; Franz Pühretmair; Andreas Wagner | |||
| This paper presents selected research results of the project "Accessible
Sport Regions" and outlines the future (e-)accessibility research initiatives
within the e-Motion competence centre. Based on the empirical research, the
project establishes a relation between the considerable accessibility market
and the relatively small number of current tourists with disabilities in the
region of Salzburg, indicating large unexploited potentials. According to
experts, even moderate investments in accessible services and infrastructure
could yield high returns. A disproportion between the provision of and demand
for accessible infrastructure will be discussed. To provide an insight into the
nature of measures for an tourism industry accessible to people with
disabilities, the barriers from the perspective of tourists with disabilities
across the tourism service-chain were analyzed. Keywords: Accessible tourism market potential vs. state of the art; barriers across
tourism service-chain; future accessibility research in the tourism and sports
industries | |||
| Smart Environments: Introduction to the Special Thematic Session | | BIBA | Full-Text | 997-1000 | |
| Gerhard Nussbaum | |||
| Smart Homes and Environments have the capability to compensate some of the occupant's disabilities and can extend the time people can live in their preferred environment by increasing their autonomy. Therefore such environments are an important approach to independent living of people with disabilities and older persons. For this reason Smart Environments are also a main topic of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme. This special thematic session deals with Smart Environments and related developments and research. The topics reach from "A Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living" over "EasyControl -- universal control system" to "A Smart Indoor Navigation Solution based on Building Information Model and Google Android". | |||
| All the Way to Living Independently: Reflections on a Design Case | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1001-1007 | |
| Peter den Brok; Ingrid Mulder; Jan van den Berg | |||
| Even when assistive technologies do support people with special needs and enabling them to retain an independent lifestyle, unforeseen thresholds may pop up and hinder people to become fully independent. Aiming to contribute to best practices in the field of independent living, a co-design case of support for a specific person with serious speech and movement impairments is reported. We describe the human-centered design trajectory, the developed support, and reflect on our experiences striving to develop computer programs that really help people with special needs in order to maintain independent living. | |||
| A Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living in the Municipality of Schwechat | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1008-1015 | |
| P. Panek; W. L. Zagler | |||
| This paper describes the Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)
technologies and services in the city of Schwechat. Local authorities, social
service providers, elderly persons, carers, research entities and companies
have started to cooperate closely as full partners in this Living Lab in order
to invent, discuss, explore, implement, and evaluate innovative technologies to
support the independent living of senior citizens. This approach allows
focusing on the actual needs of the future users by involving them right from
the beginning. The paper gives an overview on the approach of the Living Lab,
it describes some pilot projects currently being carried out and discusses the
preliminary experiences gathered since 2006. The first findings in the Living
Lab are promising, especially the feedback from the user community is very
positive. Keywords: user involvement; user participation; participative design; living lab;
innovation; assisted living; AAL | |||
| ENABLE -- A View on User's Needs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1016-1023 | |
| Stefan Parker; Gerhard Nussbaum; Helmut Sonntag; Franz Pühretmair; Veronika Williams; et al | |||
| The ENABLE project, which is partly funded by the European Commission, aims
to assist elderly people to live well, independently and at ease. In this
project a wrist unit with both integrated and external sensors, and with a
radio frequency link to a mobile phone, will be developed. ENABLE will provide
a number of services for elderly people, among them also a remote control
service for the home environment. This paper briefly describes the project in
general and then focuses on the initial user needs investigation which was
carried out in early 2007 in six different European countries. The provisional
findings are discussed and an outlook on the ongoing and future project work is
given. A special focus of this paper is on the environmental control service. Keywords: ageing population; disability; wearable computing; alarm systems; fall
detection; guidance; environmental control; smart environment; ambient assisted
living | |||
| EasyControl -- Universal Control System | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1024-1029 | |
| Marcela Fejtová; Petr Novák; Olga Štepánková | |||
| Usually, people access and control technical devices through various peripheries, e.g. PC mouse, computer keyboard or other remote control devices with buttons. Construction of these peripheries assumes that the user can hold them in his/her hand and handle them. Our team has designed and developed several peripheries and helpful software programs, which are ready to provide assistance for people with some disabilities. Our peripheries are named e.g. I4Control®, BlinkSwitch, FingerSwitch and others. Universal control system named EasyControl was developed by our team to enable primary to control PC through several input devices. Using these input devices and system EasyControl user cannot control only our PC but also other devices in surrounding environment. Some applications and toys were developed to unable users to master some input devices. | |||
| Eye, Me and the Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1030-1033 | |
| Fangmin Shi; Alastair Gale; Emilie Mollenbach | |||
| In order to broaden the applicability of an eye-tracking based assistive
technology the available environmental control systems are reviewed. Their
advantages and limitations are discussed with respect to their usage with eye
tracking technology for aiding people with special needs. It is concluded that
each system has its own distinct advantages for this task, linked also to their
availability, ease of use and cost. Consequently a modular design approach is
advocated for eye tracking control technologies in this domain to make them as
generically applicable as possible. Keywords: eye tracking; environmental control systems; assistive technology | |||
| Development of a Low Cost Base Station for Multimodal Home Monitoring | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1034-1041 | |
| Klaus-Hendrik Wolf; Arne Lohse; Michael Marschollek; Reinhold Haux | |||
