Computers Helping People with Special Needs

This paper presents the architecture of a decision support environment for large-scale assessment of compliance against web accessibility recommendations and legislations. The proposed decision support environment aims at integrating, extending and further enhancing existing web accessibility solutions making them customizable to the needs of different stakeholders, transferable to different sectors in web and mobile environments, in order to minimize costs and development time by also increasing scalability and improving their accessibility and usability.

There are different kinds of certification. In the field of eAccessibility and eInclusion (eAcc&eIncl) web accessibility (WA) is aiming at the highest degree of semantic interoperability. This can largely be achieved by compliance to pertinent standards, such as the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines – in particular WCAG 2.0. Technical and legal regulations concerning WA are getting more demanding by the day. Standards-based certification schemes can prove the technical compliance to WA standards or show that a WA expert is abreast with technical developments and regulations.

The constant emergence of new resources and interaction possibilities brought by web 2.0 brings a constant urge of keeping in track how those new elements can affect the interaction of people with disabilities and how far current re-search has managed to address existing problems. This paper presents the results of an empirical study designed to gather navigation barriers affecting blind people when interacting with some widely used web widgets – such as Popup windows, Auto Suggest Lists, etc. The aim is to correlate those barriers with WCAG 2.0 and ARIA guidelines. From this point of view, it is possible to determine which barriers are being covered by current guide-lines and which ones are still on the wild. As conducting users’ evaluations are really costly, the more barriers can be eliminated beforehand, the more useful those sessions can be.

In this paper we propose the Public Barrier Tracker (PBT) – a comprehensive solution that supports both filing and handling of user feedback on web accessibility. We give an overview of some existing approaches for gathering user feedback on accessibility barriers and outline the PBT functionality. The PBT can also offer further support for the implementation of the WAD: The collected data could be useful for monitoring and reporting as well as the enforcement mechanism.

Crowdsourcing technology can help manual testing by soliciting the contributions from volunteer evaluators. But crowd evaluators may give inaccurate or invalid evaluation results. This paper proposes an advanced crowdsourcing-based web accessibility evaluation system called CrowdAE by enhancing the crowdsourcing-based manual testing module of the previous version. Through three main process namely learning system, task assignment and task review, we can improve the quality of evaluation results from the crowd. From the comparison on the two years’ evaluation process of Chinese government websites, our CrowdAE outperforms the previous version and improve the accuracy of the evaluation results.

In spite of the progress made to date in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), recent experience reports by end users as well as research work have suggested that leading desktop-based Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) tool providers fail to consider the particular needs of screen reader users when developing their software. The study presented in this paper was conducted to assess the usability of two popular online CAT tools (Matecat and Memsource) that could serve as an alternative solution to inaccessible desktop applications. Findings indicate that Matecat is significantly more usable than Memsource, although changes would be needed in the former for blind translators to be able to perform a translation job completely autonomously and efficiently. Overall, our study suggests that accessibility awareness is still low in the translation technology industry, and that further research and development is needed in to guarantee equal opportunities for all in the translation market.

Many websites do not satisfy minimum contrast requirements. One reason could be that designers must select colors through trial and error using contrast calculators. This paper presents a visual framework for working with color contrasts. The foreground and background colors are detected automatically, and views are presented to simulate how a design is viewed with different levels of reduced vision. Moreover, saturation-brightness plots are introduced to help make valid color choices. Color corrections are proposed and visualized.

Actually several public and private services are more and more popular on the Web, even though they are intended to be usable for everyone regardless of age, disability and environment or technology limitations, their accessibility remains a real issue. This might be a factor of discrimination and exclusion of a large proportion of users. To raise awareness about web accessibility, this paper focuses on evaluating the accessibility of a sample of institutional websites in Tunisia. The evaluation was not limited to automatic and manual check but it was extended to accessibility tests involving end-users. The results show that the accessibility guidelines are often violated and in some cases are not adopted at all.

We conducted a series of tests of 37 major video players, both free and paid, on the market. Initially we tested on a PC on Google Chrome and excluded video players that contained what we called “show-stoppers”: serious accessibility failures. The remaining video players were then tested with people with vision impairments reliant on various screen readers. Any video players that contained show-stoppers were excluded from any additional testing. Thirdly, we tested on two different mobile devices, again excluding video players that contained show-stoppers. Finally, we tested with an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard. At the end of the testing only two players remained: AblePlayer and OzPlayer.

Web accessibility evaluation checks the accessibility of the website to help improve the user experiences for disabled people. Due to the massive number of web pages in a website, manually reviewing all the pages becomes totally impractical. But the complexities of evaluating some checkpoints require certain human involvements. To address this issue, we develop the semi-supervised group sparse regression algorithm which takes advantages of the high precision of a small amount of manual evaluation results along with the global distribution of all the web pages and efficiently gives out the overall evaluation result of the website. Moreover, the proposed method can tell the importance of each feature in evaluating each checkpoint. The experiments on various websites demonstrate the superiority of our proposed algorithm.

Unfamiliar terms used in the user interface (UI) of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) device, service or application may present an obstacle to users, if unfamiliar with them or uncertain about their technical meaning and intended functionality. The availability of a harmonised, user-centred terminology benefits users with functional variations, such as those with literacy difficulties, or people with varying visual needs or cognitive capabilities. This paper presents on-going standardization work, focusing on improving the overall usability and accessibility through the development of recommendations addressing terminology harmonization among devices, services and applications to a well-defined degree, in areas not intended to convey a certain brand-specific feature or image.

The number of mobile apps is rising. This can be seen in the Android Play Store were more than 3.5 million different apps are available. However, most apps have some problems with accessibility. This paper addresses the following research question: Can we improve the accessibility of apps with the help of advanced software development methods? Taking the model-driven development approach into consideration, the design and the development of an accessible app prototype is possible.In the present study 42 developers compared the new model-driven method with the standard app development approach. The evaluation of the development process shows that model-driven development can improve the accessibility of mobile apps significantly.

Involvement of real end users right from the beginning of an IT project is understood nowadays as good practice particularly in research projects where new and innovative concepts are to be investigated. In some situations, this is not feasible though, because this would cause unreasonable burden on target users, e.g., in case of chronically ill older patients or it is simply not possible, because administrative hurdles like permission by ethical committees need to be overcome, therefore it is necessary to install substituting methods. In the PICASO project (Personalised Integrated Care Approach for Service Organisations and Care Models for Patients with Multi-Morbidity and Chronic Conditions) this was achieved by implementing group-based expert walkthroughs where experts with different work-domain expert knowledge, in this case from usability, accessibility, clinical practice and software development, walked through an application by following typical usage scenarios target users are supposed to achieve. In contrast to the original method outcomes of walkthroughs were documented in form of software requirements, i.e. essential functionalities and features of the envisioned application instead of usability and accessibility issues. This way a reference document for developers evolved that closed the gap in bringing user requirements to application development.

For people with visual disabilities, mobile devices have become an indispensable part for independent and self-determined living. Increasing performance of mobile devices and availability of mobile sensors and actors can improve the usability and applicability of mobile solutions. The wide range of modalities available for communication and interaction with mobile devices increase the gap between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and actual implementation on mobile devices. We propose the use of a Domain Specific Language to enable the distributed development of modular and individually adaptable HCI implementations on an improving and exchangeable mobile platform.

