| e-Government online forms: design guidelines for older adults in Europe | | BIBAK | DOI | 1-16 | |
| Arthur G. Money; Lorna Lines; Senaka Fernando; Anthony D. Elliman | |||
| This paper reports on the findings of Delivering Inclusive Access to
Disabled and Elderly Members of the community (DIADEM), a 3-year project,
funded by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme, to assist older
adults when accessing, completing, and submitting online forms, by developing
web-based assistive technologies that adapt the online form according to users'
needs. A user-centred approach is adopted to gain insights into the challenges
faced by 80 older adults in three European countries as they interact with a
representative sample of public service-based online forms. A thematic analysis
is then carried out on the data, which revealed five over-arching themes that
relate to the challenges faced by users: assistance, trust, layout, the
technology paradigm, and language. From these themes, 23 online form design
guidelines are derived, which provide valuable guidance for the development of
the DIADEM application and for e-Government online form design for an ageing
population in general. Keywords: Accessibility; Assistive technology; Older adults; e-Government; Online
forms | |||
| Speech-based navigation and error correction: a comprehensive comparison of two solutions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 17-31 | |
| Jinjuan Feng; Shaojian Zhu; Ruimin Hu; Andrew Sears | |||
| Speech-based navigation and error correction can serve as a useful
alternative for individuals with disabilities that hinder the use of a keyboard
and mouse, but existing solutions available in commercial software are still
error-prone and time-consuming. This paper discusses two studies conducted with
the goal of improving speech-based navigation and error correction techniques.
The first study was designed to improve understanding of an innovative
speech-based navigation technique: anchor-based navigation. The second study
was longitudinal, spanning seven trials, and was intended to provide insights
regarding the efficacy of both traditional target/direction-based navigation
and anchor-based navigation. Building on earlier studies that employed similar
methodologies and interaction solutions, this paper also provides an informal
evaluation of a new correction dialogue. Although the two solutions resulted in
the same level of efficiency, the underlying strategies adopted were different,
and the anchor-based solution allowed participants to generate better quality
text and was perceived to be easier to use. These results suggest that the
anchor-based solution could be a promising alternative, especially for novice
users as they learn how to use speech-based dictation solutions. The findings
of these studies need to be further validated with the involvement of users
with disabilities. Keywords: Speech-based interaction; Navigation; Error correction; Empirical
evaluation; Assistive technology | |||
| Quantitative assessment of mobile web guidelines conformance | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 33-49 | |
| Markel Vigo; Amaia Aizpurua; Myriam Arrue; Julio Abascal | |||
| Conformance metrics for the mobile web can play a crucial role as far as
engineering mobile websites are concerned, especially if they are automatically
obtained. In this way, developers can have an idea in numeric terms of how
suitable their developments are for mobile devices. However, there are a
plethora of devices with their own particular features (screen size, formats
support, etc.) that restrict a unified automatic assessment process. This paper
proposes a tool-supported method for device-tailored assessment in terms of
conformance with Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0, including the definition of
five quantitative metrics for automatically measuring mobile web conformance:
Navigability, Page layout, Page definition, User input and Overall score. The
behaviour of these metrics was analysed for different devices and different web
paradigms, both mobile web pages and their equivalent desktop pages. As
expected, the results show that mobile web pages on more capable devices score
higher. In addition, 20 users took part in an experiment aimed at discovering
how conformance-based scores relate to usability dimensions. The results
demonstrate that automatic scoring approaches strongly correlate with usability
scores obtained by direct observation, such as task completion time and user
satisfaction. This correlation is even stronger for the device-tailored
assessment than the one that assumes a general profile for all devices. For
instance, results show a strong negative correlation between Overall score and
task completion time: ρ (9)=-0.81, (p<0.05) for the generalist approach
and ρ (9)=-0.88 for the device-tailored one, entailing that mobile web
guidelines and the metrics based on their conformance capture usability
aspects. This result challenges the widely accepted belief that conformance to
guidelines does not imply more usable web pages, at least for web accessibility
conformance. Keywords: Mobile web; Usability; Metrics; Device-tailored evaluations | |||
| Development of a system usability assessment procedure using oculo-motors for input operation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 51-68 | |
| Minoru Nakayama; Makoto Katsukura | |||
