Computers Helping People with Special Needs

The paper present the case study of the LIA services aimed at providing accessible e-books for blind and visual impaired readers in the mainstream publishing distribution channels. The service had been launched in June 2013 and the catalogue offers at the time of the publication of the paper more than 6.000 accessible e-books of fiction and non fiction, mainly new titles and best sellers. More than 400 titles are added every month thanks to the collaboration of more than 65 Italian publishers.

Descriptive video service (DVS) is the main method of making programs accessible to those with seeing disabilities, but only a few of conventional broadcasting programs have been reproduced in the form of DVS contents because of practical limitations. It takes much of the time and professional manpower to produce the DVS contents so it is quite costly. In this paper, we propose semi-automatic DVS authoring method. Non-dialog sections detected through audio/subtitles analysis are recommended and then the author is able to insert appropriate audio description (AD) scripts and to produce their synthesized AD using TTS easily. Currently we have completed a basic study and developed the trial version of the proposed.

In this study, questionnaire surveys were conducted with film producers/directors and deaf and hard-of-hearing people to consider the issues surrounding subtitling of films for people with hearing impairment in Japan. The results show that only a small number of film producers taking part in this study have engaged in subtitling, and a majority pointed out the low profitability of producing subtitles under circumstances where the actual movie-viewing demand of hearing-impaired people is unclear. On the other hand, the survey of deaf and hard-of-hearing people revealed the actual movie-viewing tendencies of people with hearing impairment equal to that of hearing people and their high expectations regarding subtitles, despite limited opportunities to watch Japanese films in movie theaters. These results suggest possibilities of creating new economic models for increasing production and access to subtitles for hearing-impaired people sustainably.

The paper differentiates three dimensions of access for eInclusion instruments: Firstly, digital media are understood as environments that offer multiple channels for interaction between persons with disabilities and their environment. This dimension is challenged by barriers that hinder people to use digital media. Peer support could be understood as a second dimension: Social media can empower people to act as social innovators and help people with disabilities. Barriers are identified in the effort that has to be done or in unsuitable ICT-applications. On a third dimension, the advantages of “space” are explored: Public internet access points can be understood as a “space” that offers ICT access, support for individual needs and competences, facilitated by specialized staff. The high costs, missing political backing and need for competences could be understood as main barriers here. The paper suggests to capitalize on social innovation approaches to design new support instruments for eInclusion.

We explore the efficacy of tactile captions as a supplement to online captioned video. Closed captions are not fully accessible, because many auditory signals are not easily represented by words, e.g., the sound of the ball being hit by a bat, or to describe a ring tone. The goal is to explore whether audiovisual information can be effectively represented through an equivalent tactile-visual interface. We compare viewers preferences between viewing video with captions alone, and captions plus tactile captions. Our study showed that viewers significantly preferred tactile captions to captions.

We propose a captioning system with a function of inserting mathematical formula images. [We match/The system matches?] mathematical formulas presented orally during a lecture with those simultaneously projected on a screen in the lecture room. We then manually extract the mathematical formula images from the screen for displaying on the monitor of the system. A captionist can input mathematical formulas by pressing a corresponding function key. This is much easier than inputting mathematical formulas by typing. We conducted an experiment in which participants evaluated the usefulness of the proposed captioning system. Experimental results showed that 14 of the 22 participants could input more sentences when using the function of inserting mathematical formula images than when not using it. Furthermore, from the results of a questionnaire, we could confirm that the proposed system is effective.

This paper describes a new important enhancement to Synote, the freely available, award winning, open source, web based application that makes web hosted recordings easier to access, search, manage, and exploit for learners, teachers and other users. The feature supports ‘flipped’ classrooms and allows students to ask questions through annotations on their personal mobile devices while also being able to remotely control and play relevant video fragments.

The purpose of this study was to examine the listening speed of the Korean TTS for the blind based on their screen reader experiences. Among ten participants, five people have used a screen reader and the other five had few experiences of using a screen reader. Participants were asked to recall what they heard after they listened to the same sentences for ten repeated sentence sets, and they were asked to recall what they heard after they heard different sentences for the five random sentence sets. For all sentence sets, sentences were provided with fifteen differentiated speeds ranged from 0.8 to 3.6. The results showed that there were positive correlations between participants’ screen reader experiences and their listening speed of the Korean TTS, and between the familiarity of sentences and the differences in the listening speed.

The broadcasting and the Internet are important parts of modern society that a life without media is now unimaginable. However, hearing impaired people have difficulty in understanding media content due to the loss of audio information. If subtitles are available, subtitling with video can be helpful. In this paper, we propose a dynamic subtitle authoring method based on audio analysis for the hearing impaired. We analyze the audio signal and explore a set of audio features that include STE, ZCR, Pitch and MFCC. Using these features, we align the subtitle with the speech and match extracted speech features to subtitle as different text colors, sizes and thicknesses. Furthermore, it highlights the text via aligning them with the voice and tagging the speaker ID using the speaker recognition.

This paper presents the results of an experiment conducted with nine blind subjects for the evaluation of two audio restitution methods for headings, using Text-To-Speech. We used specialized audio and two voices to demarcate headings. This work is part of a research project which focuses on structural in-formation accessibility for the blind in digital documents.

Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) content is expected to gain popularity gradually among the visually impaired according to the prevalence of e-book reading devices and the development of text-to-speech (TTS) technology. However, the development of DAISY-formatted e-books, which is undertaken by volunteers, is a time-consuming process, making it difficult to meet end user requirements. In this report, we propose a content transliteration system that can convert plain text to DAISY content including formatted HTML and audio data via automatic TTS technology. Furthermore, using the graphic user interface of the proposed system, users can correct text and accent information by inputting ruby-type data. Through this functionality, we aim to target support for transliteration workers such as volunteers, teachers, and parents to make and edit contents easily and quickly for the visually impaired. Finally, we present the results of a preliminary evaluation using the proposed method in order to compare it with the conventional method.

The main focus of the present study lies on patterns and characteristics of hand movements when participants with blindness receive typographic meta-data (bold and italic) by touch through a braille display. Patterns and characteristics were investigated by the use of six-dot braille and eight-dot braille code in conjunction with types of reading errors. The results depicted that the participants’ reading errors (phonological type) were similar in both braille codes. In addition, the participants performed more fluid hand movements when they used the six-dot braille code, whereas they spent less time when they were reading through eight-dot braille. The focus of the discussion was placed on the importance of the development of a suitable design of tactile rendition of typographic signals through six or eight-dot braille code in favor of better perception and comprehension.

