Computers Helping People with Special Needs

This paper introduces an approach for the (semi)automatic generation of worldwide available, detailed tactile maps including buildings and blind-specific features based on recognized illustrators’ guidelines and standards. These guidelines for tactile maps are investigated in order to define a formal rule set and to automatically filter map data accordingly. Using the rule set, our approach automatically abstracts map data in order to generate a 2.1D tactile model providing multiple height levels (layers) which can be printed by usual consumer 3D printers. Based on the popular OpenStreetMap map data, our automated approach allows to generate arbitrary detail maps blind persons individually interested in, without the need for manual adaption of the tactile map. Thus, this approach contributes to the goal to increase the autonomy of blind persons.

Existing and emerging haptic technologies offer methods for non-visually rendering and interacting with 2D and 3D graphical information. These technologies include force feedback devices, touch surfaces with vibrotactile feedback, wearable vibrotactiles, and touch surfaces with electrostatic feedback. In this paper we will focus on approaches to non-visual access to 3D shapes. The interactive models focus on two approaches: simulation of 3D shape and perspective on a 2D touch surface; and interactive exploration of 3D shapes using physical motion in a virtual 3D space with either a force feedback controller or wearable haptics. The technologies will be reviewed along with suitability for their use by students with visual impairments. Methodology and results from an ongoing series of exploratory usability studies will be discussed. Benefits and limitations of the technologies and recommendations for further research will be presented.

The access to graphical information is difficult for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Taking advantage of the residual sensory abilities such as touch is one way to solve this issue. However, it is not yet clear if blind subjects perceive new tacto-spatial information in the same way that sighted people do. In this work we code the discovery of unknown tactile virtual objects in terms of subjective and behavioral variables, which result to be in-dependent on visual deprivation and dependent only on task difficulty. Our methodology can be employed in educational, orientation and mobility protocols.

Synchronized CUI and GUI are developed for the universal design tactile graphics production system BPLOT3. BPLOT is the first tactile graphics production system for the blind that enables the blind to produce tactile graphics by themselves. With the new synchronized CUI and GUI of BPLOT3, the blind and the sighted can collaboratively produce tactile graphics. Proofreading of tactile graphics by a blind person is necessary in order to produce elaborate tactile graphics which can be used in textbooks or questions of entrance examinations. Because a blind person can modify tactile graphics by himself with BPLOT3, it will be a powerful tool.

To allow blind and visually impaired users participation in learning visualized concepts and ideas it is important to provide them not only with text but also with graphics. As the effort and expertise needed for manually transcribing graphics is time-consuming we need a better understanding of the decision-making process leading to the support of alternative descriptions and materials for tactile exploration. We performed two surveys, the first one on current practices used for the production of accessible graphics in Germany, the second one on user experiences in exploring and constructing tactile graphics. As result we have defined some requirements for enhancing the production of accessible tactile graphics by a software tool that not only supports the creation of image masters and descriptions, but also includes blind users in the editing process.

In this paper the authors have presented the design and implementation of Edutactile, a cross-platform software which automates the process of creation of tactile diagrams. Edutactile provides for automated application of guidelines or presets as well as Braille translation and thus abstracts away the production related issues. This relieves special educators for the visually challenged from having to learn the workings of the graphics editing software (Photoshop, CorelDraw) which are currently being used to produced tactile graphics and instead focus on the content of the diagram.

We have developed a Web-based tactile map automated creation system

tmacs

. Users simply type in an address or the name of a building and the system instantly creates an image of a tactile map, which is then printed on capsule paper and raised up by a heater. This time we modified this system to deal with OpenStreetMap (OSM). The advantage of using OSM data is that

tmacs

becomes to be able to create tactile maps of any location in the world and include information which is useful for blind people such as tactile paving. Another feature of the new system is that sighted users can change the point and scale of a tactile map in the same way as a regular Google Map. We are exploring the possibility of increasing the number of countries whose tactile maps can be created with

tmacs

.

Various technologies, including GPS, Wi-Fi localization, and infrared beacons, have been proposed to increase travel independence for visually impaired (VI) and blind travelers. Such systems take readings from sensors, localize those readings on a map, and instruct VI travelers where to move next. Unfortunately, sensor readings can be noisy or absent, which decreases the traveler’s situational awareness. However, localization technologies can be augmented with solutions that put the traveler’s cognition to use. One such solution is narrative maps, i.e., verbal descriptions of environments produced by O&M professionals for blind travelers. The production of narrative maps is costly, because O&M professionals must travel to designated environments and describe large numbers of routes. Complete narrative coverage may not be feasible due to the sheer size of many environments. But, the quality of produced narrative maps can be improved by automated landmark extraction and path inference. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed that uses scalable natural language processing (NLP) techniques to extract landmarks and their connectivity from verbal route descriptions. Extracted landmarks can be subsequently annotated with sensor readings, used to find new routes, or track the traveler’s progress on different routes.

Many older people rely on public transport to maintain their personal mobility and thus quality of life. However, problems may arise in unfamiliar environments or during unexpected events. Especially when changing trains in complex stations, many people experience orientation problems or feel insecure and overwhelmed. The

namo

travel assistant combines technical and human support during the journey. The users can choose the presentation of the information which suits them most: The application offers photos with directional arrows, station plans with marked paths, and contact to a service hotline to get direct support. In this way,

namo

helps maintain personal mobility in old age while offering an increased sense of security.

This paper presents an approach which allows people with disabilities to use public transportation more effectively in supporting them throughout the whole journey. Besides the common feature set, like offering time table information and planning trips consisting of multiple rides it additionally includes information when to get on or off a vehicle and performs route re-planning in the case of unexpected events like delays. Moreover, it provides information particularly important for people with disabilities, like wheelchair users or blind persons. Depending on the user profile, information regarding the accessibility of vehicles and also routing information for footpaths are delivered in real-time, which is especially important at major transfer points like railway stations where routes tailored to the user’s capabilities are provided. As it cannot be guaranteed that every footpath and every obstacle is charted and up-to-date, users can improve routing information on their own in a crowd sourcing based approach.