Nowadays, over a billion people are estimated to be living with disabilities. The lack of support services make them overly dependent on their families and prevent them from being socially included. A good solution is to use Mobile Assistive Technologies (MAT) to perform tasks in everyday lives, but one of the most important and challenging tasks is to create a solution which offers the assistance and support they need to achieve a good quality of life and allows them to participate in social life. This paper reviews researches within the field of MATs to help people with visual impairment in their daily activities like navigation and shopping.

Current document standards have the characteristic that they can only serve one group of users under the aspect of vision (sighted, visually impaired or blind reader). Wouldn’t it be nice if one documentformat could combine all properties in one document? This paper presents a new approach of an universal accessible version of EPUB 3 documents, which will allow sighted, visually impaired and blind readers to use and share the same EPUB 3 document by an “integrated switching mechanism” to change the output format. Furthermore, we will introduce a simple word processing tool that allows to easily create such accessible EPUBs without knowing how an EPUB file is constructed or created.

In this paper, as a generative contrast to the notion of design “for all”, we present and discuss the potential benefits of a design “for me” approach, where the design process from the starts from, and initially is targeted at, just one person. Given many things developed for a user group or a constructed average user, in this text we describe starting from design for a single user as an alternative approach for achieving useful and useworthy designs. We provide an example from the development of an assistive device as the starting point and discuss how and why this alternative approach should be of interest for everyone interested in usability.

The abilities profile represents the physical, cognitive and perceptual properties of the individual. This type of profile is used in the adaptive system dedicated to persons with disabilities to adapt the content, presentation and the interaction modalities to the user. In most existing works, the abilities profile is static, whereas the abilities can be altered by the situation of the individual and his environment. This article focuses on the calculation of the abilities profile in disturbance situation, such as the fatigue, cognitive overload or noise. In this framework, our objective is to determine the operational capacities of an individual by considering his theoretical capacities and the disturbances, related to his state and/or his environment, which can alter his capacities. By theoretical capacity, we mean the capacity of the individual in optimal conditions, without any disturbance. To achieve this goal, we propose models of representation of profile capacities and disturbances as well as a method that calculates the impact of the disturbances on the capacities by considering their weakening and the forgetfulness of disturbances.

With the increasing focus on digital learning, it has become extremely important that digital content is available with ease. However, a lot of this digital content is not generated keeping Universal Access in mind. Most of such content available is either completely inaccessible or only partially accessible to the print disabled people. One of the major gaps in accessibility of digital content, especially electronic books is the lack of alternative texts for diagrams and ineffective descriptions in cases they are present. The paper discusses the design of a template, which can help in augmenting descriptions for textbook diagrams. The template consists of various components, which are populated using the information present in the diagram or from the text surrounding the diagram in the textbook. This template provides means for generation of comprehensible diagram descriptions, which not only help the user to visualize the diagram but also create a mental model of the layout of the diagram. Observations made during the user study validate the effectiveness of these augmented descriptions.

This paper presents a comparison of different post-processing software tools to make PDF documents accessible. The comparison is based on different qualitative and verifiable criteria. In addition, this paper gives an overview of different standards of PDF accessibility for people with visual impairments using screen-reader software. PDF formats, potential barriers for visually impaired users, PDF accessibility standards, and available software solutions are described in more detail. A discussion including challenges for further work is presented at the end of the paper.

The present work evaluates the effectiveness of adding blank cells to the 3DCG display of braille characters in the braille learning system for sighted learners to understand the mirror image relation between the written and read characters. The results of tests indicate the effect of the addition of blank cells to the 3DCG display in advancing the understanding of the mirror image relation.

Analog production methods for braille material, like braille typewriter or thermoforming processes, are still in use. Thereupon exists the wish to archive and preserve those materials, e.g. by digitalizing it. Research in the field of braille writing system detection and braille transcription has been sparse. Therefore we present a system to digitize printed Braille-documents.

The special thematic session on eLearning for accessibility and assistive technologies is made up of a wide range of papers that illustrate a variety of approaches to teaching and learning that comes under the title ‘eLearning’ such as gamification, use of apps, online presentation tools and MOOCS. Successful inclusion of those with disabilities as well as those who wish to enhance their knowledge can be achieved by ensuring ease of access to the platform of choice, the type of content available, whilst enhancing user motivation and appreciation.

The ‘massive’ and ‘open’ nature of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can provide powerful dissemination tools to raise awareness of topics in need of public attention, such as digital accessibility and its impact on assistive technology users. The subject is a wide-ranging one when taught from the point of view of those who may have sensory, physical and/or cognitive impairments coping with a myriad of digital activities on a daily basis. These may range from creating and viewing documents, surfing the web to using a mobile or a washing machine. An analysis of the interactions and learning experiences of those who completed the FutureLearn Digital Accessibility MOOC was conducted, using a combination of statistical and qualitative methods. Preliminary results indicate a progressive loss of participants over time, which is to be expected with MOOCs. However, certain measures such as the number of comments per participant, completed steps, and the “likes” count suggest a relatively high degree of engagement from this particular learning community. After examining the topics that triggered most participation, a suggestion has been formulated to repurpose parts of the course in order to exploit its most engaging sections and offer alternative forms of support for those activities that required more explanation.

MOOCs are playing an increasingly important role in education systems. Unfortunately, MOOCs are not fully accessible. In this paper, we propose design principles to enhance the accessibility of MOOC players, especially for persons with cognitive disabilities. These principles result from a participatory design process gathering 7 persons with disabilities and 13 expert professionals. They are also inspired by various design approaches (Universal Design for Learning, Instructional Design, Environmental Support). We also detail the creation of a MOOC player offering a set of accessibility features that users can alter according to their needs and capabilities. We used it to teach a MOOC on digital accessibility. Finally, we conducted a field study to assess learning and usability outcomes for persons with cognitive and non-cognitive impairments. Results support the effectiveness of our player for increasing accessibility.

The usage of gamification elements in learning contexts is getting more and more attention, as it can help increase learners’ motivation. Nevertheless accessibility and inclusion are seldom considered yet. In this paper an inclusive gamification concept for an eLearning course is presented. The main target group are people with poor basic education in hospitality industry. The developed gamification concept has been tested in a first small pilot study.

In this paper we present first findings from interviews with twelve experts from four different sub-fields of music education regarding their views upon challenges and chances of Apps and digital music-instruments in (inclusive) music education settings with students with and without disabilities.

Deaf people across Europe struggle to have equal access to written information as the main language of instruction in school is the spoken language. The “Deaf Learning” project (2015-1-PL01-KA204-016) aims at improving the above-mentioned situation by developing a face-to-face course supported by a Moodle course according to the needs of young deaf adults. Within the project, the partners developed a framework for lessons ranging from A1 to B2 (on the basis of the Common European Framework for Languages, CEFR) to improve reading and writing skills in the respective national languages. The teaching materials for level A1 consist of 30 lessons in pdf printable version, and 6 Moodle lessons. To make the course suitable for the very heterogeneous group of deaf learners, the structure of the lessons was designed so that teachers can adapt it to the needs of the deaf students. The Moodle lessons are kept simple and visual; they include sign language videos, images, and H5P interactive contents. The teaching materials have been tested in Italy for the main target group (17 participants aged 16–25 years) and in Austria for all other interested parties (3 participants aged over 30 years) through face-to-face lessons. The participants’ feedback was incorporated into the materials.