| This paper investigates the relationship between oculo-motors, such as eye-movement and pupillary change, and the conventional subjective "usability" index, using time-domain and frequency-domain approaches, with the objective to determine the possibility of evaluating interaction through oculo-motors. An evaluation experiment was conducted by operating a target on a computer display using mouse, keyboard and key pad as input devices. The results show that there is a significant correlation between pupil size and SU-score, which is an established subjective evaluation index for system usability. Cross spectrum densities (CSD) between horizontal and vertical eye-movements and coherence as standardized CSD also significantly correlate with the results of the SU-scores and error rates. To determine the frequency range of CSD and coherence for usability assessment, frequency components used as factors were extracted using factor analysis. According to the correlation coefficients between these and the performance of factor scores for predicting the conventional metrics, factor scores of CSD are better indices for assessing usability than factor scores of coherence. These two results suggest that pupil size and index of eye-movement as oculo-motor indices based on time-domain and frequency-domain approaches can provide information about a system's overall usability regarding the input operation task. | |||
| BlinkWrite: efficient text entry using eye blinks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 69-80 | |
| I. Scott MacKenzie; Behrooz Ashtiani | |||
| In this paper, a new text entry system is proposed, implemented, and
evaluated. BlinkWrite provides a communication gateway for cognitively able
motor-impaired individuals who cannot use a traditional eye-tracking system. In
contrast to most hands-free systems, BlinkWrite allows text to be entered and
corrected using a single input modality: blinks. The system was implemented
using a scanning ambiguous keyboard, a new form of scanning keyboard that
allows English text to be entered in less than two scanning intervals per
character. In a user study, 12 participants entered text using the system with
three settings for scanning interval: 1,000, 850, and 700ms. An average text
entry rate of 4.8wpm was observed with accuracy>97%. The highest average
text entry rate was achieved with the scanning interval of 850ms. Keywords: Blink typing; Hands free text-entry; Eye typing; Scanning ambiguous
keyboard; Assistive technologies | |||
| Game accessibility: a survey | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 81-100 | |
| Bei Yuan; Eelke Folmer; Frederick C. Harris | |||
| Over the last three decades, video games have evolved from a pastime into a
force of change that is transforming the way people perceive, learn about, and
interact with the world around them. In addition to entertainment, games are
increasingly used for other purposes such as education or health. Despite this
increased interest, a significant number of people encounter barriers when
playing games due to a disability. Accessibility problems may include the
following: (1) not being able to receive feedback; (2) not being able to
determine in-game responses; (3) not being able to provide input using
conventional input devices. This paper surveys the current state-of-the-art in
research and practice in the accessibility of video games and points out
relevant areas for future research. A generalized game interaction model shows
how a disability affects ones ability to play games. Estimates are provided on
the total number of people in the United States whose ability to play games is
affected by a disability. A large number of accessible games are surveyed for
different types of impairments, across several game genres, from which a number
of high- and low-level accessibility strategies are distilled for game
developers to inform their design. Keywords: Game accessibility; Disability; Strategy; Impairment | |||
| The accessibility of university web sites: the case of Turkish universities | | BIBAK | DOI | 101-110 | |
| Serhat Kurt | |||
| The Web has become a part of daily life, and yet web accessibility remains
an important issue because of continuing accessibility problems involving many
web users. Universities utilize the Web for many purposes, and therefore,
university Web sites must be accessible for all. This paper presents the
results of an evaluation of the level of accessibility of Turkish university
homepages. A sample of university homepages was reviewed using multiple
techniques based on The World Wide Web Consortium suggestions. The results
indicated that all university homepages show some accessibility problems.
Several recommendations are provided based on the research findings. Keywords: Accessibility; Post-secondary education; Programming and programming
languages; Computer-mediated communication; Multimedia/hypermedia systems | |||
| Pervasive technologies and assistive environments: social impact, financial, government and privacy issues | | BIB | Full-Text | 111-114 | |
| Ilias Maglogiannis; Fillia Makedon; Grammati Pantziou; Lynne Baillie | |||
| Behavior monitoring for assistive environments using multiple views | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 115-123 | |
| Dimitrios I. Kosmopoulos | |||
| This work presents an approach to behavior understanding using multiple
cameras. This approach is appropriate for monitoring people in an assistive
environment for the purpose of issuing alerts in cases of abnormal behavior.