We developed a unique haptic interface, the "FB-Finger," which enables users to detect the distance to an object. When a user holds the FB-Finger and places his/her forefinger on a link, the finger bends or extends depending on the link’s angular motion (which corresponds to the metric distance between the user and the object). We expected the FB-Finger to provide more accurate distance estimation than similar commercial electric travel aids. To test this hypothesis, we conducted psychological experiments with blindfolded sighted participants who were asked to make distance estimations in conditions using three different devices. Results revealed that the FB-Finger allowed participants to make more accurate judgments compared to the other devices. These findings suggest that using the FB-Finger provides significant potential for ETA application among visually impaired individuals.

This paper presents the research of using Linked Open Data to enhance accessibility data for accessible travelling. Open accessibility data is the data related to the accessibility issues associated with geographical data, which could benefit people with disabilities and their special needs. With the aim of addressing the gap between users’ special needs and data, this paper presents the results of a survey of open accessibility data retrieved from four different sources in the UK. An ontology based data integration approach is proposed to interlink these datasets together to generate a linked open accessibility repository, which also links to other resources on the Linked Data Cloud. As a result, this research would not only enrich the open accessibility data, but also contribute to a novel framework to address accessibility information barriers by establishing a linked data repository for publishing, linking and consuming the open accessibility data.

In this paper we report on our continuing research of an audio-tactile system for visualizing travel routes on modern interactive refreshable tactile displays for blind users. The system is especially well suited for pre-journey route learning. Similar to systems for sighted users, e. g. online map services like Google Maps, we utilize an audio-tactile interactive map based on a concept from third-party research work and freely available geographic data. The system was implemented as a prototype for a touch-sensitive tactile display. Our main research interest is to explore audio-tactile concepts for displaying routes on a slippy map. We therefore developed a catalogue of ideas currently featuring tactile textures and indications for the route’s course, waypoint symbols, audio indications etc. We summarize the results of an initial user test which indicates that the route visualization with our set of strategies is feasible and justifies further research.

Walking is an important factor in good health, and people derive many benefits from travelling by foot. However, walking entails risks such as traffic accidents and falls. If people recognize specific risks before walking, then they may avoid such accidents. This paper proposes a road information collection and sharing tool for the public. The proposed system stores passive risks from the properties of the landscape and active risks identified by people. Moreover, it realizes an easy way to access such risk information. When people know and avoid these risks, they will be able to walk safely.

In Electronic Orientation Aids, the guidance process consists in two steps: first, identify the location of a visually impaired user along the expected trajectory, and second, provide her/him with appropriate instructions on directions to follow, and pertinent information about the surroundings. In urban environment, positioning accuracy is not always optimal and tracking the user’s progress along the expected itinerary is often challenging. We present three new waypoint-based validation strategies to track the user’s location despite low positioning accuracy. These strategies are evaluated within SIMU4NAV, a multimodal virtual environment subserving the design of Electronic Orientation Aids for visually impaired people. Results show that the proposed strategies are more robust to positioning inaccuracies, and hence more efficient to guide users.

This work addresses the challenge of designing an effective, reliable and affordable autonomous navigation system for blind and visually impaired people which also covers journey planning and post journey activities (such as recommendations and experiences sharing) . The main contribution focuses on the integration of accurate real-time user positioning data with binaural 3D audio based guiding techniques on mobile devices and a web services delivering platform. The aim is to produce an autonomous navigation system that can be used to guide targeted users along pre-defined tracks and that can be used also before and after the journey to carry out several related tasks such as journey planning, training and sharing of experiences. A preliminary prototype of this concept has been built and tested with 4 end users in both rural and urban environments, obtaining encouraging results.

This article presents the development of an Audio-Tactile aid in order to facilitate and enhance the spatial knowledge as well as the independent and safe movement of individuals with blindness in the University of Macedonia indoors. Moreover the developed aid provides information that helps blind individuals to obtain a cognitive image of the university indoors, plan routes they wish to track and easily identify specific locations and services. The implementation procedure of the Audio-Tactile navigation system included the following steps: 1) development of digital maps that include specific spatial information for people with blindness, 2) production of tactile maps 3) research on the readability of the tactile maps by blind individuals and development of revised tactile maps, 4) development of Audio-Tactile maps and their connection with touchpad devices, and 5) a study to derive the most appropriate locations where 10 touchpads will be installed in the university indoors.

We present a system for editing OpenStreetMap data, which is based on the idea that common-sense preconceptions about the world can be encoded semantically and thus used in conjunction with preexisting data about an area to predict probable changes. The system can thus reduce the number of OpenStreetMap tags from which the user can choose.

We have created a system of rule-based map content transformations that allows to create maps that are better fit for specific purposes and user groups than the base material. In this paper we demonstrate the application of the map content transformations in route planning and route guidance of a navigation system for specific user groups. We show that it is possible to create maps that are better suited to these tasks than the material on which they are based.

Assistive navigation systems for the blind commonly use speech to convey directions to their users. However, this is problematic for short range navigation systems that need to provide fine but diligent guidance in order to avoid obstacles. For this task, we have compared haptic and audio feedback systems under the NASA-TLX protocol to analyze the additional cognitive load that they place on users. Both systems are able to guide the users through a test obstacle course. However, for white cane users, auditory feedback results in a 22 times higher cognitive load than haptic feedback. This discrepancy in cognitive load was not found on blindfolded users, thus we argue against evaluating navigation systems solely with blindfolded users.

Despite progress in awareness and increasing electronic availability of accessibility information, getting a clear picture of physical accessibility of an infrastructure or journey remains an uncertain task. Over the past few years, a number of emerging technologies have gained maturity and adoption. Some examples are smartphones, open data, social networks, and routing engines. They are also triggering societal shifts about the way people interact together through technology. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how these technologies can positively or negatively impact the evolution of physical accessibility by using a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) approach.

POSEIDON aims at developing a tablet app for people with Down’s Syndrome (DS) to become more independent and integrated. It follows an user-centered approach by involving primary (people with DS) and secondary users (parents, carers etc.). In order to assess the needs and requirements as well as the usage of technology of people with DS an online survey was conducted. Results indicate that a majority of them use tablets in their daily life. Most of the carers agree that technical assistants can help to overcome daily challenges and that there is a need for support in the fields of communication, socializing and school/work/learning. Important features and design aspects were mentioned.