Creating and sourcing accessible Open Educational Resources is a challenge. Although slides are one of the primary forms of educational resources, there has been little focus on what is required to make slides containing different media accessible and how to encourage authors to improve accessibility. This paper examines the components within slide presentations that impact accessibility and will evaluates six different approaches for encouraging authors to add accessibility issues. Authors indicated a preference for being encouraged and guided to resolve issues rather than allowing for automatic corrections.

Environmental sounds (ES) give us fundamental information about the world around us and are essential to our safety as well as our perception of everyday life. With improvements in noise reduction techniques, hearing aids and cochlear implants show better performance in the understanding of speech by deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people. On the other hand, DHH children have little chance to learn ES. We are developing an ES learning system with visual information so that those with severely handicapped children could enjoy learning ES. In this paper, we describe a preliminary observation of including visual information as well as sound in learning ES.

In terms of information accessibility tools for hearing-impaired people, in order to understand meetings, expectations for real-time captioning utilizing speech recognition technology are increasing, from manual handwritten abstracts. However, it is still difficult to provide automatic closed captioning with a practical level of accuracy stably, without regard to various speakers and content. Therefore, we develop a web-based real-time closed captioning system that is easy to use in contact conferences, lectures, forums, etc., through trial and feedback from hearing-impaired people in the company. In this report, we outline this system as well as the results of a simple evaluation conducted inside and outside the company.

Hearing-impaired students often need complementary technologies to assist them in understanding college lectures. Several universities already use PC captioning. Captionists sometime input unfamiliar technical terms and proper nouns in a lecture inaccurately. We call these words “input-difficult words (IDWs).” In this research, we evaluate performance-detecting IDWs by using real lectures from our university. We propose a method to automatically extract IDWs from lecture materials. We conducted an experiment to measure performance-detecting IDWs from lectures by changing the interpolation weight of the language model. In this experiment, we used four real lectures. A high F-measure of 0.889 was achieved.

Cloud Robotics is the application of Cloud Computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to the realm of robotics. This paradigm is gaining momentum in worldwide research as it allows to build robotic infrastructures leveraging on both IoT and the Cloud. These technologies are every day more pervasive in our lives and enhance service robotics (i.e., robotics applications meant to serve humans). We are developing a novel Cloud Robotics architecture empowered by hand tracking technology and 3D-printed bio-inspired robotic arms to enable remote on-line communication for deafblind people in tactile sign language, the communication system most natural to them.

For hearing-impaired people (HIs) to enjoy music more, one of the authors, who is profoundly deaf but enthusiastic about music, feels the choice of instrumental sounds is important. We conducted an experiment of beat tapping with 20 musical instruments involving one group of HIs using hearing aids and another group of HIs using cochlear implants. From the analysis of a subjective evaluation about each instrumental sound, we found the two groups differed in their perceptions of sounds. One reason for this difference seems to be the envelope of the sounds. Thus, we are going to analyze sounds to pursue suitable instrumental sounds for HIs.

For deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) viewers who cannot understand speech, many countries require video producers/distributors to provide speech-to-text over the video, also called subtitles that can be turned on or off by the viewer. These subtitles must comply with national subtitle quality standards. The growth in video capable personal devices has shifted viewers away from watching broadcast video on a standardized television display and towards watching video on interactive personal devices. However, personal devices range widely from tiny watch displays to enormous television displays, with different proportions which impact subtitle readability. SubtitleFormatter automatically formats subtitles according to a display’s screen size and minimum font size for reading. A user study of subtitle formatting evaluates subtitle readability, and finds that viewers preferred SubtitleFormatted-segmented subtitles over wrap around (arbitrarily-formatted) subtitles.

We are conducting research on “automated audio description (AAD)” which automatically generates audio descriptions from real-time competition data for visually impaired people to enjoy live sports programs. However, there is a problem that AAD overlaps with the live television commentary voice, making it difficult to hear each other’s comment. In this paper, first, we show that the game situation is conveyed effectively when visually impaired persons listen to the AAD alone. Then we state the results of experiments on the following items to solve the overlap issue: (1) There is a difference in optimum volume level between live commentary and AAD, (2) The ease of listening differs depending on the difference in the characteristics of text-to-speech synthesizer for AAD, (3) Playing back AAD through a speaker placed differently from the TV speaker makes both voice sounds easier to listen to. We had clues to solve that depending on the presentation method of AAD, we can make AAD easy to listen to even when AAD overlaps the live television commentary.

In this research, we propose a novel system for displaying captions of conversation content on smart glasses. We propose natural communication using smart glasses that is more like a conversation between hearing people than conventional communication methods such as sign language or handwriting. The system translates spoken words into text and displays them on the screen of the smart glasses. It equips four microphones, localizes the direction of the sound source, and distinguishes the angular direction of the sound source. Using signals from four microphones, the system can enhance voices. The voice enhancement technique is required to improve the automatic speech recognition rate in noisy environments. Experimental results showed that the system can estimate the angular direction of a voice and recognize more than 90% of words that are spoken. The subject experiment showed that the proposed system had a similarity score close to an existing smartphone application.

People who are born with hearing difficulties often use sign language as their mother tongue. The vocabulary and grammar of sign language differ from those of aural languages, so it is important to convey information in sign language. To expand sign-language services, we developed a system that accurately generates Japanese-Sign-Language computer-graphics (CG) animation from weather data. The system reads weather-forecast data coded in XML format distributed by the Japan Meteorological Agency and automatically generates CG animation clips to present them in sign language. We conducted two experiments to evaluate the system’s performance in conveying weather information in sign-language CG animation to deaf participants, one was a comprehension evaluation to answer multiple-choice questions on the content and the other was a subjective evaluation on how easy the sign language was to understand and how natural it was on a 5-point scale (1: not understandable and unnatural and 5: understandable and natural). The overall percentage of correct answers was 96.5%. In the subjective evaluation, the average understandability was 4.43, and average naturalness was 4.13, suggesting that the participants highly appreciated the quality of sign-language CG animation. We also published a website in 2017 on which anyone can evaluate such animation regarding the latest weather forecast.

Since a couple of decades, the video games area have spectacularly grown, and video games are now a genuine cultural and social object. Alongside with the pure entertainment finality, various application areas arose: “games with a purpose” are also aiming to teach, to monitor, to train, to treat, etc. By the way, people who play games became more diverse: from the younger to the elderly, nowadays everyone is potentially a gamer.This wide diversity of users and products has led to pay a specific attention to their accessibility: how to ensure that nobody is not excluded from this strong cultural movement? The US legislation, through the CVAA, increased the focus on video/computer game accessibility, but still lots of efforts need to be done, especially regarding mainstream video games.This session aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, to present and discuss new ideas and solutions dealing with video games accessibility issues.