The output of multiple classifiers is used to model and extract abnormal
behavior from both the target trajectory and the target short-term activity
(i.e., walking, running, abrupt motion, etc.). Spatial information is obtained
after an offline camera registration using homography information. The proposed
approach is verified experimentally in an indoor environment. The experiments
are performed with a single moving target; however, the method can be
generalized to multiple moving targets, which may occlude each other, due to
the use of multiple cameras. Keywords: Behavior monitoring; Homography; SVM; Hidden Markov model | |||
| Extracting spatiotemporal human activity patterns in assisted living using a home sensor network | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 125-138 | |
| Dimitrios Lymberopoulos; Athanasios Bamis; Andreas Savvides | |||
| This paper presents an automated methodology for extracting the
spatiotemporal activity model of a person using a wireless sensor network
deployed inside a home. The sensor network is modeled as a source of
spatiotemporal symbols whose output is triggered by the monitored person's
motion over space and time. Using this stream of symbols, the problem of human
activity modeling is formulated as a spatiotemporal pattern-matching problem on
top of the sequence of symbolic information the sensor network produces, and is
solved using an exhaustive search algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed
methodology is demonstrated on a real 30-day dataset extracted from an ongoing
deployment of a sensor network inside a home monitoring an elder. The developed
algorithm examines the person's data over these 30 days and automatically
extracts the person's daily pattern. Keywords: Human activity model; Spatiotemporal activity patterns; Sensor networks | |||
| Analyzing motoric and physiological data in describing upper extremity movement in the aged | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 139-150 | |
| Gaurav N. Pradhan; Navzer Engineer; Mihai Nadin; B. Prabhakaran | |||
| Cognitive functions, motoric expression, and changes in physiology are often
studied separately, with little attention to the relationships or correlations
among them. The study presented in this paper implements an integrated approach
by combining motion capture (action) and EMG (physiological) parameters as
synchronized data streams resulting from the action and associated
physiological data. The reported experiments were designed to measure the
preparatory movement capabilities of the upper extremities. In particular,
measurement of changes in preparatory activity during the aging process is of
interest in this context, as the attempt is to develop means to compensate for
loss of adaptive capabilities that aging entails. To achieve this goal, it is
necessary to quantify preparation phases (timing and intensity). Motion capture
and EMG parameters were measured when subjects raised their arms without
constraint (condition one) and raised their arms while holding a ball (second
condition). Furthermore, on comparing aging and young participants, it was
confirmed that with aging the temporal relationships between actual movement
and the preceding EMG signal change. Keywords: Aging; Analysis of variance; Factor analysis; Electromyogram; Motion capture | |||
| Accessible interactive television using the MPEG-21 standard | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 151-163 | |
| Evangelos Vlachogiannis; Damianos Gavalas; George E. Tsekouras; Christos N. Anagnostopoulos | |||
| In this paper, the accessibility of interactive television (iTV) is
discussed as a primary factor for its satisfactory adoption and commercial
success. The work presented here is undertaken in the context of a research
project that focuses on delivering iTV services to disabled children. This
objective is accomplished through the utilization of the arising MPEG-21
standard. Based on that standard, iTV accessibility is investigated in terms of
metadata and content adaptation. The novelty of the contribution lies on a
systematic methodology that deals with a wide range of accessibility problems,
as opposed to previous studies that focus mostly on users with only one
specific disability. Keywords: Accessible interactive TV; MPEG-21; Content adaptation approach; Metadata;
Pervasive environments; Collaborative filtering | |||
| Design and evaluation of haptic effects for use in a computer desktop for the physically disabled | | BIBAK | DOI | 165-178 | |
| Brian Holbert; Manfred Huber | |||
| The human-computer interface remains a mostly visual environment with little
or no haptic interaction. While haptics is finding inroads in specialized areas
such as surgery, gaming, and robotics, there has been little work to bring
haptics to the computer desktop, which is largely dominated today by the
GUI/mouse relationship. The mouse as an input device, however, poses many
challenges for users with physical disabilities, and it is believed that a
haptically enhanced interface could have significant impact assisting in target
selection. This paper presents a study intended to evaluate haptic effects used
with a force feedback mouse on a computer desktop and a prediction algorithm
designed to focus those effects on the desired target. Results of the
experiment were partially successful and indicated future directions for
improvement. The paper introduces the proposed framework and presents
experimental results from targeting tasks using differing haptic effects with a
group of physically disabled users. Keywords: Haptic interface; Haptic mouse; Targeting; Target prediction | |||
| A cognitive framework for robot guides in art collections | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 179-193 | |
| Dimitrios Vogiatzis; Vangelis Karkaletsis | |||
| A basic goal in human-robot interaction is to establish such a communication
mode between the two parties that the humans perceive it as effective and
natural; effective in the sense of being responsive to the information needs of
the humans, and natural in the sense of communicating information in modes
familiar to humans. This paper sets the framework for a robot guide to visitors
in art collections and other assistive environments, which incorporates the
principles of effectiveness and naturalness. The human-robot interaction takes
place in natural language in the form of a dialogue session during which the
robot describes exhibits, but also recommends exhibits that might be of
interest to the visitors. It is also possible for the robot to explain its
reasoning to the visitors, with a view to increasing transparency and
consequently trust in the robot's suggestions. Furthermore, the robot leads the
visitors to the location of the desired exhibit. The framework is general
enough to be implemented in different hardware, including portable
computational devices. The framework is based on a cognitive model comprised of
four modules: a reactive, a deliberative, a reflective and an affective one. An
initial implementation of a dialogue system realising this cognitive model is
presented. main ontology. Keywords: HCI; Dialogue system; Cognitive architecture; Recommender system;
Explanations | |||
| Dynamic mix zone: location data sanitizing in assisted environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 195-205 | |
| Zhengyi Le; Yi Ouyang; Guanling Chen; Fillia Makedon | |||
| Pervasive technology has been widely used in assistive environments and
aware homes. The issue of how to preserve the privacy of patients being
monitored has been attracting more public concerns. In assistive environments,
location data of patients are collected through sensors for behavior patterns
analysis, and they can also be shared among researchers for further research
for early disease diagnosis. However, location information, even though
de-identified, also introduces the risk of privacy leakage. A series of
consecutive location samples can be considered as a trajectory of a single
person, and this may leak private information if obtained by malicious users.