Our concept of communicative images aims to provide graphical information by means of dialogue interaction, which is suitable for people with various disabilities. Communicative images are graphical objects integrated with a dialogue interface and linked to an associated knowledge database which stores the semantics of the objects depicted. This paper deals with the utilization of formal ontologies for the process of image annotation and dialogue-based investigation in the context of assistive technologies.

Active and passive accessibility are two manner to improve web accessibility. While active accessibility mostly relies on norms and recommendations, it is practically proved that it is not sufficient. Passive accessibility is achieved by

a posteriori

content transformations. The Smart Web Accessibility Platform (SWAP) is a set of open source tools designed to tackle the passive accessibility problem of web contents. This article presents the goals and aims of SWAP through its main components: the proxy, the server and the annotation tool. The annotation tool is built using the proxy of SWAP. We explain how such design allows the annotation tool to be maintainable, independent of the browser and very flexible compared to other design.

The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) were first published 15 years ago. Since then, there has been a lot of progress in web accessibility, but much work is still needed to reach good levels of accessibility. It is therefore important to measure the degree of accessibility of current websites and the rate of improvement. There have been several studies on the implementation of web accessibility in Europe and the world, but such studies are unstable, with a methodology and sample that changes from year to year. The Iberoamerican Observatory presented in this paper aims to correct this situation, coordinating the work of the observatories of the different participating countries, so that all use the same methodology and a consistent sampling and data structure. Thus, results can be compared within the same country and with the other countries of the region.

The internet has become an indispensable tool for the access of in-formation. However, most websites are not sufficiently accessible for people with disabilities. Accessibility problems originate from either the underlying CMS systems or from content authors disregarding fundamental accessibility requirements. With the Content Accessibility Checker CAC we give a tool at hand to specifically red-flag possible accessibility issues to authors. The checking criteria form a subset of the WCAG 2.0 standard and are published as a checklist for authors and publishers. CAC is available as a browser plugin and is published as open source on github. It is based on JavaScript and can be ex-tended with specific checking rules. In checking mode it detects accessibility is-sues on a website, highlights it with an overlay in the web browser and gives hints and recommendations on improving web accessibility.

Elderly population will become the largest age group of our society in the next twenty years. Consequently, we need to be able to accommodate technologies to the needs of this population. AdaptNow is a web-based application that allows users to adapt existing webpages and turn them more accessible and user friendly. Users can do so directly from any web browser thanks to AdaptNow’s user personalization and automatic adaptation artificial intelligence algorithms. In this paper we present the design and implementation of AdaptNow, a solution that improves navigation on the web for elderly users.

We report the results of a detailed analysis of the problems encountered by blind or vision-impaired persons when accessing web sites which use technologies like, for example, flash animation, JavaScript, HTML 5. We also examine typical accessibility problems found in e-commerce websites, especially in on-line shopping. We check our findings against the WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines and provide detailed recommendations for changes or additions to these guidelines.

CAPTCHAs are a widely deployed mechanism for ensuring that a web site user is a human, and not a software agent. They ought to be relatively easy for a human to solve, but hard for software to interpret. Most CAPTCHAs are visual, and this marginalises users with visual impairments. A variety of audible CAPTCHAs have been trialled but these have not been very successful, largely because they are easily interpreted by automated tools and, at the same time, tend to be too challenging for the very humans they are supposed to verify. In this paper an alternative audio CAPTCHA, jCAPTCHA (Jumbled Words CAPTCHA), is presented. We report on the evaluation of jCAPTCHA by 272 human users, of whom 169 used screen readers, both in terms of usability and resistance to software interpretation.

The European Internet Inclusion Initiative (EIII) presents a new approach by combining the benefits of automated and user testing in order to improve both the quality and the coverage of evaluation results. This paper provides an overview of the challenges posed by online accessibility assessment and outlines the initial steps towards the combination of automated and user testing in the form of crowd sourcing.

The paper gives a short overview on the topic of Massive Open Online Courses and providers of MOOC infrastructure. Selected MOOC-platforms are reviewed for accessibility with different set-ups of common screen-reading software and browsers. No platform was fully accessible, most lacked correct language markers and an accessible design. The results show that accessibility was not in focus when the platforms where built, thus excluding impaired people and not fulfilling the claim that MOOCs are open to everyone.

Since the inception of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), millions of people have benefitted from their provided content. Yet, the question we need to ask is: how accessible are MOOCs especially to the Visually Impaired People (VIP)? In this paper we look thoroughly into the accessibility problems VIP face while using one of the well-know MOOCs environments (Coursera.org) and provide some recommendations to improve its accessibility.

This paper discusses why the inverted foreground and background colors should also be considered when calculating contrast with regard to accessibility. It is even possible to achieve an enhanced contrast for a pair of inverted colors while the pair of non-inverted colors meets the minimum contrast according to the WCAG 2.0. Implementing this benefit would support users with low vision, especially those who need high contrast.

Special needs of intellectually and mentally challenged people are generally not considered in ICT, not even in exemplary accessible websites. In this paper we reveal our scientific approach on how to develop guidelines closing this gap. We describe the process of extracting relevant and easy-to-understand directives from scientific literature addressing different aspects of user interfaces and different cognitive abilities. Considerations on how to further develop and improve these beta guidelines and on how to implement the gained insights in the World Wide Web are discussed.

In this paper, we present results from work done within the project WAI-Act and an online-symposium [1] initiated and put in place by the W3C/WAI RDWG (Research and Development Working Group) aiming at raising awareness and collecting / de-riving concise and up-to-date recommendations, guidelines, standards and tools for enhancing the web experience for users with cognitive disabilities and other groups facing problems with "standard" information on the Web and its applications.

In the last few years, social media spread around the globe. Being a substantial and integral part in today’s everyday life of many people, especially online social networks (OSNs) changed communication behavior fundamentally. Unfortunately, not everybody is integrated in this “new everyday life” yet. In our research, we focus on this important issue of e-inclusion and participation of people with intellectual disabilities in social media. In the context of this paper, we will present a methodology on how to evaluate the perceived ease of use of social media applications by people with intellectual disability. Moreover, we will pre-validate this methodology by applying it in a test setting with a customized barrier-free OSN, developed in our research group. This is the first step for developing a target group specific acceptance model, based on the technology acceptance model.

This paper presents results of an interdisciplinary pre-study that involved people with and without learning disabilities using iPads as a communication tool in their everyday life for self-confidence and empowerment. Main results highlight the accessibility challenges still prevalent: not usability leading to a lack of acceptance; but poor level of awareness of the relevance of media-literate action for the target group; insufficient coaching / personal support; insufficient technical accessibility and assistance.