Elderly are sometimes set apart in some situations due to the fact that they are considered less efficient and productive, for example, in the work environment. For many elderly, their jobs represent the way of feeling useful for themselves and the society and also for having goals which keeps them motivated. Although our current society is led by productivity and efficiency both in professional and personal scenarios, today, information is the key for efficiency; those who are able to manage the information are the ones that survive the daily rush without sinking in it.

This work introduces an interactive robotic system for assistance, conceived to tackle some of the challenges that domestic environments impose. The system is organized into a network of heterogeneous components that share both physical and logical functions to perform complex tasks. It consists of several robots for object manipulation, an advanced vision system that supplies in-formation about objects in the scene and human activity, and a spatial augmented reality interface that constitutes a comfortable means for interacting with the system. A first analysis based on users’ experiences confirms the importance of having a friendly user interface. The inclusion of context awareness from visual perception enriches this interface allowing the robotic system to become a flexible and proactive assistant.

Within 2050, demographic changes, due to the significant increase of elderly, will represent one of the most important aspect for social assistance and healthcare institutions, particularly in European Union. Great attention is given to dementia diseases with over 35 million people worldwide who live in this condition, affected by cognitive impairment, frailty and social exclusion with considerable negative consequences for their independence. Preference will be given to intervention with high impact on the quality of life of the individual associated with a socio-economic burden, also for people who care for them. The main challenge comes from the social objective of assisting and keeping elderly people in their familiar home surrounding or to enable them to “aging in place”.

Some experiences regarding children with disabilities carried out in Ecuador, Costa Rica and Spain have contributed to realize the importance of reading in order to enhance their daily life activities, independence and social integration. This article describes a qualitative study to understand general issues related to the design of non-traditional technologies for children with intellectual disabilities. A methodological approach is described and explained through the results of exploratory surveys and interviews. According to the information obtained from experts and the method of literacy acquisition proposed by Troncoso and Del Cerro, the design of a smart kit using non-traditional user interfaces is presented. A preliminary evaluation of the first prototype is described. The paper concludes by reflecting upon the importance of literacy acquisition and the challenges to design non-traditional interfaces to support learning of children with intellectual disabilities. The development of the phase two of the prototype and empirical evaluation is part of the future work.

Based on the work in the FOOD project, an approach for the design of an intelligent environment and the development of applications to favour independent living is presented. Starting from the definition of activities to be carried out in the different living environments, the approach is based on the formalization of information relevant to describe functionalities, technology and users and the presence of “intelligence” for adapting the functionalities and their interfaces to individual users.

This paper presents a usability study for text entry with a new version of the assistive keyboard replacement

OnScreenDualScribe

. Over five sessions (approximately 1 hr/session), three able-bodied novice participants achieved an entry rate of 13.9 wpm. In a case study, one disabled expert achieved an entry rate of 6.6 wpm. The main aspects of the software are described and differences to the ancestor

DualScribe

are highlighted. Finally, the potential impact of the system for persons with neuromuscular diseases – a user group it particularly accommodates – is elaborated.

We present in this paper an assistive technology of communication and command for quadriplegics. To carry out this assistive technology, a user centered design approach with the patient, his occupational therapists and his family was conducted. Various iterative versions of the prototype have been defined by means of the SOKEYTO platform to meet the needs and the abilities of the quadriplegic person. Options carried out and consecutive choice will be reported as well the difficulties to implement. The assistive technology was used by one quadriplegic person. A qualitative evaluation is also reported.

In this paper we describe Semantic Keyboard: a soft keyboard augmented by semantic pointing. The cursor crosses faster over keys containing low-probability letters (considering the prefix already entered). This optimization reduces the movement of the pointer by 60%, and increases the text entry speed by 13.5% after the first character in a word. Accuracy is equivalent to a regular soft keyboard.

The purpose of this research is to assess Chinese handwriting skills of children with cerebral palsy (CP) by computerized tool. This tool can provide immediate information about children’s handwriting process and products. The parameters of process record the spatial and temporal characteristics of handwriting, which including the total writing time, on-paper time, in-air time, the ratio, and writing speed. The parameter of production is accuracy of handwriting. 14 children with CP and 13 typically developing children participated in this study. The results indicated that children with CP had significantly lower accuracy rate in Chinese handwriting. In addition, children with CP also demonstrated longer on-paper time and in-air time in writing Chinese. Further studies will focus on identifying clinical factors which result in the handwriting difficulties of children with CP.

Since 2005, public policy in France has strongly been encouraging young people with disabilities inclusion within the regular school system. This has found a direct application through technical innovation, intended to help students being more independent within their learning activities. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to underline the manner in which using assistive information and communication technologies may improve the inclusive education for people with disabilities. The case study we present underlines the complexity of the social world into which the use of a precise assistive tool takes it place.

Presently there are hardly any toys available which can be used by children, adolescents and adults with severe physical disabilities. A very interesting group of non-trivial toys are remote controlled (RC) models because the remotes can be easily substituted with custom ones. Since RC models need very accurate commands with very low latency in several channels concurrently, the remote for usage by people with severe physical disabilities must implement several requirements. This paper describes and discusses the prototype of a mouth operated joystick accessible for people with severe physical disabilities to accurately control RC model helicopters, multicopters, airplanes, boats or cars.

In today’s aging society, the importance of assistance for the people with limited mobility is acknowledged. Therefore, the personal mobility vehicle (PMV) for the people with limited mobility is proposed in this paper. Proposed PMV is propelled by kicking motion with power assisted wheels. It aims to assist short distance transportation in urban area e.g. moving from a home to a train station. By using a folding mechanism, it will be possible to carry the vehicle on public transportations and this will help to extend the area of the user’s activities. In this paper, the overview of our developed PMV and the results of preliminary experiments are introduced.

This paper presents an approach to store user settings and abilities in a user profile that can be used to automatically adjust the settings of applications on mobile or desktop devices for people with special needs. The user profile and the settings are determined automatically with a wizard like application or manually with a carer and are dispatched to other devices with the use of cloud services. By this users with special needs will be able to operate new applications without the need of a carer setting up the application for them.