This paper discusses this problem and proposes a location randomization
algorithm to protect users' location privacy. Two privacy metrics according to
location privacy are defined and used to evaluate the proposed approach. A
method using dynamic mix zones is proposed to confound trajectories of two or
more persons. Keywords: Location privacy; Assisted living; Sensor networks | |||
| A scalable and self-adapting notification framework for healthcare information systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 207-216 | |
| Anthony E. Okorodudu; Leonidas Fegaras; David Levine | |||
| There has been a great interest in publish/subscribe systems in recent
years. This interest, coupled with the pervasiveness of light-weight electronic
devices, such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants, has opened a
new arena in publish/subscribe networks. Currently, many broker overlay
networks are static and rarely change in structure. Often, a network overlay
structure is predefined or manually modified. This paper presents a dynamic
broker network for disseminating critical lab and patient information in a
Healthcare information system. The reported work builds upon previous network
optimization research on ad hoc publish/subscribe networks. The underlying
framework utilizes user-defined cost functions to satisfy quality of service
constraints. In essence, the broker network optimization problem is reduced to
an incremental search problem to generate low cost network configurations.
Certain reliability issues are also addressed by providing a scheduling
algorithm to selectively retransmit information and handle broker connectivity
failures. Keywords: Publish/subscribe; Broker overlay network; HIPAA; Healthcare information
system | |||
| An assistive environment for improving human safety utilizing advanced sound and motion data classification | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 217-228 | |
| Charalampos Doukas; Ilias Maglogiannis | |||
| This paper presents the concept and an initial implementation of an
assistive awareness system that may be used for human activity interpretation
and emergency recognition in cases such as elder or patient falls and distress
speech expressions, thus improving their safety. Awareness is achieved through
collecting, analyzing and classifying motion and sound data. The latter are
collected through sensors equipped with accelerometers and microphones that are
attached to the human body and transmit movement and sound data wirelessly to
the monitoring unit. The detection of fall incidents has been proven to be
feasible by applying Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) and spectrogram
analysis on sounds. The classification of the sound and movement data is
performed using a variety of advanced classification techniques. Evaluation
results provide a performance comparison between the evaluated classifiers and
indicate the high accuracy and the effectiveness of the proposed
implementation. The system architecture is open and can be easily enhanced to
include patient awareness based on additional context (e.g., physiological
data). Keywords: Patient status awareness; Emergency event detection; Movement and sound
analysis; SVM classification | |||
| In memory of Professor Hiroshi Tamura | | BIB | Full-Text | 229-230 | |
| Takao Kurokawa | |||
| Innovations in user sensitive design, research and development | | BIB | DOI | 231-233 | |
| Ray Adams; Alan Newell; Peter Gregor | |||
| User-Sensitive Inclusive Design | | BIBAK | DOI | 235-243 | |
| A. F. Newell; P. Gregor; M. Morgan; G. Pullin; C. Macaulay | |||
| Although "User-Centred", "Participatory", and other similar design
approaches have proved to be very valuable for mainstream design, their
principles are more difficult to apply successfully when the user group
contains, or is composed of, older and/or disabled users. In the field of
design for older and disabled people, the "Universal Design", "Inclusive
Design" and "Design for All" movements have encouraged designers to extend
their design briefs to include older and disabled people. The downside of these
approaches is that they can tend to encourage designers to follow a traditional
design path to produce a prototype design, and only then investigate how to
modify their interfaces and systems to cope with older and/or disabled users.