The ISO-standard PDF/UA-1 with its clearly-defined requirements promises a new era of accessible document creation. But users of word processing software are often overwhelmed when they try to understand how to fulfill the requirements. This leads to our focus in this paper: how can every document author using Microsoft Word be able to create a PDF/UA compliant PDF document without deep knowledge of PDF accessibility or time-consuming quality assurance and remediation? We present a workflow model which enables in combination with a special Word-Add-In the easy creation of accessible PDF documents without special training.

This paper describes the implementation of the PDF Accessibility Validation Engine (PAVE). PAVE is a web based application for identifying and correcting accessibility issues in PDF documents. The accessibility analysis is based on the PDF/UA standard.

We previously introduced the idea of such a system in [1]. The entire application runs on a web server, allowing users to both analyze a PDF document in regard to accessibility issues and then to directly fix these issues within the browser, thus relieving them from installing software. A simple and intuitive user interface allows both experts as well as users with only little previous knowledge of PDF accessibility to work with PAVE.

With the ISO-standard PDF/UA-1 and the free PDF accessibility checker (PAC) 2 it is possible to validate PDF documents for accessibility very easily based on clearly defined requirements. But users who evaluate their documents are often faced with hard to correct errors because the mainstream authoring programs do not fully support PDF/UA yet. Remediation is tedious and time-consuming and sometimes even impossible with available tools. Therefore we worked out the main "last mile" errors and developed a special tool for "quickfixing" these errors – even for document authors without PDF accessibility knowledge on expert level. In this paper we present this approach and the tool.

In 2012, the new standard PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1) was published, specifying the requirements for accessible PDF documents. The Matterhorn Protocol by the PDF Association details the list of 136 test conditions that need to be fulfilled, but so far, there was no test tool to check a given PDF document against these requirements. This paper presents the PDF Accessibility Checker 2.0 (PAC 2), which is the first tool that allows for an automatic test of those 108 test conditions which can be tested fully automatically. The tool provides a de-tailed report of a document analysis, and various features such as visual inspec-tion of standard violations, supporting further improvement of the PDF document. As the PAC 2 is free of charge and can be used without technical knowledge, the tool promotes PDF accessibility among a wider user group and has the potential to increase compliance of PDF documents with the respective accessibility standard.

Many countries, provinces and states have legislation mandating the accessibility of documents and formatted content. There are now existing and emerging standards for specific content formats such as PDF. The question remains as to why there are so many recently produced inaccessible documents if we have tools, legislation and standards clearly mandating accessible documents.

Multimodal fusion and multimodal fission are well known concepts for multimodal systems but have not been well integrated in current architectures to support collaboration of blind and sighted people. In this paper we describe our initial thoughts of multimodal dialog modeling in multiuser dialog settings employing multiple modalities based on W3C standards like the Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces.

Accessible mind maps tools are, due to their visual nature hardly available and, if available, they focus on rendering the structure, not considering nonverbal communication elements in ongoing discussions. In this paper, we describe the need for this type of communication as well as a mind map tool that is capable of processing the respective information, coming from a Leap tracking system attached to the interactive surface.

In co-located meetings, which are part of our professional and educational lives, information exchange relies not only on information exchange using artifacts like bubbles in mind-maps or equations presented on electronic whiteboards in classrooms, but also to a large extent on non-verbal communication. In the past much effort was done to make the artifact level accessible but also non-verbal communication heavily relies on the visual channel to which blind people do not have access. Thereby co-located meetings are seen as first domain to research accessibility of non-verbal communication, which are well defined and should lead to more general research on access to non-verbal communication. We present a first prototypical system which allows experimenting with access to non-verbal communication elements by blind people using both the input from a ”human” transcriber or automatic tracking and recognition of non-verbal communication cues.

The Information State Update (ISU) Model describes an approach to dialog management that was predominantly applied to single user scenarios using voice as the only modality. Extensions to multimodal interaction with multiple users are rarely considered and, if presented, hard to operationalize. In this paper we describe our approach of dialog modeling based on ISU in multiuser dialog settings employing multiple modalities, including nonverbal communication.

Our daily live is no longer imaginable without touch devices. Besides standard touch devices as mobile phones and tablets also touch-tables have the chance to find their way into our daily lives. Co-located meetings can be seen as a good application area for touch-tables. They can present the artifact information layer to the whole group. On touch surfaces virtual keyboards are used by sighted people for text input and text manipulations. For blind people, such keyboards are only accessible with a decreased working speed. In co-located meetings, manipulation of artifacts (for instance bubbles of mind-maps) is very dynamic. Therefore, a decreased working speed to generate and manipulate textual inputs makes an equal participation of blind people in co-located meetings impossible. The ongoing work is concerned with the development of a virtual Braille-keyboard to allow a better integration of blind users into co-located meetings.

Today, research focuses on the accessibility of explicit information for blind users. This gives only partly access to the information flow in brain-storming sessions, since non-verbal communication is not supported. Advances in ICT however allow capturing implicit information like hand gestures as important part of non-verbal communication. Thus, we describe a system that al-lows integrating blind people into a brainstorming session using a mind map.

In this paper, we present an experimental approach to design systems sensitive to emotion. We describe a system for the detection of emotional states based on physiological signals and an application use case utilizing the detected emotional state. The application is an emotion management system to be used for the support in the improvement of life conditions of users suffering from cerebral palsy (CP). The system presented here combines effectively biofeedback sensors and a set of software algorithms to detect the current emotional state of the user and to react to them appropriately.

Emotions are related with many key cognitive processes during human computer interaction (HCI). The aim of this study was to validate usability recommendations depending on user profile, to check the effect of the emotional state on HCI and to compare physiological response analysis and questionnaires. 10 control users and 10 users with upper limb disorders were involved. An orthogonal design with seven usability parameters were used to generate 16 websites with different styles but with the same content. Galvanic skin response and facial electromyography on the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscles were used to assess emotional response, which are related to arousal and valence respectively; and user opinion was collected using a questionnaire. The results showed significant correlations between questionnaires and physiological signals, which are more sensitive to web parameters effect; and most of usability recommendations improve usability but only have a significant influence on users with motor disorders.

People with Diskinetic Cerebral Palsy (DCPs) has speech disorders limiting physical and social activity. Alternative Communication is an alternative to improve capacity. However, participation of DCPs in the development process of DCPs is very uncommon. In this contribution, new methodologies to improve participation of DCPs in a new communicator using physiological signals for interaction is described.

Digital video games offer opportunities for older adults with cognitive impairment to engage in meaningful activities. However, to achieve this benefit digital video games are needed that take account of the players’ cognitive impairment. This paper reports work with older adults with cognitive impairment due to dementia to find out how they can best be prompted to initiate and play games independently, what sorts of digital video activities they like to play, and if playing digital video games is engaging. The results demonstrate that older adults with cognitive impairment can learn to play new digital video activities and can be prompted to play independently through visual and auditory cues. Their behaviour indicates features of Flow similar to that reported in other gaming studies.