Two case studies were conducted with two children with severe physical and cognitive disabilities in this research, and a computer-vision based technique called Motion History was applied to visualize their movement. By changing the conditions of intervention to the children, the Motion History successfully helped to find their voluntary movement and effective stimuli that attracted their attention. It was concluded that finding the changes of movement is very important for extracting voluntary movement and Motion History is suitable for that purpose. This gives us a greater possibility of evidence-based interaction with people with severe and multiple disabilities.

Deficiency of hand function presents difficulty to disabled people in various activities of daily living. While rehabilitation training in occupational therapy is helpful for them to cope with their deficiency, the paper presents a virtual realty based system in attempt to provide an alternative approach to complement the conventional methods. The system simulates tasks of daily living in virtual environments and produces real-time interactive graphics and forces to enable trainees to practise the skills in cyberspace. Currently, three tasks are simulated, namely, door opening, water pouring and meat cutting. Visual, audio and haptic cues are produced as guidance in response to user’s actions. The performance of the users is recorded automatically on the fly with quantifiable metrics to enable objective analysis of the learning progress. Findings from initial trials with disabled children show that they found it very interesting to use the system and could adapt to the virtual training environment for practicing the tasks. Further study will be conducted to improve system usability and to evaluate the training effectiveness.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a general term for a group of permanent, non-progressive movement disorders that cause physical disability in development, mainly in the areas of body movement but it might also affect intellectual capabilities. Among all this diversity of profiles, we find that, for some of them, access to a computer application is almost impossible in spite of the great variety of commercial devices based of different technologies. Kinect might be a viable possibility in order to facilitate access to games and computer applications that help users improve their skills or communication.

This paper shows our developing sit-to-stand support system using ground reaction force to operate device. Computer system control sit-to-support mechanism automatically by information of the user ground reaction force (GRF). The user of this device don’t need to operate the switch or button. This paper shows first prototype device and describe about device control rule, ex-periment results and the found problems of control, at first. Secondly, to solve these problems, experiment device for second prototype design is shown, and experiment method is described. Finally, preliminary results are shown in these experiments.

This paper presents the initial results of a critical review of recent research on new and emerging technologies designed for older people and people with disabilities. The review covers research published between 2005 and 2012 in a range of international peer-reviewed journals and conferences, in the areas of technology, human-computer interaction, disability, assistive technologies and gerontology. On the basis of this review of research, we are exploring what issues for disabled and older people are being addressed by researchers and developers, whether the research is motivated by user needs, the methodologies used, and outcomes achieved.

This paper focuses on user evaluation of the Technology Enhanced Interaction Framework (TEIF). Questionnaire results from participants using or reviewing the TEIF method to evaluate requirements and design technology solutions for problems involving interactions with hearing impaired people showed that they thought it helped them more than the Other methods and that it would also help them to gather requirements and to design technology solutions for all disabled people if information about other disabilities than hearing impairment was provided. The objective results from the experimental tasks will be analysed to investigate how the participants performed on the requirements evaluation and solutions evaluation tasks with the TEIF method and the other preferred method. These results will be compared with the participants’ questionnaire answers which reflected what they thought about the TEIF method. Future work includes extending the Method and Technology Suggestions Table to include information about other disabilities than just hearing impairment.

This paper presents a unified semantic framework that can used by vendors/service providers that would like to semantically describe their assistive technologies according to the categorization proposed by the ISO 9999 standard as well as the EASTIN taxonomy. The framework is based on an approach towards a unified semantic description of assistive technologies by combining information coming from different sources. The wealth of information of the EASTIN network, the biggest and most comprehensive information service on assistive technology serving older and disabled people, is currently exploited by the proposed framework in a unified way. The proposed framework offers an easy mechanism for including a new assistive technology in the whole Cloud4all/GPII infrastructure.

Most children with cleft are required to undertake speech therapy after undergoing surgery to repair their craniofacial defect. However, the untrained ear of a parent can lead to incorrect practice resulting in the development of compensatory structures. Even worse, the boring nature of the cleft speech therapy often causes children to abandon home exercises and therapy altogether. We have developed a simple recognition system capable of detecting impairments on the phoneme level with high accuracy. We embed this into a game environment and provide it to a cleft palate specialist team for pilot testing with children 2 to 5 years of age being evaluated for speech therapy. The system consistently detected cleft speech in high-pressure consonants in 3 out of our 5 sentences. Doctors agreed that this would improve the quality of therapy outside of the office. Children enjoyed the game overall, but grew bored due to the delays of phrase-based speech recognition.

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and open design approaches allow for the development of customized, affordable assistive technologies. Freely shared designs and software components open doors for new ways to create and to share technology, representing an approach that has the potential to be more efficient, affordable, and effective than commercial approaches to Assistive Technology development and deployment. In this paper, we present a case study of how these methods have been used to develop a DIY, open-source Speech-Generating Device.

Public procurement is one way for public administrations to promote accessibility. By procuring accessible products and services, they raise the awareness about accessibility and they have an impact on industry. In Europe, the European Commission’s Mandate M 376 has resulted in a European Standard, EN 301 549, containing accessibility requirements for ICT products and services that are suitable for use in public procurement. EN 301 549 has been drafted using a feature-based approach and can be applied to any ICT product and service. The users of the standard will need guidance to decide which re-quirements of the EN apply to a given product or service. This paper presents a decision-tree approach for that problem. This approach is being validated during the design of the user interface of a support tool for the assessment of the accessibility of ICT products and services.

An interactive advisor for ergonomic assessment and fitting of workplaces to person with disabilities (physical, sensorial, and/or psychological) is presented. It has been designed to identify areas of mismatching between workplace demands and worker functional capabilities, in order to promote the access to employment, and labor integration for people with disabilities in the retail sector. The methodology includes the process of incorporation as well as the adaptive measures of workplaces by using reasonable adjustments.

A global consortium has come together under the Enable project to create a suite of freely available, accessible, online, self-paced training modules for tutors working in adult education, who may be supporting disabled students. Topics covered include working with disabled people; pedagogical principles of using ICT to support disabled learners; making online teaching content accessible; free and built-in ICT to support disabled adult learners; end-user issues including accessibility and usability; and standardisation.