This can lead to an inefficient design process and sometimes an inappropriate
design, which may be "accessible" to people with disabilities, but in practice
unusable. This paper reviews the concept that the authors have called
"User-Sensitive Inclusive Design", which suggests a different approach to
designing for marginalised groups of people. Rather than suggesting that
designers rely on standards and guidelines, it is suggested that designers need
to develop a real empathy with their user groups. A number of ways to achieve
this are recommended, including the use of ethnography and techniques derived
from professional theatre both for requirements gathering and for improving
designers' empathy for marginalised groups of users, such as older and disabled
people. Keywords: User-Centred Design; Inclusive Design; Universal Design; Older and disabled
people | |||
| The effect of previous exposure to technology on acceptance and its importance in usability and accessibility engineering | | BIBAK | DOI | 245-260 | |
| Andreas Holzinger; Gig Searle; Michaela Wernbacher | |||
| In Usability and Accessibility Engineering, metric standards are vital.
However, the development of a set of reciprocal metrics -- which can serve as
an extension of, and supplement to, current standards -- becomes indispensable
when the specific needs of end-user groups, such as the elderly and people with
disabilities, are concerned. While ISO 9126 remains critical to the usability
of a product, the needs of the elderly population are forcing the integration
of other factors. Familiarity and recognisability are not relevant to someone
with no experience and therefore no referent; however, acceptance becomes a
major factor in their willingness to learn something new and this acceptance
requires trust based on association. Readability and legibility are of less
relevance to a blind person than to someone with failing eyesight. This paper
describes some usability metrics ascertained on the basis of experiments made
with applications for elderly people throughout the summer term of 2007. The
factors that influence the older users' acceptance of software, including the
extent of their previous exposure to technology, are evaluated in order to
provide short guidelines for software developers on how to design and develop
software for the elderly. The evaluation of the expectations, behavior,
abilities, and limitations of prospective end-users is considered of primary
importance for the development of technology. A total of N = 31 participants
(22 women/9 men) took part in various tests. The participants' ages ranged from
49 to 96 years with an average age of 79. Five of the tests were designed for a
PDA or cellular phone, one test was designed for a laptop PC. Of the total of
55 tests, 52 tests provided sufficient data to evaluate the results. In 23 of
the tests, all tasks were completed. As a main outcome, it can be
experimentally proved that the acceptance is related to a factor, which is this
paper is called PET (Previous Exposure to Technology). This is discussed in
light of the aforementioned metrics. Keywords: Usability metrics; Acceptability; Previous experience; Previous knowledge;
Acceptance; Acceptability; Technology acceptance model | |||
| The barriers that older novices encounter to computer use | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 261-266 | |
| Anna Dickinson; Roos Eisma; Peter Gregor | |||
| A course on computers was run for computer beginners aged over 55. An
iterative and flexible approach aimed to ensure that students' anxieties and
difficulties were addressed as the course proceeded. Several layers of
difficulty were encountered, ranging from initial difficulties understanding
Windows systems and the working of the mouse to more fundamental and long-term
problems such as repeatedly forgetting to move the focus before typing or
failing to recognize onscreen objects and understand their behaviours.
Inclusive design approaches should benefit from detailed recording of barriers
to use, but the diversity of the user population will also necessitate
flexibility to ensure inclusivity. Keywords: Older adults; Barriers; Inclusion | |||
| Dialogue based interfaces for universal access | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 267-274 | |
| Christian R. Huyck | |||
| Conversation provides an excellent means of communication for almost all
people. Consequently, a conversational interface is an excellent mechanism for
allowing people to interact with systems. Conversational systems are an active
research area, but a wide range of systems can be developed with current
technology. More sophisticated interfaces can take considerable effort, but
simple interfaces can be developed quite rapidly. This paper provides an
introduction to the current state of the art of conversational systems and
interfaces. It describes a methodology for developing conversational interfaces
and gives an example of an interface for a state benefits website. The paper
discusses how this interface could improve access for a wide range of people
and how further development of this interface would allow a larger range of
people to use the system with enhanced functionality. Keywords: Dialogue; Universal access; Conversational system; Conversational interface | |||
| User modelling and cognitive user support: towards structured development | | BIBAK | DOI | 275-293 | |
| Peter Eberle; Christian Schwarzinger; Christian Stary | |||
| Model-driven engineering approaches have turned out useful when handling
different perspectives on human-computer interaction, such as user profiles and
problem-domain data. Their latest flavour, Model-Driven Architecture (MDA),
targets towards platform-independent models (PIMs) and adjacent transformation
mechanisms to adapt to user needs and tasks. Although in the field of user
modelling and its major application domain, namely adaptive hypermedia systems
(AHS), considerable effort has been spent on adaptation towards user needs, a
structured development approach could not be established so far. User-oriented
application designs are highly distinctive and can hardly be compared or mapped
to novel or existing developments without major re-engineering effort. This
paper develops an understanding of existing capabilities of already applied
user-modelling techniques from a model-based perspective. Revealing the context
of user models and user modelling allows determining general concepts for