This study introduces a serious game, “Gardener”, which is one of the games planned within the “StrokeBack” project. The aim of this game is to support the rehabilitation process of stroke patients with upper limb impairments and damaged psychomotor abilities.

We address the possibilities of truly interactive systems for people with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities (PIMD). These are intended to improve alertness, movement and mood. We are working on an interactive ball that follows body movement and an interactive floor mat for this target group. We explain the key features in the design that are essential for the possible success.

Blind bowling is known as one of the popular sports for the visually impaired people. They can enjoy the bowling with sighted assistant who tells them a number of remaining pins, a ball trajectory, and scores. Bowling is such a well-adapted sports for the visually impaired people, nevertheless they want to acquire all of the information by themselves without support by the assistant. To fill this need, a prototype system was developed as a first step. The system detects the remaining pins and ball trajectory in the area of arrow marks using simple image processing. Severe visually impaired player tested the function of remaining pins and the results proved that the system works well and it is useful and helpful for them. Addition to it, unexpected advantage was discovered. With the prototype system, bowling game became more enjoyable for the blind player since they can also acquire information of remaining pins of other players.

This paper describes a system that combines haptic, virtual reality and game technologies in order to assist repetitive performances of manual tasks to patients, which are recovering from neurological motor deficits. These users are able to feel virtual objects by using a haptic device, which acts as a virtual guide taking advantages of its force feedback capabilities. A virtual environment is used forming a haptic interface between the patient and the game. The haptic device is driven under the users movements and assisted through the Magnetic Geometry Effect (MGE). Preliminary evaluation has been performed in order to validate the system in which two different tasks have been performed (throw down bricks in an hexagonal tower without and with haptic assistance) with the aim to obtain more information related to the accuracy of the device.

The combination of the potentialities of the interactive technologies, like exergames and the emerging motion capture devices with the ability of 3D virtual worlds for socialisation and context, can produce a platform to promote the physical activity of its users, which leverages its potential. The OnlineGym is an exploratory project based on an online 3D virtual worlds platform that allows users to interact with the system through the use of a motion capture device. This paper discusses the chosen technological approaches and the preliminary results of the experiments performed with users.

Sifteo Cubes is an interactive tactile entertainment solution with own unique control interface gestures. The aim of the study was the use of games for wireless cubes in the rehabilitation of people with cognitive impairment staying in the neurology department of the hospital. Most of the exercises provided by physiotherapists can be classified into specific groups of tasks using the same way to resolve. During the analysis of sets of exercises, the following main categories of tasks are proposed: anagrams, memory games, and reflex games. As a part of a pilot program of introduction wireless cubes to the rehabilitation of people with brain injuries, three sample games, one from each category were developed.

The goal of the project was to create a mobile game application for Android OS platform that follows the rules of playing a gamebook. Developed application interacts with user using touch and speech interface, which is crucial in case of blind users. The paragraphs and general game data should be stored in external XML document. Game implementation introduced a form of entertainment for users with vision disabilities and established a speech and tactile interface implementation, which could be also used in implementation of other games, which target blind players.

Future e-identity services will need to be accessible for people with different types of abilities. We review current sets of accessibility guidelines and standards, current assistive technology, and current e-identity technology to determine accessibility and inclusion requirements for a future e-identity solution. For our project, we found that the area we could influence the most was the development of user interface for the client for e-identity and focused on these areas with the assumption that users would have access to inclusive cards and card readers. The requirements are divided into content and presentation, control and operation, legal requirements, testing, and help and support. We also provide possible areas for future research.

Within three main topical areas, the eAccess+ network identified and consulted relevant stakeholder groups, analyzed and discussed the state of the art in eAccessibility, supported stakeholders in working on key issues to foster eAccessibility and disseminated experiences and knowledge all over Europe. Finally, all findings were connected and combined within a roadmap document to find appropriate future actions to support eAccessibility and its uptake.

Most guidelines for making websites accessible for older people have been developed for the Latin alphabet. Currently, there are no web design guidelines for the Thai language or for Thai older people. Our research investigated the effect of font type and size in Thai on skim reading for Thai younger (21-39 years) and older (59-72 years) adults. There were two levels of font types (Conservative and Modern, which correlate to serif and sans serif types, respectively) and three levels of font sizes (12, 14, 16 point). There was a significant effect of font type on reading time per web page, but not for font size or age group. There was also a significant main effect of font type and font size on reader preferences, but no effect of age group. These findings form the basis of recommendations for evidence-based web design guidelines for the Thai language.

Self-service terminals (SSTs) are becoming an increasing important part of the service landscape for both the public and private sector. There is very little information regarding the current state of accessibility practice in this area. This paper presents the results of interviews with 22 stakeholders in the supply and deployment communities for SSTs regarding their knowledge of accessibility issues. The analysis of these interviews helps explain the current poor state of accessibility of SSTs. In addition, we analysed academic literature on self-service technology, particularly from the management and marketing disciplines, to understand their perspectives and see how these could inform the accessibility debate. Finally, building on these analyses, we make recommendations for the ways forward to improve SST accessibility and that of self-service in general and provide an initial information resource to help improve current practice.

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a new accessibility information resource, the Web Accessibility Information Resource (WebAIR), for assisting web developers in the creation of accessible websites and applications. Evaluations were conducted with 26 web developers in which they had opportunity to use both WebAIR and an existing accessibility information resource, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, to perform accessibility testing on their own websites. The results indicate that a number of design decisions relating to the language, organisation and comprehensiveness of WebAIR have been successful in improving access to web accessibility information that supports web developers’ practices.

Object recognition solutions for the visually impaired based on a single modality cannot provide optimal performance under all circumstances, since each modality is best suited for particular usage scenarios. An object recognition application for the visually impaired, meant for a RFID-enabled tablet, which combines three approaches – RFID-based, visual-tag computer vision based and non-visual tag computer vision based – into a single piece of software is, therefore, presented in this paper. This solution has the benefits of being portable, accessible, low cost (the user needs only an RFID-enabled tablet, some inexpensive passive RFID tags and some visual tags (which can be printed out for free)) and more robust in a wider range of conditions than the approaches it is comprised of. The application will be adapted to other mobile platforms and devices (e.g., RFID-enabled smartphones) in the future.