In research and practice into the accessibility of digital games, much of the work has focused on how to make games accessible to people with disabilities. With an increasing number of people with disabilities playing mainstream commercial games, it is important that we understand who they are and how they play in order to take a more user-centered approach as this field grows. We conducted a demographic survey of 154 players with disabilities and found that they play mainstream digital games using a variety of assistive technologies, use accessibility options such as key remapping and subtitles, and they identify themselves as gamers who play digital games as their primary hobby. This gives us a richer picture of players with disabilities and indicates that there are opportunities to begin to look at the accessible player experiences (APX) players have in games.

In order to develop and enhance an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), gaze is often considered as one of the most natural way and one of the easiest to set up in order to support individuals with multiple disabilities to interact with their environment. For children who start naturally from scratch, who have in addition such difficulties, it is a strong challenge even to acquire or to support the required basic knowledge. Games are often considered a good way to learn. Games designed for eye-trackers, i.e. electronic devices able to compute the position of the gaze, allow children to discover the power of their eyes and the consequences of the actions triggered by their gazes. Video games can be a good way to improve basic requirements as gaze fixation and gaze pursuit as well as conventions like rewards or dwell interactions often used in AAC tools. In this article, we present the GazePlay project which main contribution is a free and open-source software which gathers several mini-games playable with all eye-trackers including low cost ones.

This study investigates accessibility and usability via screen reader and gestures on touch-screen mobile devices. We specifically focus on interactive tasks performed to complete exercises, answer questionnaires or quizzes. These tools are frequently exploited for evaluation tests or in serious games. Single-choice, multiple-choice and matching questions may create difficulties when using gestures and screen readers to interact on a mobile device. The aim of our study is (1) to gather information on interaction difficulties faced by blind people when answering questions on a mobile touch-screen device, and (2) to investigate possible solutions to overcome the detected accessibility and usability issues. For this purpose, a mobile app delivering an educational game has been developed in order to apply the proposed approach. The game includes the typical question types and exercises used in evaluation tests. Herein we first describe the main accessibility and usability issues reported by a group of visually-impaired people. Next, the game and its different exercises are introduced in order to illustrate the proposed solutions.

Game accessibility is to remove unnecessary barriers for people with disabilities (PwD), within the limitation of game rules. Canvas in HTML5 and WebGL means that virtually every web browser is a game runtime environment. The problem is that web-based games can only be optimised to follow WCAG within limits of game rules and WCAG may not include what is needed for accessible games. The W3C Silver Taskforce is at the time of this writing preparing the next version of WCAG. This paper compares WCAG 2.0 and a set of current game accessibility guidelines (GAG), to answer: (1) Which similarities and differences can be found between WCAG 2.0 and GAG?; (2) How may these differences inform the W3C Silver Taskforce in the ongoing work to prepare the next version of WCAG?; and (3) How could the optimisation for accessibility in web-based games be performed? 107 GAGs were compared with WCAG 2.0, resulting in 61 survey questions plus comments and demographics, sent to experts and other users of WCAG. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted. Conclusions are that there is a clear gap but WCAG 2.1 bridges a few parts. Furthermore, the study seems relevant for the Silver Taskforce in understanding the demarcation line between apps in general and games and possibly for how extended reality applications could be made more accessible.

Mobile applications have been introduced in the field of e-health for several years. The aim of this studies was the gamification of exercises used in the process of cognitive rehabilitation. Selected game elements have been incorporated to the mobile application. Then, three methods of evaluation was proposed: a questionnaire, the MMSE test, and a new universal factor independent on the exercise type. The factor allows the therapist to monitor and compare the progression in the rehabilitation. Pilot studies are finished, but the effect of gamification must be verified for a larger number of patients in longer time, because at present it cannot be unambiguously determined a positive influence of the gamification.

The 3-year project “Intelligent Serious Games for Social and Cognitive Competence” targets children and youth with disabilities, teaching them on creativity and social competencies, using serious desktop and mobile games. The intellectual output (IO) 4 “Trainers manual” is based on the results and conclusions from desktop and survey findings from IO1 Scoping Report, the curriculum and learning scenarios of IO2 Suite of serious game on accessible learning objects (learning content creation) and IO3 Interactive games for mobile learning which can be reviewed/downloaded from the official project website www.isg4competence.com.

This short paper introduces the seven papers a special thematic session dedicated to discussing accessibility and usability issues of self-service terminals technologies and systems. The authors are from a mix of academic and industry backgrounds, thus bringing together a range of stakeholder perspectives. The papers include experimental investigations; user testing and feedback from real world deployments; novel interface and interaction concepts; and critical appraisals of standards and legislation as mechanisms for ensuring accessibility. To give some context to the focus on SSTs, particularly when some are being replaced by combinations of mobile app on smartphones, this introduction presents a brief account of current and past interest in the accessibility and usability of SSTs in Europe, as evidenced by the upcoming European Accessibility Act.

The intention of the standards, guidelines and legislation discussed here, along with other initiatives mentioned, is to ensure accessibility for all is built into self-service technologies from the outset. This paper presents developments in relevant standards, guidelines and legislation since 2013. In reporting on this work, the intention to give an idea of its scope, but also to place these standards, guidelines and legislation within a critical framing that reviews both the material and its impact on efforts to make SSTs accessible to all users.

This paper gives an overview of the accessibility features on the BNP Paribas Fortis ATM’s (Automatic Teller Machines). This document doesn’t have the intention to be scientific, but can be considered as an example how the industry is taken in account the accessibility for customers with special needs. The accessibility efforts done on our ATM’s is part of the program “An Accessible Bank For All”. The goal of this program is to provide to our customers with a disability the opportunity to carry out their banking transactions in the most autonomous and user-friendly way possible. Within this program we’ve consulted organisations, representing persons with impairments, to better understand the needs of our customers with special needs. This helped us to work out a global approach to render the use of our ATM’s as accessible as possible. We can divide the efforts on 3 levels: physical accessibility of the venue, accessibility of the hardware and accessibility features of the software.

This short paper outlines a project on SST accessibility conducted by Funka on behalf of the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi). The aim of the project was to establish a set of usable guidelines for the accessible placement of SSTs in Norway. To do this, Funka reviewed and compared the relevant existing standards. From the resulting corpus, Funka culled requirements relevant to issues of placement and harmonised them. The eventual result was a step-by-step guide for the accessible placement of self-service terminals. Funka would like to continue the work on role-based filtering tools. Funka has already launched such a tool for its Swedish market, drawing on several open-source standards. Something similar could be done for SST accessibility on the basis of, for instance, the EN 301 549 European standard.

Text input is cumbersome on public self-service kiosks and apps. Applications often provide prefix-based text suggestions to speed up input, but the input must be correct. However, application specific lists are usually limited in size. For example, the Norwegian rail network comprise 324 stations. This can be exploited in the input process. Several approaches are explored herein for more flexible text input that are robust to errors.