| Objectives: Enable the sustainable monitoring of health-related parameters by developing an easy-to-deploy and low-cost base station for home monitoring seamlessly integrated into trans-institutional health information systems utilizing established standards. Methods: A network attached storage device based on Linux is modified to perform as an easily expandable data logger for different modalities. Local data storage as well as the communication of gathered or analysed data to authorized systems uses established standards. First usability tests are performed in laboratory settings and in an elderly person's home. Results: The modalities implemented by now include different wireless and wired sensor systems. Data can be communicated to institutional health information systems. Conclusions: It is possible to deploy a very low cost and easy to use base station for home monitoring. The chosen device was able to perform the logging of data as well as simple analysis and forwarding of relevant information. | |||
| Distributed Accelerometers as a Main Component in Detecting Activities of Daily Living | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1042-1049 | |
| Josef Diermaier; Katharina Neyder; Franz Werner; Paul Panek; Wolfgang L. Zagler | |||
| In this paper we describe the use of accelerometers in a system aiming to
detect Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) of elderly people in home
environments. Our aim is to enable senior citizens to remain in their familiar
home environments as long as possible by increasing their feeling for safety
and autonomy in a minimally invasive way. Therefore we developed a ZigBee-based
smart system which uses distributed accelerometers as main sensory component
and does not need the resident to wear any artifact. In this way certain
activity patterns could be recognized respecting the users' privacy. We
gathered certain ADLs manually from the raw data and validated them in
different ways. In this manner 151 out of 155 ADLs could be verified. In this
paper an overview of the system together with the findings of the real life
tests are presented. Keywords: Accelerometer; AAL; Activities of Daily Living; Minimally Invasive; ZigBee;
Activity Patterns | |||
| A Smart Indoor Navigation Solution Based on Building Information Model and Google Android | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1050-1056 | |
| Ferial Shayeganfar; Amin Anjomshoaa; A. Min Tjoa | |||
| There are many types of indoor and outdoor navigation tools and
methodologies available. A majority of these solutions are based on Global
Positioning Systems (GPS) and instant video and image processing. These
approaches are ideal for open world environments where very few information
about the target location is available, but for large scale building
environments such as hospitals, governmental offices, etc the end-user will
need more detailed information about the surrounding context which is
especially important in case of people with special needs. This paper presents
a smart indoor navigation solution that is based on Semantic Web technologies
and Building Information Model (BIM). The proposed solution is also aligned
with Google Android's concepts to enlighten the realization of results. Keywords: IAI IFCXML; Building Information Model; Indoor Navigation; Semantic Web;
Google Android; People with Special Needs | |||
| Developing a Sub Room Level Indoor Location System for Wide Scale Deployment in Assisted Living Systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1057-1064 | |
| Gerald Bauer; Paul Lukowicz | |||
| The work described in this paper is part of the MonAMI European project that
aims to facilitate and demonstrate large scale real life deployment of AAL
technologies. A major concern of the project is the ability to locate and track
people within their homes with sensor setups that are cheap, easily installed
into hundreds of homes, and can be operated for extended time periods with no
or little maintenance. This paper describes such a system. It is based on a
standard ceiling mounted camera, an on body accelerometer and simple yet robust
image processing. We describe the system concept and the current implementation
based on a commercial wide angle webcam and the motion sensor of the Apple
iPhone/Nokia N95 mobile phone. We also report on initial results with operating
the system in our lab. Keywords: Human Monitoring System; Activity Recognition; ROI Localization; Home Care
Appliances | |||
| Utilizing QR Code and Mobile Phones for Blinds and Visually Impaired People | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1065-1069 | |
| Hend S. Al-Khalifa | |||
| In this paper a barcode-based system to help the visually impaired and blind people identify objects in the environment is introduced. The system is based on the idea of utilizing QR codes (two-dimensional barcode) affixed to an object and scanned using a camera phone equipped with QR reader software. The reader decodes the barcode to a URL and directs the phone's browser to fetch an audio file from the Web that contains a verbal description of the object. Our proposed system is expected to be useful in real-time interaction with different environments and to further illustrate the potential of our work, two scenarios are presented. | |||
| Exploiting RFIDs and Tilt-Based Interaction for Mobile Museum Guides Accessible to Vision-Impaired Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1070-1077 | |
| Giuseppe Ghiani; Barbara Leporini; Fabio Paternò; Carmen Santoro | |||
| In this paper, we present a study aiming to investigate how tilt-based
interaction, along with RFIDs for localization, can be exploited to support
blind users in interacting with mobile guides. We describe the design proposed
and report on a first user study, which also compared two different ways to
provide audio feedback (short sounds or vocal messages) for the tilt-based
interaction. Keywords: Mobile guides; Accessibility; Tilt-based interaction; Blind users; RFIDS | |||
| Portable and Mobile Systems in Assistive Technology | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1078-1080 | |
| R. Manduchi; J. Coughlan | |||
| Computing power, communications and internet access are becoming increasingly untethered from the desktop and moving to the realm of portable, wireless technology. Devices such as mobile (cell) phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants) have become affordable and ubiquitous, and offer not only substantial computational power but also telephone and internet access, as well as a variety of sensors such as cameras, GPS and RFID readers. While the overwhelming majority of such devices are being marketed primarily to able-bodied users (primarily young, tech-savvy people without obvious disabilities), there is enormous potential to harness their capabilities for use in assistive technology. As of yet, however, this potential remains largely untapped, with very few commercially available systems of this type. | |||
| A Survey on the Use of Mobile Phones by Visually Impaired Persons in Japan | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1081-1084 | |
| Tetsuya Watanabe; Manabi Miyagi; Kazunori Minatani; Hideji Nagaoka | |||
| The present state and future needs of visually impaired mobile phone users were surveyed. The results showed that many visually impaired users, even print enabled persons, were making use of speech output to e-mail and to access the Internet, and, accordingly, improvements of speech output were requested. Additionally, GPS navigation was on the high priority request list. | |||