This paper discusses the need for an evaluation framework specifically for (ICT-based) learning technologies for disabled learners and demonstrates the limitations of existing approaches based on the evaluation of assistive technology or learning technologies for non-disabled learners. It presents elements of the first full such evaluation framework comprising a set of evaluation principles and aims and three evaluation methodologies. It has a wide range of applications including (i) stand-alone and comparative evaluations of ICT-based learning technologies for disabled people; (ii) identifying gaps in provision or the need for modifications; (iii) supporting the design and development of new technologies; (iv) supporting learners in making informed choices about appropriate learning technologies; and (v) supporting the policy process and determination of the future research agenda, including by evaluating the impact of various measures on the effective implementation and use of ICT learning technologies for disabled learners.

It seems widely accepted that senior citizen need special assistance for using IT technology and that tablet computers are more easy for them to use than PC. The project “Tablets for Seniors” challenged these preconceptions. It evaluated over three months the use of Android tablet computers by a group of 19 seniors, aged between 53 and 82. The group of participants was divided into a subgroup using an interface specifically designed to support seniors and another group working with the native Android user interface. Support requests from both groups, in face-to-face meetings or through a dedicated phone hotline, have been recorded and qualitatively analyzed. As results of this qualitative study we present in this paper recommendations for the design of user interface and accompanying support measures.

Utilizing invisible 2-dimensional codes and digital audio players with a 2-dimensional code scanner, we developed a new type of textbooks for students with print disabilities, called “multimodal textbooks.” Multimodal textbooks can be read with the combination of the two modes: “reading printed text” and “listening to the speech of the text from a digital audio player with a 2-dimensional code scanner.” Since a multimodal textbook looks the same as a regular textbook and the price of a digital audio player is reasonable (about 30 euro), we think multimodal textbooks are suitable for students with print disabilities in ordinary classrooms.

The constant evolution of assistive technologies helps users with dis-abilities to have a myriad of choices to access digital content, and the application of accessibility standards and their relationship with assistive technologies enable and potentiate user interaction with web based systems for everyday activities. In the context of education through Virtual Learning Environments, a basic stone of the web accessibility initiative is the content prepared and provided by teachers, but they need to be instructed on how to generate accessible documents and how to provide truly accessible curriculum developments. In this sense, E-Learning solutions adopted by several institutions, including Higher Education Institutions need to be encouraged to validate and promote accessibility within a Virtual Campus. This article presents an initiative promoted by ESVI-AL project, looking to improve accessibility in virtual higher education through the definition of systematic and replicable methodological processes for the design and implementation of accessible virtual curriculum developments.

This paper presents the argument that some assistive technologies have in recent times become more widely used in education to support all students. Building on research gathered as part of a European funded project, the authors present findings that indicate that students are becoming more aware and sensitive to their own learning preferences and their own styles. More importantly however, the paper suggests that through the evolution of technology, students can now choose how to study, where to study and when to study. Underpinning this change, the paper explores how some assistive technologies have evolved into learning technologies by taking into consideration three factors: European social policy, universal design theory and learning preference theories.

This study surveyed the special education teachers’ literacy for inte-grating assistive technology into the instruction in Taiwan. At first, a scale for literacy of assistive technology integration for special education teachers was developed through Delphi technique. 391 special education teachers completed the web-based questionnaire. The results reveal that the teachers’ AT literacy were inadequate. Though the teachers are aware of the importance of assistive technology, they lack essential skills and knowledge. The results of the analysis also indicated that participation in AT training programs and experiencing with students who used AT devices benefited their AT literacy.

This paper presents the development of a web based, platform inde-pendent system for university examination purposes that can be easily accessed and used by students with visual impairments, with minimum effort required to learn its use. The developed examination system allows students with visual impairments to take suitably adapted online written examinations according to their individual and personalized special characteristics and preferences for reading digital text. Those special parameters and characteristics can be applied as predefined user options to the examination platform. The user interface for individuals with low vision is based on the selection of effective color contrast and the principle of legible texts that students need in order to read and write during examinations. Based on the above, it was considered necessary that spe-cial parameters and characteristics had to be tested and determined by the end users themselves with N Print tests.

“Planet School” is currently the most important blended learning platform in Germany. The multimedia content of the popular website is developed especially for teachers by the public service broadcasters WDR and SWR. However, as it stands today, “Planet School” is neither accessible by all students, nor does it meet the needs of the entire student population. This paper presents both the results of the evaluation of the learning platform in inclusive classrooms and first recommendations on how to offer variable content for students with special needs. The revised version of “Planet School” shall address different types of learners and offer accessible and usable materials, including movies, television broadcasts, interactive and multimedia content for students with very different prerequisites for learning. The paper has implications for application-oriented research in the field of e-inclusion and blended learning, for the development of multimedia content by broadcasters and others as well as for the use of multimedia in inclusive classrooms.

Real-time speech transcription is a service of potentially tremendous positive impact on quality of life of the hearing-impaired. Nevertheless there is a total lack of government funding for these assistive services in the Czech Republic. In the article, we present such a business model of a socially orientated service that enables its long term sustainable development and provides online transcription services for personal use of the target group for free.

We have developed a device that allows sounds to be perceived via hair vibrations by deaf people; the concept is similar to cat whiskers, which can detect air currents. The device converts the loudness of a sound into a vibration with a certain power, and the users wear the device in their hair in much the same way as a hair slide. When the device detects a sound, it relays the information to the user by both shaking the hair and activating a light-emitting diode. This allows other users of the device to gain information about the sound, and facilitates sharing. The results of an assessment experiment showed that deaf people could understand animal-call patterns and car-engine sounds.

The study conducted a 3-month intervention to improve deaf and hard-of-hearing children’s storytelling ability through training in arranging episodes of temporal scripts, and telling the stories they created. We examined 65 D/HH children aged four to seven years who were divided into two groups: virtual reality (VR) technological intervention and pictorial non-technological intervention. Participants completed pretest and posttest measures and demonstrated significant improvement in storytelling achievements following intervention. In the VR group the improvement was much more significant. In addition, participants at an early age at onset of treatment correlated with children’s better achievements in storytelling.

Deaf-blind people have a very small window to the world. New technology can help, but portable Braille lines are expensive. We developed and tested a very low cost method for reading and writing SMS messages with a Hungarian deaf-blind person using Android smartphone with vibrating motor built in. Words and characters were converted to vibrating Braille dots and Morse words. Morse was taught as code for recognizing characters and also as language for recognizing words.