Self-service technologies (SSTs) must be accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. This leads to an interesting challenge in terms of ensuring their accessibility to people with disabilities. There are various laws, standards and guidelines aiming to describe the minimum requirements that make SSTs accessible for everyone, for example by requiring specific height and depth to interface elements and controls, requiring private audio guidance, and requiring that interface elements are tactile enough to be discoverable and identifiable by touch. In this paper, we reflect on the experiences of implementing these various accessibility requirements from an industrial perspective, and demonstrate difficulties and successes through three different case studies. The first describes the development of the tactile symbols on ATM (Automated Teller Machine) keypad, which became a de facto standard and eventually a codified legal requirement. The second case study describes a research project to make ATM touchscreens accessible for people with visual impairments, and the impact accessibility laws and standards had on the project. The third case study takes a look at the height and depth requirements for ATMs worldwide to demonstrate the challenges of their implementation and the urgent need for harmonization. Finally, broader conclusions will be drawn between the gap that can exist between standards writers and the industries that must use them, with suggestions being made as to how this process can be improved.

Findings are presented from a user test of several different concepts to enable personal identification number (PIN) entry on a touchscreen by people who are blind or partially sighted. A repeated measures experimental design was used for the user test, with all participants using all concepts in a randomised order. Results are presented, and wider implications of this study and the subsequent approvals are discussed.

ATM interaction tends to be restrictive and prescriptive in the way one can interact with. The hardware (screen, keyboard, slot) and most often also the software interfaces are fixed and miss many layers of adaptability for diverse groups of users including those with disabilities. All studies on accessibility and usability underline the difficulty due to often contradictory requirements (what helps one user makes it more complex for another user) making it very hard, cost intensive and almost impossible to reach a satisfactory user experience. Therefore, considerations are vital to investigate the feasibility of transferring the interaction with ATMs as much as possible to a standard HCI and web based system and to runs as much as possible of the interaction on a personal device, which might connect ATs in a well-controlled and accessible environment. The TokenAccess approach is a feasibility study of these considerations. It provides a prototype of a technical infrastructure demonstrating the feasibility of such approach by integrating steps of interaction into already existing services such as e-banking, online check-in or eTicketing. The development of the prototype was done using a user centered design approach involving disabled colleagues and students at the Institute Integriert Studieren at the University of Linz as co-researchers and evaluators. Heuristic Evaluation, Cognitive Walkthrough and observation have been used in each step from requirements engineering towards evaluation.

This paper reports on work in progress that relates to the use of digital media and ICT in educational settings, particularly in vocational education and training. While the application of digital media and information and communication technology has often been the subject of projects with a focus on classrooms and beyond, this work discusses an idea for a systematic analysis of the potentials digital media and ICT carry to increase an educational organization’s inclusive capacity as a whole, not just at classroom level.

The article reveals the experience of introducing new tools related to the Smart-education technology segment into the educational process of the disciplines “Listening to Music” and “Musical Literature”, which are included in the curricula of Russian supplementary education institutions - children’s music schools and art schools: computer (multimedia) presentation, video-clavier, electronic textbooks with audio and video sections, materials of sites related to musical art. This toolkit helps promotes stimulation and activation of cognitive and creative activity, self-realization of students with special educational needs, development of their independence, ability to full artistic perception, which allows achieving the main goal of the lessons in the disciplines “Listening to Music” and “Musical Literature” - the formation of interest in musical art and creativity. It will allow teachers working in the system of additional education to effectively organize the monitoring of students’ knowledge, to build individual educational trajectories, to implement personally oriented and activity-oriented methodological approaches in teaching students with special educational needs.

This paper presents an Android mobile application consisting in an educational content for visually handicapped children in Tunisia. The application involves simple and various interfaces that aim to teach Braille alphabet in both Arabic and French. It uses multimodal interaction methods as well as a novel approach to help young users locate areas of interest on the screen.

The article considers information technologies that can be used by children of adolescence with limited motor abilities. Such children can not often visit music schools, vocal studios and circles, but they, like many teenagers who do not have health restrictions, want to engage in contemporary forms of musical art and, in particular, pop vocals. One of the tools that allows an adolescent with limited motor abilities (cerebral palsy, upper and lower extremity dysplasia, etc.) to engage in this form of music making, to engage in creative communication with other children who are addicted to pop-performance are information technologies. Currently, Internet resources provide ample opportunities for learning pop vocals. But, the use of the abundance of Internet programs, various kinds of Internet teaching resources, however, is not yet a guarantee of its success. Therefore, adolescents who want to master pop vocals need the help of an adult teacher who, through the use of these technologies, will determine the logical sequence and appropriateness of including such resources and technologies in the learning process. The article presents the sequence of introducing teenagers with disabilities into health in the form of interrelated stages in the process of education. Receiving the teacher’s advice on Skype, the child can successfully master them. Each stage is aimed at: on the development of a sense of rhythm and purity of intoning (the program “Real piano” and “Absolute Rumor.”); on the upbringing of the ability to evaluate one’s performance; on the formation of the ability to listen to vocal harmony (the program “Akapella maker”); on the formation of skills of ensemble performance (the program “Smule sing.”). The content of the stages of teaching pop vocals of a child with disabilities in health: from elementary vocal skills to the skills of joint vocal playing with other children and is the purpose of this article.

Our paper introduces and assesses the Levumi platform’s web-based assessment of reading fluency. One challenges of inclusive education is meeting the needs of the learners with special education needs (SEN). Children with SEN and other risk factors face an increased risk of failing in schools and manifesting academic and social problems over the time. Web-based curriculum-based measurement (CBM) can provide an effective tool to track progress of learners and limit such risks. In particular, it can ease the challenges of test administration in inclusive classrooms through automation and providing multiple difficulty levels without the need of different paper-forms. Furthermore, Levumi can help educators track children and thus provide support for learners. Levumi takes advantage of the strengths of web-based CBM to assess reading fluency in primary school students. We confirmed the reading fluency test’s test-retest reliability (n = 334), its ability to measure learning over time in individual learners with SEN (n = 8, across 14 MPs), and its applicability to learners with SEN (n = 300, including n = 46 with SEN). We evaluate Levumi’s overall usefulness in assessing different types of learners, and discuss its contributions to CBM research.

More than half of Germany’s functional illiterates are gainfully employed adults. This paper presents the eVideo approach that aims at people with poor basic education. The course “eVideo mobile - digital media in hospitality industry” is a game-based work-related eLearning course. It is based on an inclusive eLearning platform. Basic educational skills are addressed in workplace-related interactive videos and exercises on different competency levels. In a small pilot study users were observed while using the course and afterwards questioned in interviews.

For hearing-impaired children, interaction with others is often suppressed due to their struggle to communicate vocally, which is the primary tool of communication for most children. This limits hearing-impaired children’s opportunities to develop social skills. We have developed a prototype system that supports hearing-impaired children’s acquisition of social skills. This system encourages collaborative play, using visual information and full-body interaction, with the aim of supporting the hearing-impaired child’s acquisition of social skills. We evaluated this system for empathy, negative feelings, and behavioral involvement. The result of this evaluation suggests that this system provides opportunities for collaboration, supporting the hearing-impaired child’s acquisition of social skills.

The commercialization of EEG devices (electroencephalography) increases the possibility of their use in different fields other than medicine. These brain computer interfaces (BCI) can be a solution for people who suffer from sever motor disabilities like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It offer them the ability to control a computer without any movement. In fact, the EEG signals are transformed into machine commands. Thus, it exist deferent BCI based systems. Our main objective here, is to offer a video surveillance system commanded by voluntary blinks. This voluntary blinks are detected from the EEG signals using our blink detection approach. It’s based on unsupervised clustering of the blink regression parameters using the Gaussian mixture model (GMM). Based on the user tests of our system, it was well appreciated.