| Mobility Impaired Pedestrians Are Not Cars: Requirements for the Annotation of Geographical Data | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1085-1092 | |
| Thorsten Völkel; Romina Kühn; Gerhard Weber | |||
| Mobility is one prerequisite for carrying out an autonomous and independent
life. As mobility impaired pedestrians impose very heterogeneous requirements
regarding the calculation of optimized routes and the provision of navigation
instructions, currently available navigation systems do not offer sufficient
support. The main drawback is due to inadequate map data which is mostly
optimized for car navigation. To overcome these limitations, the technique of
multimodal annotation of geographical data has been developed for which
additional requirements have been gathered by conducting a survey including 88
visually impaired respondents. Within this paper, the results of the survey are
presented. Requirements for multimodal annotation are derived and discussed. Keywords: Mobility impaired; annotation; navigation systems | |||
| People Helping Computers Helping People: Navigation for People with Mobility Problems by Sharing Accessibility Annotations | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1093-1100 | |
| Harald Holone; Gunnar Misund | |||
| Accessibility maps are valuable tools for people with mobility problems navigating in the urban landscape, in particular for first time visitors. However, the costs of establishing and maintaining such maps prohibit widespread use. Moreover, smartphones, GPS positioning and a growing number of open geospatial tools and technology are becoming commodities. Letting users create and augment geospatial data is opening up for a host of novel user generated geospatial services. Maps, or more precisely, the geospatial data they depict, might for instance be used for route planning. For pedestrians, not to say people with mobility problems, such tools are scarce. In this paper, we explore the combination of accessibility maps and route planning for people with mobility problems. To overcome the cost problems of accessibility surveys, we propose a novel concept, OurWay, which allows the users to annotate the accessibility of their surroundings. This user generated content provides a basis for computing satisfactory routes, from one location to another, matching the user's preferences and needs. We present findings from two experiments, which bear evidence of the validity of the concept, and discuss its potential as a tool for surveying and route planning. | |||
| Inclusion of Accessibility Requirements in the Design of Electronic Guides for Museums | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1101-1108 | |
| Lourdes Moreno; Ma Carmen Gálvez; Belén Ruiz; Paloma Martínez | |||
| Technology can be an integrative tool with which to facilitate universal
access to museums and their works via virtual guides that accompany the user
making the visit more inclusive and accessible. With this aim it is necessary
to keep in mind accessibility requirements which guide the design and
development process. Since there are no clear procedures for defining and
including these requirements, this paper presents a proposal for requirements
capture and definitions of accessibility mechanisms which assure their
integration, following studies and standards in the area of accessibility. Keywords: Universal design; accessibility; electronic guide; virtual guide;
requirements; multimedia; caption; audio description; Sign Language; museums | |||
| ODILIA -- A Mobility Concept for the Visually Impaired | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1109-1116 | |
| Bernhard Mayerhofer; Bettina Pressl; Manfred Wieser | |||
| A navigation system for visually impaired people has to take into account the special requirements of these users. Within this group, there is also need for a customizable man-machine interface tailored to the individual. It has to be suitable for people depending on orientation by the sense of hearing or on tactile orientation, always avoiding disturbance of the user's remaining senses. On the other side, the hardware for data input and on-trip control should not exceed a certain size and weight. To be accepted for daily use, the overall system must not be stigmatizing the user. Stigmatizing means, that visually impaired users often do not want to be apparently distinguishable from the average pedestrian by wearing noticeable equipment. Another point is reliability and accuracy of the system which are essential features, because a blind person can be reliant on the system when entering an unknown area. The navigation system developed in ODILIA should provide accuracy, reliability of routing and guidance and the possibility to give the user an impression of the surrounding area. | |||
| Cellphone Accessible Information Via Bluetooth Beaconing for the Visually Impaired | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1117-1121 | |
| S. Bohonos; A. Lee; A. Malik; C. Thai; R. Manduchi | |||
| We describe a complete hardware/software system, dubbed Universal Real-Time Navigational Assistance (URNA), which enables communication of relevant location-aware information to a blind person carrying a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Although URNA can be used for a number of different applications (e.g., an information kiosk at a shopping mall or public transit information at a bus stop), we concentrate on the challenging case of an urban intersection. Information provided to the user as he or she approaches the intersection includes a description of the intersection topology and real-time notification of the state of the traffic lights. | |||
| Crosswatch: A Camera Phone System for Orienting Visually Impaired Pedestrians at Traffic Intersections | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1122-1128 | |
| Volodymyr Ivanchenko; James Coughlan; Huiying Shen | |||
| Urban intersections are the most dangerous parts of a blind or visually impaired person's travel. To address this problem, this paper describes the novel "Crosswatch" system, which uses computer vision to provide information about the location and orientation of crosswalks to a blind or visually impaired pedestrian holding a camera cell phone. A prototype of the system runs on an off-the-shelf Nokia camera phone in real time, which automatically takes a few images per second, uses the cell phone's built-in computer to analyze each image in a fraction of a second and sounds an audio tone when it detects a crosswalk. Tests with blind subjects demonstrate the feasibility of the system and its ability to provide useful crosswalk alignment information under real-world conditions. | |||
| Personal Mobile Assistant for Air Passengers with Disabilities (PMA) | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1129-1134 | |
| Alireza Darvishy; Hans-Peter Hutter; Peter Früh; Alexander Horvath; Dominik Berner | |||
| This paper describes the PMA research project in progress, whose aim is to
develop a concept for personalized mobile route guidance and information for
air passengers with disabilities (PWDs), and to implement this concept step by
step. The PMA guides PWDs along their route from home to the desired departure
gate (or vice-versa: from landing to destination), and provides them with
information -- as and when they need it -- on their current position and
remaining travel route, together with the latest flight information (e.g.