This paper demonstrates the usage of touchscreen interfaces in the Japanese visually impaired population by means questionnaire surveys conducted in 2011, 2012, and 2013. In 2011 and 2013, we carried out usage situations of touchscreens and the reasons why some of them did not use it. The surveys in 2012 and 2013 comprised the questionnaire items regarding specific manipulation situations of touchscreens. Some of the results indicate that an increasing number of visually impaired people used and required to use touchscreen computers; some of them did not want to use it because they were satisfied with conventional cell phones, and because they are waiting for the device which can feedback tactually; the users of touchscreen computers with total and partial vi- sual impairments mainly uses double-tapping after tracing for selecting buttons and objects; The proper uses and manipulations of smartphones and tablet computers mainly depends on the application usability and the screen size, respectively.

Regardless of the improvement of accessibility functions, people with visual impairments have problems using touchscreen computers. Though the size of accessible objects may differ for visually impaired users because of the manipulations under screen readers are different from those without screen readers, the characteristics of desired objects and useful gestures on the touchscreen computers for the visually impaired remain unclear. In this paper, our objective is to clarify the accessible single button characteristics and preferable gestures for visually impaired users of touchscreen computers. We studied these characteristics by evaluating the single button interaction of touchscreen interfaces for visually impaired people under a screen reader condition. As a result, the performance of task completion time on selecting task with a single button decreased as the button size became larger; they were ranked in descending order of double-tapping after flicking, double-tapping after tracing, and split-tapping after tracing.

This paper outlines the development of the AccessBraille framework, an iOS framework designed to provide a Braille keyboard to an iOS application. The proof-of-concept app developed with this framework is presented as an example of how the framework can be utilized, demonstrating its use across multiple contexts where Braille entry is used. The AccessBraille keyboard framework provides a natural way for blind users to enter US Type 1 or Type 2 Braille text into an app. The keyboard allows for users to customize finger placement for comfort and hand size. User feedback was solicited through observation on the task of entering Braille using the framework at various stages of development. In addition, feedback was gathered for the deployed app itself. The feedback will provide input into the prioritization of revisions and new features.

There are a large number of highly structured documents, for example: newspaper articles, scientific, mathematical or technical literature. As a result of inductive research with 200 blind and visually impaired participants, a multi-modal user interface for non-visual presentation, navigation and manipulation of structured documents on mobile and wearable devices like smart phones, smart watches or smart tablets has been developed. It enables the user to get a fast overview over the document structure and to efficiently skim and scan over the document content by identifying the type, level, position, length, relationship and content text of each element as well as to focus, select, activate, move, remove and insert structure elements or text. These interactions are presented in a non-visual way using earcons, tactons and speech synthesis, serving the aural and tactile human sense. Navigation and manipulation is provided by using the multitouch, motion (linear acceleration and rotation) or speech recognition input modality. It is a complete solution for reading, creating and editing structured documents in a non-visual way. There is no special hardware required. For the development, testing and evaluation of the user interface, a flexible platform independent software architecture has been developed and implemented for iOS and Android. The evaluation of the user interface has been undertaken by a structured observation of 160 blind and visually impaired participants using an implemented software (App) over the Internet.

People live longer than ever before and the population of elderly is increasing. Many elderly visit day care centres in order to avoid loneliness and continuously look for new methods of entertainment. A possible new mean of entertainment can be found in the use of tablet applications. However, due to the physical and/or cognitive impairments of these elderly, most tablet applications are not accessible. This research tries to design an elderly-friendly entertainment application. Several design guidelines were determined via a literature review and a contextual inquiry for the design of three prototypes. These prototypes successfully eliminated problems concerning button size, navigation, readability of the fonts and swiping. Furthermore, results indicated that the elderly had a strong preference for the design which had a low number of icons, a more direct way of giving information, no deep hierarchy, larger buttons with immediate feedback when pressed, a clear notification that the screens had changed and the screens which used bright colours were more effective.

The aim of this study was the analysis of existing sets of rehabilitation exercises for possible adapting them to mobile devices (tablets). We analyzed more than 300 different memory tasks presented on the pages of workbooks. Numerous tasks were classified to different categories because of the type of content and cognitive functions trained. For each type there was assigned a certain number of specific tasks. In each type the feasibility of adaptation for tablets (full, partial, impossible) and complexity of interaction (entering characters, indication, drag&drop) were evaluated. That is a big help for many older people (most of the patients in the Rehabilitation Center), because they have problems entering text with the virtual keyboard displayed on the screen.

We are developing a location-based information delivery system to facilitate efficient and safe use of public transportation by people who have visual or cognitive impairments. This system comprises Wi-Fi beacons (access points) that are placed at bus stations and inside bus vehicles. Users of this system receive information on their cell phone, without the need for GPS or for Internet connectivity. The system allows one to receive information about an upcoming bus at a bus stop and to select a specific bus line. Once the desired bus arrives, the system automatically connects to the access point on the bus vehicle and remains connected while the user is riding the bus. The user can specify a desired bus stop, and the system informs the user (by a speech message) with enough advance notice when the bus is approaching the stop.

The main research about indoor navigation is about the use of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Ultra Wide band technology for locating one person in a building. These systems give an absolute position of the person; however, it is mandatory to put the hotspots of every technology in the building for calculating this position. An Inertial Measurement Unit is usually placed on the foot because, it is easier to compute the distance. The aim of this work is to use inexpensive sensors which come in a Smart Phone, which are handheld, or belt mounted for guiding one visually impaired in two main tests: the subway station and the commercial center. We are not intending neither to put any hotspot or landmarks on the place nor to use the IMU on the foot for ergonomic reasons. The results and performances are better in the subway stations than in the commercial centers.

People with disabilities may encounter many communication difficulties. Our main goal is to develop a communication system, called COMMOB, designed to assist people with cerebral palsy in different contexts: at home, at work and in public places. After a brief review of the different categories of assistive communication systems, our user-centered design approach is presented. It was tested in a public place in the context of a help request by a cerebral palsy person in a wheelchair. The result concerns particularly the response rate. The assistive power of COMMOB was rated from the respondents’ and the user’s point of view. The main lesson to be learned is that the most difficult was to attract the attention of people and to engage the interaction.

This paper describes recent progress on Crosswatch, a smartphone-based computer vision system developed by the authors for providing guidance to blind and visually impaired pedestrians at traffic intersections. One of Crosswatch’s key capabilities is determining the user’s location (with precision much better than what is obtainable by GPS) and orientation relative to the crosswalk markings in the intersection that he/she is currently standing at; this capability will be used to help him/her find important features in the intersection, such as walk lights, pushbuttons and crosswalks, and achieve proper alignment to these features. We report on two new contributions to Crosswatch: (a) experiments with a modified user interface, tested by blind volunteer participants, that makes it easier to acquire intersection images than with previous versions of Crosswatch; and (b) a demonstration of the system’s ability to localize the user with precision better than what is obtainable by GPS, as well as an example of its ability to estimate the user’s orientation.