The impairment of finger movements after a stroke results in a significant deficit in hands everyday performances. To face this kind of problems different rehabilitation techniques have been developed, nevertheless, they require the presence of a therapist to be executed. To overcome this issue have been designed several apparatuses that allow the patient to perform the training by itself. Thus, an easy to use and effective device is needed to provide the right training and complete the rehabilitation techniques in the best way. In this paper, a review of state of the art in this field is provided, along with an introduction to the problems caused by a stroke and the consequences for the mobility of the hand. Then follows a complete review of the low cost home based exoskeleton project design. The objective is to design a device that can be used at home, with a lightweight and affordable structure and a fast mounting system. For implementing all these features, many aspects have been analysed, starting from the rehabilitation requirements and the ergonomic issues. This device should be able to reproduce the training movements on an injured hand without the need for assistance by an external tutor.

This article presents the new version of the DUCK keyboard. To evaluate this new prototype, we chose an evaluation with novice users, in two steps: A first step with a copy of sentences. Then we let them get familiarized with our system for 15 days. Finally, we re-evaluate their performance after this phase of familiarization. Results shows that, after a learning phase, the participants significantly improve their input performance with the DUCK keyboard. Text input speed and accuracy have been improved.

Gaze reactive accessibility software for computer control permits individuals with moderate or severe dysfunction of motor function to operate a computer exclusively via gaze. Unfortunately, the small size of the severely motor impaired community and the large fixed costs of developing accessibility software results in commercial gaze control software solutions being markedly expensive, with price ranges between 1,000–10,000 USD. The high price tag renders gaze control accessibility software unaffordable for a large proportion of the motor impaired population. Historically, open source gaze control software has been lacking. The few existing applications do not match the effectiveness, feature richness and software robustness of commercial solutions. In this work, an open source accessibility application for gaze control is presented that permits complete and customizable desktop computer control using only gaze interaction. The software depends merely on a low cost eye tracker geared by its manufacturer towards the gamers market (cost less than $200 per unit). Thereby, motor impaired users with limited financial means can benefit from gaze control as a means to interact with computers. The open source nature of the software also makes it possible for software developers and accessibility researchers to extend the application by adding innovative interaction methods and features stemming from accessibility research. The motivation for the creation and distribution of this software is grounded on the belief that accessibility research bears a responsibility in furthering a culture of dissemination of open source and/or low-cost assistive technologies that make the digital world accessible to all.

This paper presents a case of co-design for people with rheumatic disorder to support the argument of opening up the design space to include interaction opportunities found in the physical world. The position argued for is that opening up the design space beyond common screen-based interfaces may contribute to the design of enabling technologies for people with rheumatic disorders by acknowledging their varying capabilities during both design and use. The presented results consist of one thematic analysis of home interviews and group discussions as well as one statistical analysis of the results from a formative evaluation of six conceptual prototypes developed along with the participants. The paper uses the combination of the thematic analysis, the six conceptual prototypes, and formative evaluation of performance scores and preference ratings to demonstrate how our co-design process involving users with rheumatic disorder in all phases allowed participants to discover both limitations and opportunities as they explored and co-designed alternative concepts.

Power Wheelchairs can be a necessity for many people to have a certain level of mobility. Unfortunately, some of them may not be able to use one because they cannot safely manipulate a joystick. In a previous study, we proposed a tactile interface to steer power wheelchairs and started a first round of experimentation with able-bodied users. In this paper, we present recent tests of our steering interface in both formal and informal settings with some users with mobility impairment from different profiles. In the formal tests, two wheelchair users performed three different common tasks: straight line following, 90° corner and doorway passing with both our tactile steering interface and a joystick. The steering performance of the tactile interface was close or similar to that of the joystick. We also outline lessons that we learned from these tests for future improvements.

Not only access to digital media but also technical skills, educational opportunities, living conditions, personal support and financial resources play an important role in digital participation. In this article, existing barriers to digital participation and current research projects, examining existing access to digital resources and developing approaches to improve in particular the participation of people with cognitive impairments through appropriate technologies, are presented and discussed. Relevant future research fields, and approaches to the participatory development of accessible technologies and the increased application of the principles of universal design, are motivated.

Digital technologies can improve the daily lives of people with cognitive disabilities, allowing them to participate and communicate in society. However the success of a technical product depends not only on the price or lifespan, but also on its user experience. To ensure user satisfaction when creating new technology or products, it is necessary to know their needs. This article presents methods of requirements analysis and elicitation for digital participation together with people with cognitive impairments.

Since the use of software products has become an integral part of life, it has emerged that, in addition to functional requirements, the consideration of qualitative requirements plays an essential role in the usability and acceptance of software systems. In order to enable people with cognitive impairments, who are particularly affected by exclusion and disadvantage, to participate in technical development, cognitively accessible software must be developed. In the scope of various studies, usability patterns have been developed which can be used to facilitate the implementation of general usability requirements in software development. In the study presented here, the usability of four software systems, which have been developed specifically for users with cognitive impairments, was examined. In order to solve the existing problems and improve the usability of the examined systems, usability patterns and respective usage scenarios were developed and will be evaluated as part of the redesign of the systems. As the main result of the study a catalogue of usability patterns will be compiled, which contains all relevant usability patterns for the development of cognitively accessible software systems.

Participation in social inclusion activities has been reported to be an important determinant of health for people with disabilities and has a number of benefits particularly for young adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). However, young adults with ID often have difficulty making friends and are excluded from taking part in social activities in society, therefore they struggle to sustain friendships over time. This paper reports on a study that investigates how a mobile application can help young adults with ID make friends, build social relationships and participate successfully within their communities. Using a participatory research design, we developed a prototype of a mobile app to introduce social inclusion activities for young adults with ID. Parents, service providers, staff and young adults with ID provided input on features of the prototype. To evaluate the impact of the mobile app, pre- and post-intervention measures will be collected. This experiential opportunity will encourage young adults with ID with self-determination when they interact with others but more importantly, give a sense of independence when they engage in real-world social environments.

The goal of this paper is to report how the adaptation of user centered (UCD) design approaches meet the specificities of impaired persons and their ecosystem for the design of interactive systems. Adapted UCD methods are illustrated through three case studies involving different impairments. The discussion reports the success of the different design processes.

Early detection of autism spectrum conditions (ASC) is an important goal. Automated facial expression recognition is a promising approach and has implications for assistive and educational technologies, too. This study was an initial exploration of (1) the inter-rater reliability of human recognition of facial emotions of high functioning (HF) children with ASC; (2) the relationship between human and automated recognition of facial emotions; and (3) a ‘bottom-up’ approach on identifying ASC/typical development (TD) differences, from a screening serious game context. Thirteen HF, kindergarten-age children with ASC and 13 children with TD, matched along age and IQ, participated. Emotion recognition was administered on video-recordings from sessions of their playing with the serious game. Results showed lack of inter-rater reliability in human coding, confirming some advantages of machine coding. The simple bottom-up cross-sectional exploratory analysis did not reveal any ASC/TD difference. This is in contrast with our and others’ previous results, indicating such differences when aggregating emotion data from wider time-windows in machine-coded data-sets. This suggests that this second approach may be a more promising one to identify autism-specific emotion expression patterns.