delays or gate changes). This project mainly focuses on in-house guidance
within the airport for passengers with visual disabilities. The concept is
based on normal commercial mobile devices (cell phones or PDAs) with cameras.
Within this project, the implementation of the concept is also restricted to
the airport area, but is easily extendable to other public transport
facilities. Keywords: visual impairment; accessible mobility; airport guidance; accessibility;
mobile devices; auditory interfaces; accessible tourism | |||
| Search Strategies of Visually Impaired Persons Using a Camera Phone Wayfinding System | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1135-1140 | |
| R. Manduchi; J. Coughlan; V. Ivanchenko | |||
| We report new experiments conducted using a camera phone wayfinding system, which is designed to guide a visually impaired user to machine-readable signs (such as barcodes) labeled with special color markers. These experiments specifically investigate search strategies of such users detecting, localizing and touching color markers that have been mounted in various ways in different environments: in a corridor (either flush with the wall or mounted perpendicular to it) or in a large room with obstacles between the user and the markers. The results show that visually impaired users are able to reliably find color markers in all the conditions that we tested, using search strategies that vary depending on the environment in which they are placed. | |||
| Design of a Haptic Direction Indicator for Visually Impaired People in Emergency Situations | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1141-1144 | |
| Tomohiro Amemiya; Hisashi Sugiyama | |||
| Some emergency situations, such as fires or earthquakes, require that
evacuation to a safe area, often through an emergency exit. This is especially
difficult for people with visual disability. Here, we propose a new device, a
haptic direction indicator, which will help blind pedestrians intuitively and
safely escape from dangerous area by means of haptic navigation. Keywords: ungrounded force perception; kinesthetic illusion | |||
| A New Cell Phone Remote Control for People with Visual Impairment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1145-1152 | |
| Ryo Yoshida; Michiaki Yasumura | |||
| As visual interfaces become prevalent on home appliances such as LCDs used
on remote controllers (RCs), people with visual impairment experienced
increased difficulty. Previously, we developed two types of RCs for people with
visual impairment, one with voice recognition and the other with numeric keys.
We combined these two RCs into a cellphone RC application and evaluated three
conditions. The combined condition (using both buttons and voice) took the
least task time, and also received the highest score in the evaluative ratings
provided by participants. Keywords: visual impairment; cell phone; home appliance; mobile; assistive technology | |||
| Skills vs. Abilities | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1153-1156 | |
| Grigori Evreinov | |||
| A spectrum of human abilities, which people use to communicate and socially interact with others, is narrow enough (Table 1). Moreover, even basic human abilities (sensory-motor or/and cognitive) can be lost due to an accident or an illness. Nevertheless, the key issue is not how many different tools are needed to solve a specific problem but whether a person desires to be socially included [1, 2, 4, 7, 12, 14]. Social inclusion aims to reduce inequality between the least advantaged groups and communities and the rest of society. Nevertheless, the inclusion cannot be achieved when a target group or an individual person has a lack of skills to meet social challenges and opportunities. | |||
| A Character Input System Using Tooth-Touch Sound for Disabled People | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1157-1160 | |
| Koichi Kuzume | |||
| This paper presents the realization of a character input system for disabled
people using tooth-touch sound. The proposed system had several advantages,
including low price, ease of handling, and reliability. First, we analyzed the
characteristics of the tooth-touch sound, obtained using a bone conduction
microphone. We utilized the tooth-touch sound as a control signal for the input
device. For practical purposes, we developed a novel method for eliminating the
voice signal and white noise. Finally, we designed a device using the FPGA
(Field Programmable Gate Array) in practice and applied it to the character
input system to confirm its usefulness. Keywords: tooth-touch sound; user interface; ECS | |||
| An Eye Gaze Tracking System Using Customized User Profiles to Help Persons with Motor Challenges Access Computers | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1161-1168 | |
| Anaelis Sesin; Malek Adjouadi; Mercedes Cabrerizo; Melvin Ayala; Armando Barreto | |||
| The central aim of this study is to develop an adaptive real-time eye-gaze
tracking (EGT) system that serves as an assistive tool for persons with motor
challenges access computers with optimal practicality. The novelty of the
proposed method is that it adapts to the different and changing jitter
characteristics of each specific user, through the configuration and training
of an artificial neural network (ANN). A profile, generated for each user by
the ANN through a one-time short training session, comes to reinforce the
stability of mouse-cursor movements. The user profile, which can be fine-tuned
with additional training, and the methods for training are embedded in the
proposed system. The results using 9 subjects show an average jitter reduction
of 36% in test 1 which is to follow a moving target, and 53% for following the