This paper discusses a communication method with smart phones for deaf or language dysfunction people as well as foreigners at the urgent time of sudden sickness or fire in order to report to the nearest fire station. Such method is originally proposed by a hearing impaired person. Their appearances are the same in the daily life. However at the unexpected situation, they will be suddenly in trouble at such the occasion of disasters or accidents. The previous research, which was introduced at ICCHP 2010, proposed a method to create pictograms or icons referring to multiplex local sign languages with Multivariate Analysis (MVA). Those outcomes are drawn on a booklet to be held a dialogue between deaf and hearing people. This time they are implemented on a smart phone. Normally the usability is measured by the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Then this time the outcome is measured by the efficiency, that how quickly to report the fire station nearby. The evaluation gathering deaf people and a foreigner found that this method is about three times quicker to do the first report to the station comparing with text messaging on a smart phone.

We developed an application for learning the finger alphabet of Swiss German Sign Language. It consists of a user interface and a recognition algorithm including the Kinect sensor. The official Kinect Software Development Kit (SDK) does not recognize fingertips. We extended it with an existing algorithm.

Signed language interpreter training programs are necessary to support the training of professional signed language interpreters who facilitate the communication between Deaf and hearing people. However, these programs have few tools that provide asynchronous or non-face-to-face means of giving feedback to or communication with learners in the signed language by peers, instructors or mentors. TerpTube has been designed to support these asynchronous activities through the use of video and signlinking within a computerized mentoring management system. Initial user studies show that mentors and mentees/students found TerpTube easy to use to create and post video material and provide commentary on that video in American Sign Language without the use of text. Having the ability to provide comments to comments was thought to be a good idea but made the user interface confusing.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing students who use visual accommodations face difficulties in following multimedia lectures due to the delay in visual translation and dividing attention between simultaneous visuals. As a result, deaf students miss information. We address these difficulties with two approaches: visual cues and live replay in recorded lectures. Our analysis found that when deaf students view the lecture videos with cues, they show less delay in switching to the active visual information source and report high satisfaction with the cues. The students who liked the cues were more likely to demonstrate reduction in delay time associated with shifting visual attention. Similarly, when deaf students used gaze controlled replay with lecture videos, they miss less information and report high satisfaction with live replay.

On the web, we can find dictionaries for viewing a sign of French Sign Language (FSL), from a word. However, finding a word from a sign is much more complicated. For this purpose, we propose to design a web application to find the meaning of a FSL sign in the French language from the sign’s features. In order to do this, we have developed an intelligent system capable of learning and self-improving by feeding off the information presented to it during its use. We have managed to find a middle ground between the reliability of the results and the ergonomics of Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI).

In this paper, we present a study on the relationship between American Sign Language (ASL) statements and English written texts toward building a statistical machine translation (SMT) using 3D avatar for interpretation. The process included a novel algorithm which transforms an English part-of-speech sentence to ASL-Gloss. The algorithm uses a rule-based approach for building big parallel corpus from English to ASL-Gloss using dependency rules of grammatical parts of the sentence. The parallel corpus will be the input of the translation model of the SMT for ASL. The results we obtained are highly consistent, reproducible, with fairly high precision and accuracy.

3D sign language data is actively being generated and exchanged. Sign language recognition from 3D data is then a promising research axis aiming to build new understanding and efficient indexing of this type of content. Model-based recognition strategies are commonly based on recognizing sign language features separately. Those features are: the handshape, the hand position, the orientation and movement. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for hand position classification in the space. The approach is based on a two-layer feed-forward network and generates classifications which are very close to human perception. Evaluations have been made by 10 PhD students and 2 sign language experts. The evaluation of the results shows the superiority of our approach compared with classic methods based on the calculation of the distance between the hand and the face as well as the method of K nearest neighbors. In fact, the misclassification average of our methods was the lowest with 4.58%.

3D sign language generation has showed real performances since several years. Many systems have been proposed aiming to generate animated sign language through avatars, however, the technology still young and many fundamental parameters of sign language like facial expressions and other iconic features have been ignored in the proposed systems. In this paper, we focus on the generation and analysis of descriptive classifiers also called Size and Shape Specifiers (SASSes) in 3D sign language data. We propose a new adaptation of the phonological structure of handshapes that have been given by Brentari. Our adapted framework is able to encode 3D descriptive classifiers that can express different amounts or sizes of shapes. We describe the way our model has been implemented through an XML framework. Our model is a way to link the phonological level with the 3D physical animation level since it is compliant with sign language phonology as described by Brentari as well as Liddel & Johnson and compliant with the 3D animation standards.

In the field of automatic treatment of natural languages, the analysis and the exploitation of each statement in sign language (SL) have a great importance. In fact, the own specificities of SL such as the simultaneity of many parameters, the significant role of the facial expression, the use of space to structure the statement, as well as the technical specificities, such as the change lightening and the presence of occlusion in the space of one-sighted-capture, have a deep effect on tracking the different parts of the body. In this paper, we propose an empiric method of tracking adapted to the specificities of SL that we use to elaborate a real time recognition system based on a prediction approach.

In the absence of a standardized writing system to transcribe their native sign language, deaf signers cannot communicate between each other in their own language except face-to-face. They can’t leave messages, read books take class notes and send email in sign language. Certainly, being able to read and write their own language would bring to these signers the same advantage that writing systems for spoken languages bring to speakers. SignWriting system seems at present the most appropriate method that could meet the deaf needs than other existing notations, as it was intended as an everyday tool for reading and writing. However, such script requires a training to learn to interpret the proposed transcriptions. In this paper, we present an avatar-based system named, tuniSigner, able to display and interpret automatically sign language transcriptions, in the well known SignWriting system. Showing how the actual gestures should be performed in virtual reality would be very useful to signers.

Contrary to the popular believes, the structure of signs exceeds the simple combination of hands movements and shapes. Furthermore, sign significance resides, not in the hand shape, the position, the movement, the orientation or facial expression but in the combination of all five. In this context, our aim is to propose a model for non-manual gesture generation for sign language machine translation. We developed in previous works a new gesture generator that does not support facial animation. We propose a multi-layer model to be used for the development of new software for generating non-manual gestures NMG. Three layers compose the system. The first layer represents the interface between the system and external programs. Its role is to do the linguistic treatment in order to compute all linguistic information, such as the grammatical structure of the sentence. The second layer contains two modules (the manual gesture generator and the non-manual gesture generator). In first module the non-manual gestures generator uses three dimension facial modeling and animation techniques to produce facial expression in sign language.