representing and processing knowledge for adaptation. The obtained findings
show primarily technically motivated approaches, rather than designs grounded
in findings from human factors. For human-centred design, a shift is suggested
towards distributed cognition as a methodological and operational frame of
reference for user modelling. This could help overcome existing limitations in
adaptation. The corresponding research agenda requires directions on how to map
psychological constructs to user-model elements and adaptable user-interface
elements, such as mapping field dependence to content annotation features, in a
transparent and empirically grounded way. Keywords: User modelling; Model-driven architecture; Adaptation; Cognitive support;
Psychological constructs; Transformation; Adaptive hypermedia systems | |||
| Inclusive design: beyond capabilities towards context of use | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 295-305 | |
| Darren Reed; Andrew Monk | |||
| Inclusive design is oriented to a particular outcome, to ensure that
products and services address the needs of the widest possible audience.
Approaches towards achieving this aim include the use of ergonometric data to
predict product exclusion and the participation of extreme users in a design
team. This discussion paper extends these approaches by comparing the inclusive
design process to the design process that has evolved for Interaction Design
within Human Computer Interaction, and in so doing identifies additional issues
and processes. Potential ways practicing designers in an Inclusive Design
context might approach these concepts are suggested. True Inclusive Design must
engage the widest population as actual users not just potential users. This
objective can only be achieved through a move from a view of Inclusive Design
as solely concerned with individual capabilities to a view of Inclusive Design
set in a social context. Keywords: Inclusive design; Design by society; Design process model | |||
| User sensitive research in e-learning: exploring the role of individual user characteristics | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 307-318 | |
| Andrina Granic; Ray Adams | |||
| The increasing need for active and accessible learning in the inclusive
knowledge society drives the demand for e-learning that engages users much more
effectively than ever before. In this context, it is crucial to conduct
research that embraces innovation in user sensitive design, or else influential
individual user differences may be overlooked. The objective of this paper is
to explore the creation of successful e-learning systems that are able to
increase users' learning performance and enhance their personal learning
experiences. The paper reports two converging and complimentary approaches,
namely case studies and experimentation. First, case studies are used to
explore the extent to which effective e-learning systems comply with eight
specific factors. Of the eight, accessibility, individual differences and
student modeling turn out to be the weakest points in current practice. Second,
an empirical study investigates the influences of user individual user
differences on users' learning outcomes in an e-learning environment. The
experiment found that individual differences in motivation to learn and
expectations about e-learning significantly impacted users' learning
achievements. Third, based on these studies, improvements in research
methodology are identified towards greater consideration of user sensitive
research issues, thus enabling us to outline improved experimental procedures.
Further experiment results should provide us with better insights into the
arguments needed to carefully assess benefits of developing and involving a
user model in an e-learning application. Consequently, evaluation and
justification could now encompass both system performance as well as user
performance. Keywords: User sensitive research; User individual characteristics; User modelling;
Intelligent user interfaces; e-learning systems | |||
| The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology | | BIBAK | DOI | 319-336 | |
| Ifan D. H. Shepherd; Iestyn D. Bleasdale-Shepherd | |||
| This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally
accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab
initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-by-adaptation,
involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one
application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is
similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using
the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how
principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a
broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical
data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind
the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame
technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track
record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake
varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience.
The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames
which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been
implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation. Keywords: User interfaces; Transfer; Adaptation; Videogames; Virtual geographical
environments; GIS | |||
| A diversity-sensitive evaluation method | | BIBAK | DOI | 337-356 | |
| Alexandros Mourouzis; Margherita Antona; Constantine Stephandis | |||
| This paper presents an evaluation method, along with the underlying theory,
for assessing interactive systems and specifying their quality in terms of
universal access. The method is an adaptation of traditional walkthroughs and
is aimed to incorporate user diversity, for example in terms of individual
abilities, skills, background, levels of expertise, equipment used, etc., as
key input to evaluation. The method aims at addressing as many as possible of
the qualities of a system that might affect diverse users throughout their
usage of the system and which, ultimately, have an impact on the system's wide
acceptance. The proposed method, described here, extends the cognitive
walkthrough method by introducing a simulation of the users' reasoned action
process in order to assess whether users can, and will be, in favour of
accessing, exploring, utilising and, ultimately, adopting a system.