contour of a square, which resulted in eye-gaze displacements that are
significantly smoother. Keywords: Eye-gaze tracking system; artificial neural network; user profile; jitter | |||
| Applicability of No-Hands Computer Input Devices for the Certificates for Microsoft Office Software | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1169-1176 | |
| Wonsuk Choi; Dongwoo Lee; Jongwhoa Na | |||
| The workload-based evaluation is applied for the certificates of the
Microsoft Office Specialist. The certificates may be one of the solutions for
this conflicts cause by the misunderstanding between the employer and the
employee. We analyzed the MOS Word test questions by using various types of
input devices including the camera mouse and the no-hands mouse. The
experimental result showed the no-hands input devices can be successfully
utilized for the examination for the MOS certificates. Keywords: benchmark; no-hands mouse; employment problem | |||
| Assisting an Adolescent with Cerebral Palsy to Entry Text by Using the Chorded Keyboard | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1177-1183 | |
| Yun-Lung Lin; Ming-Chung Chen; Chih-Ching Yeh; Yao-Ming Yeh; Hwa-Pey Wang | |||
| For people with severe motor disabilities, the utilization of a standard
keyboard has been a challenge because of their motor limitations. This study
aimed to design a chorded on-screen keyboard with a customized alternative
input device to meet the needs of a client with cerebral palsy. A bilingual
on-screen keyboard with Chinese and English input methods was designed
especially for Chinese users. The intervention study revealed that the chorded
on-screen keyboard with a customized alternative input device could
significantly improve the text entry performance of the user and could
efficiently be his communication tool. A deeper understanding on computer
access through text entry was explored and better text entry training solutions
were recommended for future researches. Keywords: chorded keyboard; on-screen keyboard; cerebral palsy | |||
| Designing a Scanning On-Screen Keyboard for People with Severe Motor Disabilities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1184-1187 | |
| Yun-Lung Lin; Ting-Fang Wu; Ming-Chung Chen; Yao-Ming Yeh; Hwa-Pey Wang | |||
| This study aims to explore the effectiveness of a scanning on-screen
keyboard for persons with severe motor disabilities. In order to enhance the
typing performance, the on-screen keyboard employs the group-row-column
scanning and a frequency-of-use layout. Besides the international alphabetical
layout, the on-screen keyboard also provides two Chinese selection layouts for
Chinese users. The usability evaluation was carried out with simulations and
experiments. The usability evaluation was conducted to compare the performance
with that of the QWERTY layout of block scanning built in Microsoft Windows XP.
The results demonstrated that the performance of using the scanning on-screen
keyboard was better than that of using the Windows XP. No significant
difference between the error rates of the two different keyboards was found. Keywords: on-screen keyboard; accessibility; scanning selection | |||
| Evaluating the Hands-Free Mouse Control System: An Initial Case Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1188-1195 | |
| Torsten Felzer; Rainer Nordmann | |||
| An initial user study evaluating the HAnds-free Mouse COntrol System
(HaMCoS) will be presented. The system allows its user to fully operate a
Windows® PC without using the hands. It requires a special piezo-based
input sensor in order to pick up the muscular activity of a single dedicated
muscle of the user. The idea is to detect intentional contractions of the
monitored muscle, and to use this information for emulating a two-button mouse
device. In addition, the software framework renders any keyboard input
unnecessary, so HaMCoS represents a comprehensive input method for persons who
are unable to reliably employ the hands (e.g., tetraplegics). The paper will
take a closer look at the specifics of the system followed by a discussion of
the experiences gained by potential end users in a first case study. Keywords: Human-computer interaction; bio-signal interfaces; scanning; hands-free
control | |||
| GrooveWrite: A Multi-purpose Stylus-Based Text Entry Method | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1196-1203 | |
| Khaldoun Al Faraj; Mustapha Mojahid; Nadine Vigouroux | |||
| With the emergence of mobile computing devices such as Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs), a new challenge to design methods of interacting with them
for people with disabilities has been created. In this paper, we propose
GrooveWrite as a novel text entry system for handheld devices equipped with
touch screen and stylus, targeted at people with situational and motor
impairments. Based on traditional seven-segment layout, GrooveWrite interface
is designed and implemented. The characters are entered by moving the stylus
inside physical side-grooves, which are used as a stabilizer for stylus motion,
and crossing the subset of segments that forms intended character. Character
recognition neither considers the path of movement, nor recognition pattern,
but only the subset of seven segments that is crossed. We examine our system
theoretically using CLC model. This study shows that GrooveWrite text entry
speed will be 24.78 words per minute. Keywords: Text entry; gestures; unistrokes; PDA; mobile devices; people with motor
impairment; grooves; CLC model | |||
| Interaction between a Disabled Person and a Scanning Communication Aid: Towards an Automatic Adjustment of the Scanning Rate Adapted to the User | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1204-1207 | |