The manual transcription process of Sign Language is a work-intensive step which requires considerable effort to create Signs. Even, often the result of this step misses the natural aspect of motion to be conform to the natural human interpretation. In other words, the lack of the sign language annotated corpora is closely related to the difficulty of the sign creation task. In this paper, we propose a novel tool Sign

motion

for creating an annotated sign language corpus based on Natural Human Gestures: By overlaying a real signer motion onto an articulated 3D skeleton using Microsoft Kinect and Leap motion sensors. Sign

motion

is created to support the natural 3D facial expression, the natural 3D body posture and gives the possibility to annotate and analyze each sign and motion in the recorded animation. The resulting data and structure are precise enough to create and to store signs to be used for Sign Language data analysis or Machine Translation using virtual signer.

Many statistics have confirmed that many deaf are enabled to access to written information. As a solution, computer applications designed for deaf person, have been created. Therefore, to facilitate access to information, new methods improving the dialogue between human and machine are required. The signs generation is based on different parameters such as manual configuration, orientation of hands, the location where the sign is made, the movement made by hand and the facial expression accompanying the realization of the sign. We take into account all these parameters and the system presented in this paper is based also on avatars which have many degrees of freedom. The challenge of this project is to find the tradeoff between computational time and realistic representation that must be closer to real-time generation signs.

The purpose of this study is to experiment the usability of a speech recognition system to help deaf and hard-of-hearing students to understand the lesson inside the classroom by subtitling the speech of the professor in live. The proposed solution is to repeat the professor’s speech in a microphone plugged to a notebook with a speech-to-text software and to generate the text inside a collaborative editor displayed in front of the student. The repeater is a valid volunteer listening the professor’s speech in the classroom. The software transforms the voice in text. The deaf student could read the text on his own device (a notebook or a mobile device).

In this study we examined whether the level of hearing loss is related to the frequency of communication within different situations and performance activities on social networking sites. It was also investigated as to how the frequency of activities were related to the perceived accessibility of these sites. Firstly, the findings revealed that users with lower levels of hearing loss communicated more frequently with hearing persons in the written language than users at higher levels. In contrast, they communicated less frequently with deaf users in sign language than those with higher levels of hearing loss. Secondly, users with lower levels of hearing loss posted videos more frequently than those with higher levels. Thirdly, the more frequently the deaf and hard of hearing users actualized their profiles, posted photos, videos, commented and liked the content, the higher the perceived accessibility of those sites they reported.

We propose a simple system for detecting warning sound. The system processes a signal captured by a microphone by an IIR band pass filter with a pass band covering warning sound spectrum and then applies an IIR comb filter corresponding to the fundamental frequency of warning sounds. The system calculates the ratio of the mean of the absolute values of the input signal to the output signal of the comb filter. If the ratio is smaller than a threshold, the system judges that warning sounds exist. As an experiment result, the proposed system can detect the ambulance sirens with accuracy above of 94% under noisy environments of SNR 0 dB, while over-detection rate is less than 3%. In an experiment using five real sounds recording approaching siren on the road, its accuracy ranges from 30 to 82%.

In the class of practical lesson such as painting or modeling to hearing impaired students, conventional translation services do not make enough effects because students cannot see a signer or captioning texts and teacher’s operation simultaneously. To solve the problem, we propose a tabletop projection system with special software which displays synchronized explanation texts which is prepared in advance. With this system, the teacher can project text information just besides operation area on the table. To control the timing of changing those texts, the teacher use foot pedals. Hearing impaired students’ answers for questionnaires after a practical lesson of Manga drawing with proposed system showed that it was useful for such a lesson.

This paper is discussing Universal Curriculum Design in Higher Education for curriculum delivered on and using the facilities of Smart Devices. The case study in Australia (2012-2013) was focused on universal design and pedagogical approach involving a literature review and an analysis of the university context with a placement orientation module design in the spirit of inclusive practice for delivery via smart devices. Through legislative requirements the majority of Smart Devices are developed with inbuilt accessibility features. Developing curriculum using Universal Design Principals ensures that students and faculty have the opportunity to maximize the capability and facilities of their Smart Devices. Contemporary working and learning environments depend on ICT integration. Smart environments such as smart phones are facilitating ubiquitous engagement. University education has to prepare graduates to take proactive roles in engaging with ICT providing them with learning environments that both model and demonstrate best practice.

This paper explored if the ICT skills is different between students with/without learning disabilities across the grades. Meanwhile the current paper also explored if the structural equation modeling (SEM) is different between the students with/without learning abilities. 547 students with LD and 2298 students without LD from grade 3 to grade 9 participated in this survey. The results indicated that although the ICT skill is different between the students with/without LD, the structure of model is similar between the two groups.

The purpose of this study is to develop a computer–based Chinese handwriting assessing system. This on-line evaluation system consist two kinds of input modules, one is copying Chinese characters and the other is memory writing. This system can provide immediate information about students’ handwriting process and products. The parameters of process record the spatial and temporal characteristics of handwriting, which including the total time of writing, on paper time, in air time, the ratio of in-air time/ on-paper time, and the speed. The parameter of production is accuracy of handwriting. 25 children aged between 8 and 10 years with dysgraphia and 50 typically developing children of similar age participated in this study. The results indicated that children with dysgraphia had significantly lower accuracy rate in both copy and memory writing tasks. Children with dysgraphia also demonstrated grater the ratio of in-air time/ on-paper time in both copy and memory writing complex characters. The system proposed in this study is able to record the real time handwriting performance of pupil with and without writing difficulties. The kinematic and kinetic indicators provide more information about how children control their motion when writing. Further studies can include more writing forms, such as copying, writing in memory, dictation, and free writing in the assessment system to comprehensively understand the writing problems of the children with dysgraphia.