Aiming for older adult’s comfortable and independent outing, we are researching and developing the body water management system according to their outing schedule, their surrounding environment, and their activities like eating and drinking. In this paper, we describe our proposed system, the physiological formula for non-invasive estimation of the body water balance and the method of calculating the suggestion timing.

The number of persons with hearing and vision loss is on the rise as lifespans increase. Vision plays an important role in communication, especially in the presence of background noise or for persons with hearing loss. However, persons with vision loss cannot make use of this extra modality to overcome their hearing deficits. We propose automatically utilizing some visual information in hearing aids through the addition of a small wearable camera. Our initial results show potentially significant benefits to incorporating low level robust visual cues when the background noise is high. This technique can potentially benefit all persons with hearing loss, with substantial improvements possible for the speech perception performance of persons with dual sensory loss.

Autonomous navigation is a critical factor for visually impaired people. Outdoors, positioning based on ubiquitous signals is available, contrary indoors no ubiquitous navigation solution does exist. Because of the implementation of screen-reader software into mobile devices, visually impaired people start using smartphones. This paper focuses on the abilities of an indoor positioning purely based on sensors already present in smartphones nowadays. Therefore, algorithms specifically designed for low-cost sensors are developed. The outcome of these algorithms, which process the accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and barometer data and a WiFi fingerprinting, is integrated within a mathematical filter to get a final position and heading information.

IT-based assistive services offer the potential to support the independent living of people with dementia provided that they accommodate their specific needs. Due to their declining cognitive functions, these users face among other issues a diminishing capacity for problem solving and attention focus. As a consequence they get easily distracted and finally lost while using assistive services. To counteract such situations it is necessary to implement scaffolding features that will assist users in navigating through all relevant sub-tasks. In our user study it was evaluated whether remote collaborative interaction —obtained by offering family carers remote access to assistive services running in the homes of the relatives they care for— could serve as an extended scaffolding feature. The user study has shown promising results because the vast majority of users even in later stages of dementia understood this concept and could achieve a task in collaborative interaction with their relatives.

PALRO is a humanoid type robot which can communicate with human through voice. This paper describes effective application for people with Dementia of PALRO. PALRO, a humanoid communication robot (Fujisoft Co Ltd.). It responds to users’ speaking and even remembers faces of over 100 people. Our team wanted to see how seniors with dementia would react to PALRO and it’s programs. We concluded that the effectiveness of PALRO is encourage people with dementia to interact with others, verbal and non-verbal interactions with others, et cetera.

With the aging of the population the numbers of people with a chronic condition such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are expected to increase. Most people with a chronic condition, such as AD, are cared for by a family member. Although caregiving can be rewarding many caregivers experience emotional distress and physical comorbidities. In this regard, there a broad range of interventions aimed at decreasing caregiver stress. Despite the proliferation of these interventions they have only met with limited success for a variety of reasons. Information technology offers the potential of enhancing the ability of caregivers to access needed services and programs. This paper evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of technology-based psychosocial intervention for family caregivers of AD patients. Overall, the results indicated that the caregivers were enthusiastic about the program, found the technology easy to use, and indicated that the intervention enhanced their access to resources, support and caregiving skills.

Seventeen fifth graders of elementary school in Taipei were administered a web-based AIFD learning system where they practiced aural skills in response to musical intervals, pitch identifications, and rhythms then tested on their recall of these aural skills while using adaptive immediate feedback drill as cues. The pre and post-tests resulted in a significant increase in scores from the pre-test to post-test (t (16) = 2.759, p = .014). Advanced analysis showed significant differences were observed between the pre and post-tests only for the interval recognition (t (16) = 2.634, p = .018). The result of the interviews showed that the teachers and the parents hold positive views on this AIFD learning system. They were satisfied with the progress of the students’ aural skills, participation during the class, and preference on music.

New devices have made their way into everyday life in recent years, opening the doors to new ways of interacting with computers, providing different, and potentially better, solutions to some problems. But this raises the question of if there is any way of measuring whether or not these new devices are suitable. This paper presents a strategy for evaluating the suitability of new interaction devices in the context of teaching children with special educational needs.

Participation in online social networks has considerable potential to empower people with intellectual disability who might experience social isolation in the real world. However, this issue has received little research attention. In response to this challenge, we conducted an accessible online research survey to learn how adults with intellectual disability use and perceive Facebook. Results from 58 respondents indicated that they use Facebook much as non-disabled users do to connect with family members and real-world friends. At the same time, the respondents reported challenges such as privacy setting and literacy demands. We discuss these findings and how to make social networking sites accessible for this population.

People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) find it hard to communicate and interact with other people. Although technology has been involved in sup-porting people with ASD in developed countries, research on such technologies has been mainly related to Western culture. Arab adults with ASD require sup-port for improving their social skills. However, cultural differences could limit the usability of existing technologies. The proposed study aims to investigate the use of social networks for supporting Arab adults with High-Functioning Autism or Asperger syndrome in order to improve their abilities in social situations such as family relations and friendships, considering the influence of culture and tradition views on the usability and sociability of social media technologies.

There has been, in the last ten years, a fast developing interest in the potential use of mobile technology in the classroom and in particular, in the use of such technology to support children with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorders). The HANDS project developed a software application for mobile Smartphones based on the principles of persuasive technology design, which supports children with ASD with social and life skills functioning – areas of ability which tend to be impaired in this population. Issues with the application of a behaviorist approach to the complex social field of special educational needs are considered. An argument is made for the need for ‘thick’ persuasive applications which take account of such complexity including the role of mediating factors. Particular focus is given to qualitative results indicating that user emotional attachment is one such key factor.

This study investigated the effects of the gamification elements of scaffolding, score and hints on the user enjoyment and motivation of people of low literacy. In a four-condition within-subjects experiment, participants per-formed mental spatial ability tests with the aforementioned elements. Quantitative results were inconclusive, but post-test interviews provided insights on the limited effectiveness of the gamification elements. Complex questionnaire wording, high task difficulty, and an improperly situated task environment all contributed to ceiling effects in the influence of scaffolding. Score was found to be ineffective without proper contextualization connecting the numerical score to clearer performance measures. Finally, the underused hints functionality has indicated the need for adequate ‘mixed initiative’ support.

Tangible multitouch tabletops allow multiple users to interact with physical and virtual objects simultaneously and afford natural and intuitive social interactions. Although some applications have shown that multitouch tabletop technology is an applicable technology with potentials for children with ASD, more research is need to understand how to take advantage of the affordance of this technology. This research presents an effort in exploring the potentials of tangible and multitouch games for children with ASD.