Additionally, the method allows considering in the assessment process various
aspects of diversity among target users and use conditions, rather than
assessing for the so-called average user, aiming at incorporating
accessibility, usability and acceptance as intrinsic measurements. Finally, the
paper presents ORIENT, a prototype inspection tool developed as a means to
further facilitate experts in conducting such walkthroughs in practice, and
which offers step-by-step guidance throughout the process until final
reporting. Preliminary experiences with the application of the method in the
domain of e-Services are also discussed. Keywords: Evaluation; Universal access; System acceptance; Design for all | |||
| Toward web accessibility for older users | | BIB | DOI | 357-358 | |
| Anna C. Cavender; Jeffrey P. Bigham | |||
| An ethnographical study of the accessibility barriers in the everyday interactions of older people with the web | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 359-371 | |
| Sergio Sayago; Josep Blat | |||
| Older people experience many barriers when they access to the web. However,
little is known about which barriers limit more (or less) their daily
interactions. This paper presents some findings based on an ethnographical
study of the everyday interactions of nearly 400 older people with the web over
3 years. Difficulties remembering steps, understanding terms and using the
mouse are more severe than problems perceiving visual information,
understanding icons and using the keyboard. This is largely explained by
inclusion, independence and socialization, which are the three key components
of real-life web use. This paper also shows that these aspects should be
considered in other areas of web and ICT accessibility, as technophobia is not
the only experience in the interactions of older people with the web, and both
social relationships and life experiences beyond technologies need to be taken
into account apart from age-related changes in abilities. These findings
suggest that the current focus on compensating for age-related changes in
functional abilities needs to be widened. Working towards making the web more
accessible should not be divorced from real-life use. This paper discusses
implications for web (and ICT) design, training and support. Keywords: Ethnography; Web accessibility; Older people | |||
| A survey of technology accessibility problems faced by older users in China | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 373-390 | |
| Dengfeng Yao; Yunfeng Qiu; Hairui Huang; Zaixin Du; Jianqing Ma | |||
| Internet accessibility for older users has become an important issue to
promote inclusion and participation in the Information Society. This paper
proposes an investigation into the technology accessibility problems faced by
older users in China. The research reported here was conducted by means of an
exploratory survey with a Web-based questionnaire and discussions with older
users at meetings. The study had 180 valid answers and involved representatives
from each of the 25 provinces of China. The results show that 39% of the
participants cannot or can only partially access information, because of
various kinds of accessibility problems. Many participants indicated that the
main problems in accessing the Internet were health barriers, circumstances
barriers, and Internet design barrier. The possible reason for these
difficulties could be that the government doesn't foster a social environment
conducive to helping the elderly to get online and that it does not provide
services for the elderly designed to help them access information
electronically. The poor rate of accessibility industry for the elderly, as
well as the lack of Chinese accessibility laws, is an important issue that must
be dealt with to promote greater Internet accessibility for the elderly. Keywords: Accessibility; Survey; Older users; Internet | |||
| Designing accessible experiences for older users: user requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 391-402 | |
| Özge Subasi; Michael Leitner; Norman Hoeller; Arjan Geven; Manfred Tscheligi | |||
| This article presents the results of a survey that shows that older users
differ in their attitude and experience towards the Internet not only according
to their age or to their previous knowledge with Internet services, but also
according to what they are expecting from this media. The aim of this study was
to collect information about barriers on usage and perception of an online
ticketing service for a nationwide public railway company, in order to enhance
the notion of "accessibility" toward a broader understanding including
non-technical accessibility factors as semantic accessibility and/or procedural
accessibility. The results of the survey with 1,208 participants and
additionally focus groups, interviews and qualitative analysis of user feedback
indicate that in order to improve and optimize the usage of the online system
for older adults, it is necessary to develop a system which is not only
universally accessible, but also satisfies the specific expectations of senior
users. This article concentrates on designing accessible user experiences and
presents several recommendations to the area and for WCAG 2.0 according to the
results. Keywords: Universal accessibility; User experience; Older adults; Experience
centeredness; Perceived accessibility | |||
| Web accessibility guideline aggregation for older users and its validation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 403-423 | |
| Giorgio Brajnik; Yeliz Yesilada; Simon Harper | |||