| Souhir Ghedira; Pierre Pino; Guy Bourhis | |||
| For many motor disabled persons, using scanning systems remains the only
means of communication. The main disadvantage of this system is the slow pace
of communication. A way to raise the pace for the selection of messages
consists in optimizing the basic scrolling time. The purpose of this paper is
to describe a method making it possible to adjust this time in an automatic and
adaptive way. Keywords: alternative communication; scanning system; Model Human Processor;
adaptative scanning rate | |||
| Investigation of Calibration Techniques in Video Based Eye Tracking System | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1208-1215 | |
| Nerijus Ramanauskas; Gintautas Daunys; Donatas Dervinis | |||
| Exact calibration in real time is critical for gaze control systems. Five
different calibration techniques were investigated: a standard calibration
using linear and second order models (9 and 25 points); 2D mapping with
interpolation; a mapping with developed model, describing eye image formation
process. Results show that there is no significant difference between
polynomial calibration method and a mapping with developed model. Calibration
using model has an advantage, because there is no need to follow a whole
calibration points each time. The point of gaze accuracy achieved during
experiments is less than 1 degree. Keywords: gaze based interaction; point of gaze; video based eye tracking | |||
| Text Entry System Based on a Minimal Scan Matrix for Severely Physically Handicapped People | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1216-1219 | |
| Julio Miró; Pablo A. Bernabeu | |||
| Improving augmentative communication systems is necessary for severely
physically handicapped people because of the low rate of text entry that
doesn't even permit them to communicate simultaneously with other people. This
paper presents a reduced virtual keyboard based on scanning with only one
switch. The scan matrix consists of only two cells, so ambiguity is present due
to the assignment of 26 characters to both keys. In order to disambiguate,
users enter each letter in two stages. An estimation of the text entry rate for
an expert user is 10.1 words per minute using a scan rate of 0.5 seconds,
although this value should be adapted for each individual, leading to different
rates. Keywords: Text entry; scanning; handicapped people; ambiguous keyboards; AAC | |||
| Applications for Proximity Sensors in Music and Sound Performance | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1220-1227 | |
| Ben P. Challis; Kate Challis | |||
| A low cost accessible sound and music control system is described (the Benemin). The interface employs an array of infrared distance measuring sensors that can be mapped to either MIDI pitches or MIDI control messages. When mapped to pitch, a user can interact with the system directly as a musical instrument. When mapped to controller messages, the system can be used as a multiparametric sound-controller. The Benemin has been designed to be inclusive such that it is aimed at users with or without specific needs. A model for testing is presented along with an indication of preliminary results. | |||
| EasyVoice: Breaking Barriers for People with Voice Disabilities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1228-1235 | |
| Paulo A. Condado; Fernando G. Lobo | |||
| Text-to-speech technology has been broadly used to help people with voice
disabilities to overcome their difficulties. With text-to-speech, a person
types at a keyboard, the text is synthesized, and the sound comes out through
the computer speakers.
In recent years, Voice over IP (VoIP) applications have become very popular and have been used by people worldwide. These applications allow people to talk for free over the Internet and also to make traditional calls through the Public-Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) at a small fraction of the cost offered by traditional phone companies. This paper presents an application, called EasyVoice, that integrates different systems to allow a person with motor impairment and voice disabilities to talk with another person located anywhere in the world. Keywords: Voice Disabilities; Virtual Keyboards; Text-to-Speech Synthesis; Skype; VoIP | |||
| An Experiment Using Personalised Multimedia Interfaces for Speech Therapy | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1236-1243 | |
| Jennifer George; Paul Gnanayutham | |||
| This paper discusses the experiments used in the design and development of
assistive technology interfaces for children with phonological disorders and
answering the research question should there be a group of interaction
paradigms or one novel interaction paradigm that can be personalised, to
enhance the performance of pronunciation skills for children with speech
impairments? This research question is tested against an artifact designed and
developed to address the need for an assistive device to rehabilitate children
with phonological disorders. Keywords: Speech Impairments; Phonology; Special Needs; Interfaces; Speech Therapy;
Methods; Methodology; Articulation and Assistive Technology | |||
| MOVEMENT -- A Modular and Versatile Mobility Enhancement System | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1244-1249 | |
| Gernot Kronreif; Paul Panek; Alexander Hüntemann; Ger Cremers; Andreas Hochgatterer; et al | |||
| This paper describes a novel robotic system which aims on supporting the
mobility of elderly citizens and persons with disabilities. The key innovation
of this research project is the use of the concept of "Modular Mobility".