This paper reports our work in developing a mobile application, which helps autistic children communicate with those around them, by using PECS symbols to formulate a sentence and later on speak it out loud. The appli-cation in question has gone through a rigorous development process: both the requirements gathering and evaluation for this project have been conducted with experts in the world of autism in order to further establish the soundness of the work. All the issues that were found throughout the evaluation, which was carried out as a cognitive walkthrough, were fixed and suggested additional functionalities were taken into consideration in order to enhance the application with more features. A user-based evaluation, which was conducted in order to further establish the validity of the work, proved that the application was well accepted by the autistic community in the virtual world.

In this paper, we discuss the design and evaluation of a computer game “Guess Who” which was used as a tool to encourage social interaction in autistic children. We performed an evaluation of the game for a span of six weeks at an autistic school in Pakistan. We present the qualitative results collected from the weekly feedback taken from teachers against every child’s behavior. We also present the video analysis results that give us information about the amount of social interaction among children while playing the game.

Nowadays there are many problems with the access to scientific and educational materials for visually impaired people. It especially refers to learning mathematic. Only a small number of such materials is published in a form accessible for blind and low vision people. Particularly, it limits significantly disabled persons to participate in education research and engineering works in many science and technology disciplines. Fortunately new technological solutions, such as e-learning become more and more popular, and many universities use it to improve educational offer and create new possibilities for disabled people. However, in many cases it may cause the problems with accessibility. The article presents developed, intelligent, interactive tutoring platform for math teaching. Currently, the platform is used in the process of education of students from Faculty of Mathematics at Silesian University of Technology, and disabled students from others faculties of the University. The research results clearly indicate the improvement of learning quality by visually impaired people, and also confirm the efficacy of designed rules for adapting mathematical formulas to visually impaired people needs.

This paper is introducing a new concept which is combining gestures and speech in applications to help people navigate through Mathematica notebooks. The application can be used by all people, but it is targeting visually impaired people specifically. On the basis of the $1 gesture recognition algorithm our definition of gestures started and advanced to include the enhancements that took place in the $1 gesture recognition itself. The prototype system allows users to navigate through the Mathematica notebooks on the basis of the tree structure receiving speech as an output. Finally the evaluation and the conclusion that sums the basic concept and the user feedback is also provided in this content.

In this work, a language-independent design methodology for the systematic development of an 8-dot braille code, has been applied to the Nemeth code. First, we set the design principles: compression, intra-similarity, inter-similarity, unambiguity, consistency and foresight. Then, we follow the Nemeth principles: non enclosure, just in time information, be true to the print, good mnemonics and continuous notation. Finally, we introduce 24 transition rules from 6- to 8-dot Nemeth code. Indicative results of the methodology are also presented.

It is well known that mathematics presents a number of hindrances to visually impaired students. In case of function graphs, for example, several assistive solutions have been proposed to enhance their accessibility. Unfortunately, both hardware tools (e.g., tactile paper) and existing software applications cannot guarantee, at the same time, a clear understanding of the graph and a full autonomous study. In this paper we present

AudioFunctions

, an iPad app that adopts three sonification techniques to convey information about the function graph. Our experimental evaluation, conducted with 7 blind people, clearly highlights that, by using

AudioFunctions

, students have a better understanding of the graph than with tactile paper and existing software solutions.

Transcription of study materials into accessible formats is a challenging but necessary task. The sources of study materials vary from images to multimedia files, which often have to be transcribed manually. A fully accessible target format such as HTML is the goal of every transcription process, supported by guidelines and helpful tools. Therefore the transcribers have to deal not only with the content but also with the right usage of the used tools. We show that the usage of the easy to use Markdown language can improve the technical quality and accessibility of the resulting documents. For further improvements of the transcription process several helping tools are presented to simplify and speed up the process as well.

The authors of the proposal are teachers of mathematics for students with visual impairment at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). When giving instruction, they face the following problem: how can blind people use a given mathematical algorithm in view of the fact that they follow all the information in linear way. Often the instructors have to decide whether to adapt such an algorithm or let blind students work with it in the same manner as their sighted peers do. Their goal is to find an optimal set of methods which would respect blind people’s linear manner of working with information and at the same time be sufficiently effective. In their paper, the authors will present several adaptations of two algorithms of Graph Theory. They will assess the pros and cons of all the proposed modifications.

DAISY or accessible EPUB3 could be a good solution to make e-textbooks more accessible. However, unfortunately, a good method to include Braille in them is not established, yet. Due to complicated Situations in Braille notations, automatically converting print contents, especially, ones for math/science into Braille has its own problem. Furthermore, Braille translation in Japanese is usually context-dependent. After reviewing those situations and how Braille is currently treated in DAISY, what are required for Braille capability in DAISY/ accessible EPUB3 are discussed. Based on our DAISY/EPUB3 authoring tools, “ChattyInfty3,” and Braille editor, “BrailleInfty,” a practical solution to realize the Braille capability is given.

Tablet computers are becoming a common tool to support learning since primary school. Indeed, many didactic applications are already available on online stores. Most of these applications engage the child by immersing the educational purpose of the software within an entertaining environment, often in the form of a game with sophisticated graphic and interaction. Unfortunately, this makes most of these applications inaccessible to visually impaired children. In this contribution we present

MathMelodies

, an iPad application that supports math learning in primary school and that is designed to be accessible also to visually impaired children. We describe the main challenges we faced during the development of this didactic application that is both engaging and accessible. The application, currently publicly available, is collecting enthusiastic reviews from teachers, who often contribute with precious insight for improving the solution.

In this paper an interactive workspace designed to help visually impaired students practice the fundamentals of linear algebra is introduced. Unlike most of the approaches, this interactive workspace aims at enhancing math manipulation abilities for students who are visually impaired, mainly dealing with linear algebra expression that requires more complicated techniques in accessing. Read-expression, Hide-Row/Column, and Text-Tools are examples of techniques that the workspace implements. Such techniques are invoked by hot access keys which in turn with audio feedback allow the user to navigate and edit the linear algebra expression, access its elements especially matrices, find the solution and save it for further review and edit. The methodology followed is to list all the operations required in Linear Algebra. Then the tasks which require visual abilities were isolated and implemented in the framework.

This article describes the new LEAN Math application. LEAN Math will input MathML and convert it to an internal representation from which any number of accessible formats can be generated. It is useful for reading math, but its real importance is that it fills a void for blind people who need an efficient, usable tool to create, edit, and manipulate math equations in braille and/or audio. The first application of LEAN Math is as an editor for MathType equations in MS Word, the most popular scientific authoring system today. The editor can open and edit existing equations or create new ones. It also puts a word description or braille translation of the equation into the MathType alt text property. This alt text is read by any screen reader, making MathType equations in MS Word fully accessible. This paper gives a brief overview of its features.