| Web site-evaluation methodologies and validation engines take the view that all accessibility guidelines must be met to gain compliance. Problems exist in this regard, as contradictions within the rule set may arise, and the type of impairment or its severity is not isolated. The Barrier Walkthrough (BW) method goes someway to addressing these issues, by enabling barrier types derived from guidelines to be applied to different user categories such as motor or visual impairment, etc. However, the problem remains of combinatorial explosion of possibilities when one has to consider users with multiple disabilities. In this paper, a simple set theory operation is used to create a validation scheme for older users by aggregating barrier types specific to motor impaired and low-vision users, thereby creating a new "older users" category from the results of this set union. To evaluate the feasibility and validity of this aggregation approach, two BW experiments were conducted. The first experiment evaluated the aggregated results by focusing on quality attributes and showed that aggregation generates data whose quality is comparable to the original one. However, this first experiment could not test for validity, as the older users category was not included. To remedy this deficiency, another BW experiment was conducted with expert judges who evaluated a web page in the context of older users. In this second experiment, it was found that there is no significant difference between the aggregated and the manually evaluated (by experts) barrier scores, and that the same barriers are identified using experts and aggregation, even though there are differences in how severity scores are distributed. From these results, it is concluded that the aggregation of barriers is a viable alternative to expert evaluation, when the target of that aggregation could not be evaluated manually or it would not be feasible to do so. It is also argued that aggregation is a technique that can be used in combination with other evaluation methods, like user testing or subjective assessments. | |||
| Validating the effectiveness of EvalAccess when deploying WCAG 2.0 tests | | BIBAK | DOI | 425-441 | |
| Amaia Aizpurua; Myriam Arrue; Markel Vigo; Julio Abascal | |||
| While automatic tools are not intended to replace human judgment, they are
crucial in order to develop accessible websites. The release of WCAG 2.0 has
caused great expectation, as it is supposed to be precisely testable with
automated review tools. Therefore, more effective tools could be developed.
However, so far few tools applying WCAG 2.0 have been developed. This paper
presents an evaluation framework which has been updated in order to evaluate
the new tests. In addition, it describes a validation process carried out in
order to verify the effectiveness of the new version of the evaluation tool.
The effectiveness is validated by conducting a quantitative and qualitative
analysis of the results obtained by applying both versions of the tool (the one
implementing WCAG 1.0 and the one implementing WCAG 2.0) to a set of selected
web pages, as well as by manual evaluation of an expert for detecting the
possible false positives and false negatives produced by each tool. Keywords: Web accessibility guidelines; Tool effectiveness; Automatic evaluation | |||
| Technology skill and age: what will be the same 20 years from now? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 443-452 | |
| Vicki L. Hanson | |||
| Is current research on computing by older adults simply looking at a
short-term problem? Or will the technology problems that plague the current
generation also be problematic for today's tech-savvy younger generations when
they become "old"? This paper considers age-related and experience-related
issues that affect ability to use new technology. Without more consideration of
the skills of older users, it is likely that applications and devices 20 years
from now will have changed such that this "older" generation finds themselves
confronting an array of technologies that they little understand and find
generally inaccessible. Recent evidence suggests that older adults bring
specific strengths to Web browsing. A fuller investigation of these strengths
and how to design to optimize for strengths of older users has the potential to
address the need for usable technology for this increasingly important
demographic. Keywords: Aging; Web; Cognition | |||
| Use of force plate instrumentation to assess kinetic variables during touch screen use | | BIBAK | DOI | 453-460 | |
| Curtis B. Irwin; Thomas Y. Yen; Robert H. Meyer; Gregg C. Vanderheiden; David P. Kelso; Mary E. Sesto | |||
| Touch screens are becoming ubiquitous technology, allowing for enhanced
speed and convenience of user interfaces. To date, the majority of touch screen
usability studies have focused on timing and accuracy of young, healthy
individuals. This information alone may not be sufficient to improve
accessibility and usability of touch screens. Kinetic data (e.g. force,
impulse, and direction) may provide valuable information regarding human
performance during touch screen use. Since kinetic information cannot be
measured with a touch screen alone, touch screen-force plate instrumentation,
software, and methodology were developed. Individuals with motor control
disabilities (Cerebral Palsy and Multiple Sclerosis), as well as gender- and
age-matched non-disabled participants, completed a pilot reciprocal tapping
task to evaluate the validity of this new instrumentation to quantify touch
characteristics. Results indicate that the instrumentation was able to
successfully evaluate performance and kinetic characteristics. The kinetic
information measured by the new instrumentation provides important insight into
touch characteristics which may lead to improved usability and accessibility of
touch screens. Keywords: Touch screen; Usability; Force; Impulse | |||