The DATA project is intended to develop a compound digital assistive system, including a mobile app set, for increasing independence in people with autism. The objective of this study was to explore this target group’s support needs, as a basis for the system designing process. A mixed-mode study was implemented, with an on-line survey (N = 147), and with 3 focus groups. The support need profiles were different across levels of functioning, with only minor differences between profiles provided by parents vs professionals. One’s awareness of support methods emerged as an important factor.

The aim of this article is to focus on user experience with DysHelper, the dyslexia assistive web extension designed for Czech and other phonetic languages. We conducted this research with university and high school students over 18 years old. Firstly, we describe the design of the extension (invented in 2016 at Masaryk University) and then focus on describing the various stages of the practical user experience, which consisted of individual user testing, the reading two types of texts, followed by discussion with users. The results indicate that the extension is generally welcomed. Although DysHelper has its limits, user experience research shows that it has a significant potential to affect reading problems positively and can be easily used, also in consideration of needs that may change over time.

Mental, neurological and/or physical disabilities often affect individuals’ cognitive processes, which in turn can introduce difficulties with remembering what they have learnt. Therefore, completing trivial daily tasks can be challenging and supervision or help from others is constantly needed. In this regard, these individuals with special needs can benefit from nowadays advanced assistance techniques. Within this contribution, a language-driven, workplace integrated, assistance system is being proposed, supporting disabled individuals in the handling of certain activities while taking into account their emotional-cognitive constitution and state. In this context, we present a set of baseline results for emotion recognition tasks and conduct machine learning experiments to benchmark the performance of an automatic emotion recognition system on the collected data. We show that this is a challenging task that can nevertheless be tackled with state-of-the-art methodologies.

Children and young adults with intellectual disabilities experience problems to go from one place to another using public transport because of the complexity of its network. Different learning activities are practiced in order to make them learn a path and to take the right bus. For example, the creation of small paper books as learning tools which describe the actions to do in a chaining way using pictograms, texts, colors, landmarks, photos and times. Additionally, specialists do the path as many times as it is necessary with the children completing the learning process. However, unexpected situations while the person is doing the path by himself can induce to errors not allowing the person to arrive to the destination. In order to help people to reduce the errors and to propose a learning tool, an app called “Assist Motion” has been created. This work has been done in collaboration between ADAPEI Belfort and Altran Technology. The app was developed in Android operating system with the function to save the steps of the path with specific information and to reuse it to visualize the different steps sequentially as a learning tool. This information associated to the GPS coordinates proposes navigation, emergency and surveillance systems. Tests with specialists and disabled children have been done showing a good acceptance of our first approach.

We present a pilot case study evaluating the deployment of touch screen tablets in supported living situations to help improve the independence of individuals in their daily lives. Supported individuals who required prompting and reminders for their activities of daily living were provided with tablets in their homes supported by staff members who could set up daily reminders. This paper discusses the needs of supported individuals and staff, the deployment of the technology, and observations of the intended user population. Our focus here is on the observation of adaptation and abandonment factors of the technology by supported individuals and support staff.

In this short paper, we shed light on the potential for everyday Information Technologies (IT) to serve as Assistive Technologies for Cognition (ATC) for persons with cognitive disabilities. We present the results of a review and thematic analysis of definitions of ATC included in peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings published within the last decade. We then provide a critical analysis of researchers’ descriptions of ATC, emphasizing the need for definitions of these technologies that are inclusive of everyday IT. The discussion provided in this paper may serve to broaden current conceptualizations of ATC and IT, thus promoting greater access and accessibility of technologies for persons with cognitive disabilities.

In line with statistical predictions, the age-correlated condition of dementia may become a major societal challenge in the 21st century.As technology-supported reminiscence therapy is a potentially effective way to maintain the well-being of people with dementia, we propose a reminiscence recommender system that aims to lower the caregiver burden and allow for the efficient conduction of individually tailored reminiscence sessions.This paper describes the underlying technologies of the MemoRec system as well as the promising results of the preliminary study.

Plain Language and Easy-to-Read Language are two approaches to reduce language complexity, which are also applied in the context of Web Accessibility. While Easy-to-Read Language was specifically designed to meet the needs of people with cognitive and learning disabilities, benefits for users with a variety of abilities have been reported. However, studies have also found unintended side-effects on non-disabled users, such as reduced text liking and intention to revisit a website compared to variants in conventional language. The present study addresses this issue by testing two approaches combining conventional with Easy-to-Read Language against a Plain Language variant, as well as a control group in conventional language. In an online study, 308 non-disabled participants read three texts presented in one of the four language variants. Measurements of performance indicators as well as subjective responses show that Easy-to-Read language may be implemented without unintended side-effects.

In this paper, We focused on the measurement method of the tripartite interpersonal distance in the social development supporting for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and tried quantitatively measurements of interpersonal distance dynamics between three-person using motion capture. We report on the modeling and measurement about the tripartite interpersonal distance dynamics.

Reading skill is an important ability for students, and students acquire knowledge through reading. However, it is difficult for students with learning disabilities (LD) to read effectively without any support. The purpose of this study was to develop a Multiple-representation system, which provided different kinds of cognitive supports for reading and to examine the effects of cognitive supports by comparing the reading performance of students with LD in the situations of with and without cognitive supports. The “Multiple-representation system” includes six cognitive support strategies. The result demonstrated that the participants performed better when reading with cognitive supports. The “Multiple-representation system” provides learners with LD an individualized cognitive supports adapted to their needs in digital learning environment.

In this paper an augmentative and alternative communication mobile application for people with language and speech impairments, called Diga Olá, is presented. With this mobile application, we aimed to assist people with speech and language impairment in their communication process, by presenting an alternative mobile solution in Portuguese language. The main results achieved on a preliminary user assessment were: first-rate performance, higher satisfaction and total autonomy in their interaction with the solution presented.

Providing people, who cannot or almost not articulate themselves vocally, with a Voice Output Communication Aid (VOCA) with prosodic features would allow them to express their daily needs and intentions emotionally. We outline first steps towards such a prosodic VOCA, the EmotionTalker.

Within a collaborative effort of technicians, speech therapists and psychologists “ISi-Speech” has been developed as an Internet-based speech-training tool. This tool aims at improving the speech of people with degenerative neurological impairments such as acquired dysarthria in, for example, Parkinson’s Disease. ISi-Speech is characterized by a theory based design of training elements which take specific challenges in speech therapy as well as motivational elements into account. To ensure acceptance and long-time usage of a training system members of the target group have been involved in the design and formative evaluation process at various times in the project. Specifically, we focus on accessibility as one elementary factor of technology acceptance. Based upon the concept of the Universal-Design and Web-Accessibility-Guidelines 2.0 we implemented accessibility requirements that will be introduced and discussed in this paper.

In this paper, we investigate the benefits of deep learning approaches for the development of personalized assistive technology solutions for users with dysarthria, a speech disorder that leads to low intelligibility of users’ speaking. It prevents these people from using automatic speech recognition (ASR) solutions on computers and mobile devices. In order to address these issue, our effort is to leverage convolutional neural networks toward a speaker dependent ASR software solution intended for users with dysarthria, which can be trained according to particular user’s needs and preferences.