Curve sketching is a hard task for blind and visually impaired pupils and students, but it is an essential part in education. To help those students as well as their colleges, teachers and other people to prepare good tactile function plots the platform independent console program

SVGPlott

was developed. It enables users without any special knowledge about creating graphics for blind or visually impaired people to prepare highly adaptable mathematical function plots in the SVG format, which can also be used for audio-tactile exploration.

SVGPlott

was developed in a user-centered design process, including teachers and users. We show that blind and sighted users can prepare function plots including key as well as an automatically generated textual description not only for tactile, audio-tactile and print output, but also for usage on a dynamic tactile pin device and as a high contrast visualization for low vision people.

This paper describes solutions to improve the access to music for blind people. These solutions are proposed during the European project Music4VIP. The objective of the project is to help teacher to teach music to blind pupils and to create tools which will enable blind people to learn music independently. A method base on SUS questionnaire is described and used to have a quick feedback for users. These first results indicate that users perceive our solution as good but these results have to be consolidated with further surveys with a large number of respondents.

We have been developing the Body-Braille system, which transmits Braille characters to disabled people through vibrations on any part of the body. Five years ago, we began working on music applications of this. Using 9 micro vibrators, any melody with a sound range less than 2 octaves can be expressed by vibration. Last year, we developed the music presentation system using only two vibrators. Using special equipment (Pocket-Body braille, Pocket-Bbrll), we performed two experiments and obtained successful results for applying a small number of vibrations to music expression. The details of the system to present music tone by vibration and the results of the experiment are described.

In an integrated school environment for Mathematics learning, effective communication and collaboration between sighted and non sighted students and teachers is a crucial aspect. Common activities in the classroom as doing dictations, exercises and exams, become cumbersome without an adequate support. We have developed a prototype interface to support these activities using visual, speech and braille output modalities. User testing with students showed that the interface facilitated writing, manipulation and communication.

We introduce and compare three approaches to calculate structure- and content-based performance metrics for user-based evaluation of math audio rendering systems: Syntax Tree alignment, Baseline Structure Tree alignment, and MathML Tree Edit Distance. While the first two require “manual” tree transformation and alignment of the mathematical expressions, the third obtains the metrics without human intervention using the minimum edit distance algorithm on the corresponding MathML representations. Our metrics are demonstrated in a pilot user study evaluating the Greek audio rendering rules of MathPlayer with 7 participants and 39 stimuli. We observed that the obtained results for the metrics are significantly correlated between all three approaches.

It is difficult for blind persons to conduct research using statistical methods in an effective and independent manner. Jonathan Godfrey emphasized the usability of R for blind persons. His BrailleR package can be said to use is the “method of transcribing values represented in graphics into characters.” The author has shown that the advantages of the “method of converting graphics into a tactile graphic.” This research realized access by blind persons to graphics output by R using that method with no human intervention. The software developed through this research was employed the approach of interpreting SVG output produced by RSVGTipsDevice. It was configured that dot size and inter-dot pitch could be defined. An experiment showed that the question of which method is more effectively applied differed according to the experiment participant.

We have been studying the Body-Braille system that transmits Braille characters to disabled people through vibrations on any part of the body. Two years ago, we began to use a SMA (Shape Memory Alloy) device instead of a micro-vibrator. As a result, several advantages were obtained such as smaller equipment size, high resolution transmission, and low power consumption. This year, we developed test equipment for the SMA device which can supply flexible PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) parameters and performed several tests for Braille reading. The test results reveal several possibilities for using a SMA device as a communication channel.

In professional and educational settings, a document’s presentation can be as important as its content. Thus, blind people often rely on sighted help for fear of having their documents treated dismissively or misinterpreted as lack of professionalism or education, by sighted readers when the documents do not meet presentation ‘standards’. Still, most work on helping blind people with word-processed documents focuses on the content rather than the formatting. Our work aims to enable the development of efficient tools to help blind people independently format their documents. We first sought to understand blind peoples’ experiences and issues with document formatting and sighted readers’ strategies and expectations regarding well-formatted documents. As a result, we compiled a set of guidelines for such tools and present them here.

This paper presents an image conversion process on tactile maps intended for the use by people with blindness. This process is based on the image processing which includes image segmentation, shape recognition and text recognition. The proposed approach can be applied to different types of images.

Tailored text input methods for visually impaired and blind users are needed on touchscreen devices to support their accessibility. Therefore, we de-veloped a new Braille-based text input method named EdgeBraille, which allows entering Braille characters by swiping one finger along the edges of the touchscreen. The approach was compared with the current standard method of a talking keyboard, first in a short-term lab study (14 participants) and then during two weeks of daily training (7 participants). Overall EdgeBraille was perceived well by the users. In terms of user performance we found no significant differences between the two methods. Based on the evaluation results and the feedback of our participants, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of Braille-based methods in general and EdgeBraille in particular, as well as possibilities for improvements.

Some mobile devices have been developed for helping the visually-impaired people to obtain useful information from text on documents, goods, and signboards. However, it is still difficult for the blind to find or even notice the text in the environment and to capture the images suitable for character recognition and speech synthesis. We developed a prototype of reading assistant device with a scene text locator that shows the text location by sound signals. To improve the device further, this paper proposes a real-time text tracking method that enables character recognition on-the-fly and also helps the users to obtain the text information easily and efficiently with less searching efforts. The presented method is based on our former one, and provides a new feature that it is tolerant of temporary occlusion or out-of-view of text regions.

Large-scale Braille displays will make participation in modern media society easier for visually impaired people. At the moment extensive research is done on developing new technologies for affordable refreshable Braille displays. However, the developed displays often do not match the user requirements. This is because most of the engineers entrusted with the development know little to nothing about the potential users of their systems. To bridge that gap we carried out an online survey. Within this survey 69 people who either are visually impaired themselves or take care of someone who has lost his/her sight stated their opinion on how a large-scale refreshable Braille display should be designed. The results of this survey were used to build a first prototype of a large-scale refreshable braille display for displaying text and tactile graphics. This prototype relies on cheap, energy efficient microfluidic phase change actuators.

Erratum to:Chapter 81 in: K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.)Computers Helping People with Special Needs,DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-08596-8_81In the original version the following reference was missing:Brzoza, P., Łobos, E., Macura, J., Sikora, B., Żabka, M.: ForMath - Intelligent Tutoring System in Mathematics, 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2012), pp. 118–122, Porto, Portugal, 16–18 April (2012)