According to this concept the system consists of a mobile (robotic) platform as
core system and several dedicated "application modules". On demand the platform
is being assigned to a particular task and automatically connects to an
appropriate application module in order to accomplish the given task. Keywords: assistive robotics; mobility aids; accessibility; independent living | |||
| BMI Based RHC Method for Wheelchair | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1250-1260 | |
| Tohru Kawabe | |||
| In this paper, a new BMI (Brain Machine Interface) based RHC (Receding
Horizon Control) method is proposed. The method is designed intending to apply
to control of the wheelchair, since the wheelchair is considered as one of a
most significant man-machine system for handicapped persons in the contemporary
society. The wheelchair system by using the proposed method is constructed with
the RHC controller, the adaptive DA converter and the BMI based on the EEG
(Electroencephalogram). A numerical example is also included to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed method. Keywords: Man-machine systems; Brain machine interface; Receding horizon control;
Adaptive DA converter | |||
| Modeling a Hands-Free Controlled Power Wheelchair | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1261-1268 | |
| Ludmila C. A. Silva; Torsten Felzer; Geraldo G. Delgado Neto; Rainer Nordmann; et al | |||
| This paper will present a study of the dynamics of the contact between the
tire of a wheelchair and the ground. The model of the contact between road and
tire has been implemented using a mathematical concept in a 2D multibody
program, creating a laboratory. With this laboratory, it is possible to see the
behavior of the wheelchair with different input sources. In this work the input
is taken care of by a program called HaWCoS which allows the user to control a
wheelchair without the need to use the hands. The results make it possible to
develop new products for people with special needs and to develop better
control systems by taking the dynamic behavior of wheelchairs into
consideration. Keywords: wheelchair; tire; dynamics; vehicle model; hands-free control | |||
| Brake Control Assist on a Four-Castered Walker for Old People | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1269-1276 | |
| Tetsuya Hirotomi; Yasutomo Hosomi; Hiroyuki Yano | |||
| Brake control assist for a four-castered walker for old people has been
developed. The prototype system is equipped with a set of simple sensors, such
as three-axis acceleration sensor and distance sensor. Our system estimates
three walking states to control the application of the brake. Emergency strong
brake can be predicted to prevent and/or forestall a fall. Individual
characteristics related to brake control can be acquired within a short time
and taken effect. In this paper, the implementation of brake control assist and
its evaluations from performance and usability points of view are presented. Keywords: Brake Control Assist; Four-Castered Walker; Adaptability; Old People; Gait
Analysis; Assistive Technology | |||
| Development of a Sit-to-Stand Assistance System | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1277-1284 | |
| Yoshiyuki Takahashi; Osamu Nitta; Kosuke Tomuro; Takashi Komeda | |||
| A sit-to-stand assistance system with a moving handrail was developed, and
experiments were conducted with individuals with Parkinson's disease. This is
an outline of the sit-to-stand assistance system and the experiment. The system
permits the user to stand up when, ordinarily, he would not be able to do so.
The experiment was carried out with individuals who had been diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease and could or could not stand up without aid. Comparisons
were made using three handrail trajectories. Keywords: Handrail; Sit-to-stand assistance; Parkinson's disease | |||
| OLDES: Designing a Low-Cost, Easy-to-Use e-Care System Together with the Stakeholders | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1285-1292 | |
| Christophe Ponsard; Mike Martin; Sarah Walsh; Susan Baines; Sébastien Rousseaux; et al | |||
| With the growing number of senior citizen, Europe is going to face major
challenge to deliver care for them. The OLDES project funded by the Information
Society Technology Programme of the European Union is exploring how ICT can
help in the cost-effective scaling of the care delivery while also improving
the well-being of elderly people. Designing a caring system is intrinsically
complex because of the personal dimension and the many stakeholders involved
across multiple organisations boundaries with different cultures.
This paper describes the approach taken in OLDES to produce a design able to cope with the needs of the various stakeholders. Rather than following a traditional "requirements to design solution", a co-constructive approach was taken where the multiple actors, including patients, carers, social services, services managers were involved. A distributed animation tool was used to support this approach, enabling validation through various graphical representations of the system behavior. The resulting platform still, under development, will be tested in two major European towns: Bologna and Praha. Keywords: eHealth; elderly; home care; call center; service oriented architecture;
requirements validation | |||
| The Risk Factor in the Adaptation of Worksites in ICT-Related Jobs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1293-1300 | |
| Renzo Andrich; Giacomo Liverani; Lucia Pigini | |||
| If working tasks are carried out in inadequate conditions, workers with
functional limitations may, over time, risk developing further disabilities.
While several validated risk assessment methods exist for able-bodied workers,
few studies have been carried out for workers with disabilities. This paper,
which reports the preliminary findings of a Study funded by the Italian
Ministry of Labour, describes a general methodology for the technical and
organizational re-design of a worksite, based on risk assessment and
irrespective of any worker disability. To this end, two samples of disabled
workers, composed of people with mild and severe motor disabilities, were
recruited. By using a mix of risk assessment methods and the ICF taxonomy, an
adapted worksite was designed for the individual workers in the study, and a
prospective evaluation was carried out to check whether the new design would
eliminate the risks. One case study is reported in detail -- a man with
congenital malformations who works as a help-desk operator for technical
assistance in the ICT department of a big organization. Keywords: risk assessment; worksite accommodation; ICT-related jobs | |||
| Development of a Wearable Measurement System to Identify Characteristics in Human Gait -- eSHOE -- | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1301-1304 | |
| Harald Jagos; Johannes Oberzaucher | |||
| Measurement and interpretation of human ambulation offers great
opportunities for several fields in AAL. In this paper CEIT RALTEC's ongoing
development of a wearable measurement system, integrated in a conventional
walking shoe, is presented. By combining different kinds of sensors in a sensor
network, several characteristic parameters of the human ambulation can be
measured. Extensive sensor data fusion and interpretation is used to extract
significant features, which will be used for inference purposes. Beside the
pure technical development a main goal during the design process is the
deployment of an user centred approach. Whereas potential elderly users as well
as medical experts and care takers are involved during the whole development
process, with the goal of delivering a close-to-market prototype at the end of
the project. Keywords: Aging and Disability; Ambient and Assisted Living; Assistive Technology;
eHealth -- Medicine and Care; Ambulation Measurement | |||
| Experiences Using Mobile Phones as Patient-Terminal for Telemedical Home Care and Therapy Monitoring of Patients Suffering from Chronic Diseases | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1305-1312 | |
| Matthias Pinsker; Karin Schindler; Jürgen Morak; Dieter Hayn; Peter Kastner; et al | |||
| Optimizing the treatment of chronic diseases requires continuous monitoring
of the health status. With standard information and communication technology
this challenge can be solved, with respect to special needs of patients, stated
as marginal effort and simple handling. We present a therapy-management-system
where patients acquired their health data using a Java-application running on
mobile phones. The data were transferred to the health centre, which provided
data visualization, individual feedback, reminders and surveillance of critical
events. The system was evaluated in the course of two clinical trials with
patients suffering from diabetes mellitus. Seven out of ten patients of the
first trial returned questionnaires and reported feasibility of the concept for
regular daily use. Patients of the second trial reported problems to a
telephone-hotline, most were related to faulty data insertion. Based on their
high user acceptance and ubiquitous availability mobile phones show the
potential to be the patient-terminal of choice. Keywords: eHealth; home care; telemedicine; mobile phone; patient-terminal; therapy
management; disease monitoring; chronic disease; diabetes mellitus | |||
| Making an International Certificate Accessible | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1313-1320 | |
| Denise Leahy; Dudley Dolan | |||
| Digital Literacy is necessary for all in today's information society. Is it
possible to measure this? And is it possible to include accessibility in that
measurement? The European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) is accepted as a
measure of digital literacy with over seven million participants worldwide.