Access to mathematical expressions have always been a particular problem for blind and partially sighted people, and more widely persons with a print disability, including those with dyscalculi, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other perception or processing disorders. This has a distinct negative effect in terms of careers possibilities for print disabled people, since it excludes them not only from mathematical studies, but from all fields that require mathematical knowledge, including all scientific areas as well as areas using statistics. Since a couple of decades many researches have been carried out to provide assistive tools that help visually impaired people to overcome this challenge. This session, created 16 years ago by Art Karshmer, includes in ICCHP 2018 eight full and four short interesting and novel relative papers.

WYSIWYG editors for entering math in documents have existed for over 20 years. A few of these are accessible, but almost all are geared towards entering a single expression, not to the process of solving a math problem. The Benetech math editor introduces two simple and unique ideas that are very useful in the middle and high school settings for solving math problems. The first idea allows a student to cross out or cancel subexpressions; the second allows them to annotate their work so the teacher or other reviewer knows the student’s reasoning.

The biggest barrier for visually impaired people to pursue a bachelor of science degree is not the blindness itself but the access to mathematical resources. Resources such as Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) are not accessible, which means that even the execution of elementary math becomes a challenging task. In this paper, we present Casvi, a CAS for visually impaired people, which allows to perform symbolic and numeric computation using the Maxima’s math engine. Casvi offers modules for algebra, linear algebra, differential calculus, integral calculus among others. Moreover, it provides an intuitive user interface based on synthetic speech and non-speech sounds.

In this paper, we discuss the reasons which led us to propose LaTeX as mathematical notation to visually impaired students and why there is need for an accessible LaTeX editor. We performed an accessibility test for a selection of three LaTeX editors, to investigate their capabilities to satisfy the needs of these users. The evaluation of the results showed that it was necessary to develop an own editor. The first prototype was preliminarily tested, proving that, paying attention to the GUI library and the development environment, it is possible to develop a GUI with a high level of compatibility with assistive technologies like screen readers and magnifiers. The editor achieved a satisfying ranking in the user-tests which encourages further development of the software.

Assistive technologies for visually impaired people (screen readers and braille displays) perform satisfactorily with regard to digital documents containing alphabet characters, but they still have a long way to go as far as formulae and graphs are concerned. In general, the most spread digital documents are in PDF format. However, in the case of mathematical contents, they are not accessible at all, since formulae are usually unreadable by screen readers. Currently, a standard and fast method for inserting accessible formulae into a PDF document is still lacking despite it is a very important issue for spreading accessible digital scientific documents. In this paper, we propose a method for automatically generating a PDF document with mathematical contents accessible by assistive technologies for visually impaired people. Specifically, we have developed a LaTeX package that produces a final PDF document where the formulae are totally accessible by screen readers and braille displays.

Data is everywhere and its communication and understanding is an important pre-requisite for the full participation of individuals in the information age. Good data visualisation is commonly used to great effect for the sighted world, but are practically useless to a blind audience. Blind people are at risk of being left behind if efforts are not made to improve the access to information that is not traditionally conveyed in text, whether that text be accessed in braille, audio, or a computer’s screen reading software. Our work aims to provide an accessible way for blind users to easily, efficiently, and most importantly accurately, explore and query the data contained in diagrams such as bar charts, box plots, time series, and many more. We employ the statistical software environment R not only as a means to generate accessible diagrams, but also as a way for blind users to directly interact with data in the same way as their sighted peers by supporting immediate data visualisation via screen reading and interactive exploration.

UML-based software modelling addresses the needs of sighted people but creates barriers for visually impaired people. Textual representations are a general premise to make modelling languages accessible for people with blindness, but their degree of accessibility differs. This paper presents the UML4ALL syntax designed to address the sequential way of working of blind people using screen reader technology. The proposed UML notation comprises four principles introduced in this paper. An evaluation with sighted and visually impaired people showed that the UML4ALL syntax has a good usability for both target groups.

To facilitate the spread of accessible e-books, especially books in STEM much more in developing countries, an efficient/systematic scheme to localize producing/reading tools should be established. Here, multilingual support in our tool to produce accessible STEM contents and problems in localizing it are discussed. Our new localization scheme and the localization for Vietnamese as a model case are shown.

We developed a tangible programming education tool “P-CUBE2” to aim at learning benefits of subroutine such as to create a function once and then reuse it. The target user of this tool are visual impairments and inexperienced persons who are not familiar with PC operation. We introduced the function mat, utterance function blocks and HIRAGANA (Japanese character) blocks so that user can learn subroutine concept. Users can create the function of utterance by combining and placing these blocks which on the function mat. The created function of utterance can be called on the main mat. By these operation, the user can control a robot which outputs sound as a controlled object. In this research, we introduce the system configuration of the P-CUBE2 and report the result of experiment for evaluation of the tool operability.

Tangible interaction enables physical manipulation of digital data, making it ideal to support visually impaired students. Visually impaired students are frequently integrated in mainstream courses, collaborating with sighted peers and instructors. This paper describes a tangible block localization and tracking method, using small inexpensive sensor packages that detect color placed on an interaction surface—i.e., a standard flat-screen display. The system recursively subdivides the display surface into regions of distinct colors that the sensor package can distinguish. Once located, the sensor package can be tracked by moving the color pattern underneath to follow it, re-expanding the pattern as needed to capture the sensor package if it moves too fast. The novel tracking infrastructure supports novel approaches to teach a number of science and math concepts to visually impaired students.

The goal of making a scatter plot is to visually identify the type of relationship between two quantitative variables quickly. To explore whether a scatter plot can achieve this goal when it is made in the form of a tactile graph and presented to blind people, we conducted an experiment in which x-y data sets were presented to blind participants in three data representations: tactile graph, tactile table, and electronic table, and the participants were asked to identify the type of relationship between two variables. Under all presentation conditions, the correct rates were high: it was 92.5% for the tactile graph condition and 85.0% for the tactile table and electronic table conditions. Tactile graphs were understood with the shortest time, tactile tables with the second shortest, and electronic tables needed the longest time. This differences were due to the different strategies for identifying the relationships. Both tactile graph and tactile table conditions gained higher subjective ratings than the electronic table condition.

Natural language interfaces (NLIs) are a novel approach to non-visual accessibility of diagrammatic representations, such as statistical charts. This paper introduces a number of methods that aim to compensate for the lack of sight when accessing semantically-enhanced diagrams through a Web-based NLI.

We report on a project to develop a best practice for representing molecule diagrams for teaching Chemistry to blind and visually impaired students in Dutch secondary education. The goal was to provide both a resource for inclusive curriculum development for chemistry teachers and a source of reference for visually impaired students. Technically our solution provides a repository of commonly occurring chemical structures via a web site with interactive, fully accessible molecule diagrams together with a thematic volume of corresponding tactile images. The repository was created in close collaboration with chemistry teachers, one partially sighted, and a blind student. We report on the technical solution to generate the web accessible diagrams in Dutch, some of the necessary adaptations as well as the initial deployment of the catalogue.