The evolution of any product is usually in response to perceived benefits; either for the workflow, cost-benefit or for the end users. The development of accessible digital print resources at source of publication is uniquely advantageous in many ways. A system with improved accessibility for humans also enables content to be machine read[1]. Although the global publishing and digital distribution industries have not uniformly embraced accessibility, the United Kingdom (UK) has been able to make significant positive progress. The UK has not embraced a specific disability ebook format and distribution system; instead, through a model of cross-industry stakeholder engagement, a cultural shift has begun to embed accessibility at source within the publishing industry. The authors maintain that the cultural change witnessed is not a coincidence and has its roots in a particular set of catalysts being initiated by stakeholders resulting in a model that could be replicated.

A software solution for teaching Braille letter recognition to very young blind children is presented which allows them to interact with the computer by manipulating NFC-tag embedded blocks with Braille letters embossed on their sides. Braille letter recognition is taught and reinforced through various exercises and games and auditory feedback is provided via a speech interface. By embedding interactivity into physical blocks, our system provides the best of both worlds: the manipulation and exploration of physical objects in accordance with the sensory dependence and developmental needs of young children and the exploitation of the power of digital technology to extend and enhance the learning process taking place through traditional exploratory play. Furthermore, this is a cost-effective solution and does not require children to have previous experience with computers. This system can be easily adapted in the future to teach other concepts such as Braille numbers, shape or texture recognition.

Fingerspelling is a critical communication of sign language used not only by deaf children but also by parents, teachers and interpreters who support them. The recognition of fingerspelling is particularly difficult for sign language learners and support software for practice is particularly limited due to the fluid and natural way that signers will spell with their hands. Any software tool that helps people practice reading fingerspelling must be natural enough to represent the fluidity of this motion while at the same time being flexible enough to spell any list of words in the target language in any order.

To address these needs, this paper introduces a novel mobile app called "Fingerspelling Tutor" that produces natural full-motion fingerspelling using a realistic 3D computer animated character. The app can fingerspell any word that the user types in and can provide practice and quizzing opportunities for the user that are not limited to a fixed set of word lists. The software also allows users to post on social media sites to share their progress with fellow students.

Compared to numerous studies in dyslexia, there is still a paucity of research exploring dyslexia in Arabic and especially the issues that arise in deciding the success or failure of Arabic dyslexia training tools. The present research attempts to address this gap by developing an Arabic Framework for Dyslexia Training Tools (AFDTT) that can be utilized to support the design and guide the evaluation of such training tools. This paper demonstrates the development, confirmation and refinement of the AFDTT. Drawing upon established theories and prior research findings, the initial version of the proposed framework has been developed. Confirmation and refinement involving feedback from content experts were carried out on the components of the proposed framework.

Children with intellectual challenges (IC) are growing up with wide exposure to computer technology. Computer software and assistive devices have the potential to help these children in their education, career development, and independent living. In spite of the current spread of the use of computers in education in the Arab world, complete suites of solutions for children with IC are very scarce. This paper presents a fully accessible Arabic learning platform for assisting IC children in the State of Qatar. The platform provides four main components which are divided into learning management content, multimedia educational tutorials, edutainment games, and ontology-based learning with the aim of enhancing those children skills, understanding, communications, and memorization skills, while overcoming their obesity problems. The effectiveness of the proposed platform has been tested on IC children, and the results show clear advances on such children’s learning capabilities and improved largely their performance.

Young children typically learn skills and knowledge through play and the exploration of their environment. In the last few years, many preschool children have also had the experience of playing on their parent’s smart phone and/or tablet. Although, there is some research that indicates that exploration that includes the use of digital technologies can support the development of preschool children, research looking specifically at learning with the iPad for preschool children is just beginning to emerge. The focus of this study was to look at the use of the iPad by preschool children with special needs over a 6 week period of time.

Touch interaction has become a popular and widespread interaction technique. Recent studies indicate significant potential for touch interaction with regard to the integration of older adults into the world of ICT. We carried out a study with the goal of gaining deeper insight into performance differences between young and old users as well as the influence of tablet device orientation on performance. We implemented an application for the iPad that measures various performance characteristics when performing six gestural tasks—tap, drag, pinch, pinch-pan, rotate left and rotate right—for both portrait and landscape orientations. Results showed the importance of device orientation as an influencing factor on performance and indicate that age is not the exclusive influencing factor on touch interaction performance.

In this paper we describe a tablet-based system that is designed to help students with partial sight access math and science lecture material in and out of the classroom. The instructor writes material on the whiteboard, that has a Mimio Capture bar affixed magnetically as well as sleeves for the markers. The lecture material is sent as written strokes that the iOS app displays for the student in real-time. Students can adjust the size and contrast of the material, as well as write notes on the lecture itself for later viewing. The access to lecture provided by the system provides students the ability to follow an active lecture and take more ownership over learning through note taking.

The use of the iPad as a mobile learning tool in post-secondary set-tings with students with disabilities is an area still relatively unstudied. This research study investigates how 2 post-secondary students with disabilities participating in a university course, used iPads in their studies. The study examines: how students used the iPad; if the iPad, the course materials on the iPad, and the apps helped to support students in their course work; what issues arose and how they were addressed; and what kinds of supports the students needed to use this tool effectively in their studies.

Of the paper “Different ICT Competency but Similar Pattern between Students with/without Learning Disabilities?” on pages 528-531 of this publication, the name of the author Ting-Fang Wu was inadvertently omitted in the originally published version. The order of the authors and affiliations should read as below:

Ming-Chung Chen

1

, Chen-Ming Chen

1

, Ting-Fang Wu

2

, Ya-Ping Wu

1

, Chien-Chuan Ko

3

, and Yao-Ming Yeh

4

1

Department of Special Education, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan,

tomson2@ms18.hinet.net

,

{mtchen,ping78kimo}@mail.ncyu.edu.tw

2

Graduate Institute of Rehabilitation Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan,

tfwu@ntnu.edu.tw

3

Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan

kocc@mail.ncyu.edu.tw

4

Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan,

ymyeh@ice.ntnu.edu.tw

The paper starting on page 482 of this publication has been retracted because a significant amount of material was taken verbatim and without permission from the publication “FABRIK: A fast, iterative solver for the Inverse Kinematics problem” by Andreas Aristidou and Joan Lasenby, © 2011 Elsevier Inc.