ECDL is running in over 146 countries. This paper examines the work to make
this international certificate accessible while maintaining the quality of the
standard. Two specific projects are examined: one an international
collaboration and the other a project undertaken with a community of people
with visual impairments in remote locations in Ireland. Keywords: Digital literacy; accessibility | |||
| Effective Application of Paro: Seal Type Robots for Disabled People in According to Ideas of Occupational Therapists | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1321-1324 | |
| Kaoru Inoue; Kazuyoshi Wada; Yuko Ito | |||
| Paro is an autonomous seal type robot for those who cannot take care of real
animals and those who live in places where pet-animals are forbidden. This
paper describes effective application for disabled people of Paro in according
to idea of Occupational Therapists. OTs thought that Paro is an effective tool
on occupational therapy but OTs should consider clients' characters,
situations. We think OTs should have skills to introduce activities to clients
proficiently, to explain Paro's attractive points skillfully, to keep clients'
interest for activities. Keywords: Mental Commit Robot; Human-Robot Interaction; Robot Therapy; Seal type
Robot; Occupational Therapy; disabled people | |||
| Which Technology Do We Want? Ethical Considerations about Technical Aids and Assisting Technology | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1325-1331 | |
| Anne Venter; Gerlinde Renzelberg; Jürgen Homann; Lars Bruhn | |||
| 1976 the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation (UPIAS) has published the "Fundamental Principles of Disability" (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/UPIAS/fundamental%20principles.pdf updated: 5.3.2008) In Great Britain these principles were pivotal for the emergence of the social model of disability, that clearly distinguishes between the terms of impairment and disability. The document describes the technical progress as a requirement for the establishment of Disability Studies (DS) (cf. Oliver 1996, 24). Looked at it that way DS supports and demands technological progress, because it breaks up barriers for disabled people to be able to participate in society and work towards self-determination. Probably the most up to date significance is the so called "Design for All" (as well known as Universal Design, Inclusive Design, Kyoyo-Hin and the like). Technological designs are developed in a way that all people will be able to use the aids, whether they are physically, sensorial or mentally impaired. This is a concept that reinforces the thought of the social model of disability. In so far the technology is orientated towards inclusion. Nevertheless technological development plays an ambivalent role for disabled people. This ambivalence is discussed thoroughly in the article below to deduce ethical claims for research and development (R+D) of technical aids. | |||
| Characteristics and Solutions of Digital Divide for People with Physical Impairments in Taiwan | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1332-1339 | |
| Yao-Ming Yeh; Ting-Fang Wu; Ling-Fu Meng; Ming-Chung Chen; Hwa-Pey Wang; Jung-Gen Wu; et al | |||
| The purpose of this study is to narrow down the digital gap between people
with and those without physical impairments in Taiwan. To better understand the
need of the digital learning for people with physical impairments, the authors
have created the digital characteristic assessment scale, digital need
assessment scale, and developed the mouse training system and on-screen
keyboard assessment system. In order to comprehend the performance and
practicability of the scales and systems, this integrated project have also
applied these tools to evaluate and train the clients with muscular dystrophy
and cerebral palsy.
To fulfill the need of training the clients and providing appropriate assistant facilities, the alternative input device and the adapted web platform have been developed. The result validates the feasibility of both software and hardware developed by our implementation. Keywords: accessibility; digital divide; alternative input device; e-learning platform | |||
| Long-Time Effect from Deprived Communication, Information and Orientation/Mobility in Individuals with Acquired Dual Impairment and the Need for ICT-Aids | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1340-1343 | |
| Michael Cyrus; Frank Lunde | |||
| Long-term deprivation in combination with aging, changes in civil state and development of diseases in addition to the actual dual impairment of communication and organization of information might lead to symptoms of cognitive impairment thus in the worst case leading to early institutionalization. In contrast to individuals with TBI, stroke sequels and similar structural damage, these symptoms generated by persons with dual sensory impairment, may be eased by supporting their cognitive potential and may bring back non-used or lost capabilities. ICT-based technical aids may provide access to communication, minimize distress and fear, as well as provide information to meet everyday life's challenges. The issue of ICT under the above mentioned conditions is little discussed. This paper may be an initiative to this discussion. | |||