André Sousa

Supporting Accessibility in Higher Education Information Systems: A 2016 Update

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have come a long way on the usage of Information Systems (IS) at the several phases of the execution of their business plan. These organizations are very peculiar in the sense that most of the IS technologies have been developed as a consequence of the research work of the HEIs, positioning them as creators and as consumers of IS technologies. In fact, a considerable part of the IS products, currently available for the education sector, was initially created in a HEI as an in-house development. For these reason, the adoption of IS technologies by HEIs has followed two distinct paths: the in-house creation, previously described; and a current market adoption, similarly to most other companies IS adoption.

CanIHelp: A Platform for Inclusive Collaboration

Technology plays a key role in daily life of people with special needs, being a mean of integration or even communication with society. By built up experience, we find that support tools play a crucial part in empowerment of persons with special needs and small advances may represent shifts and opportunities. The diversity of solutions and the need for dedicated hardware to each feature represents a barrier to its use, compromising the success of the solutions against, among others, problems of usability and scale. This paper aims to explore the concept of inclusive collaboration to enhance the mutual interaction and assistance. The proposed approach combines and generalizes the usage of human computation in a collaborative environment with assistive technologies creating redundancy and complementarity in the solutions provided, contributing to enhance the quality of life of people with special needs and the elderly. The CanIHelp platform is an embodiment of the concept as a result from an orchestrated model using mechanisms of collective intelligence through social inclusion initiatives. The platform features up for integrating assistive technologies, collaborative tools and multiple multimedia communication channels, accessible through multimodal interfaces for universal access. A discussion of the impacts of fostering collaboration and broadening from the research concepts to the societal impacts is presented. As final remarks a set of future research challenges and guidelines are identified.

Feature Detection Applied to Context-Aware Blind Guidance Support

Human beings have developed a number of evolutionary mechanisms that allows the distinction between different objects and the triggering of events based on their perception of reality. Visual impairment has a significant impact on individuals’ quality of life, including their ability to work and to develop personal relationships as they often feel cut off people and things around them, due to their impairment. The need for assistive technologies has long been a constant in the daily lives of people with visual impairments, and will remain a constant in future years. Cognitive mapping is of extreme importance for individuals in terms of creating a conceptual model of the surrounding space and objects around them, thereby supporting their interaction with the physical environment. This work describes the use of computer vision techniques, namely feature detectors and descriptors, to detect objects in the scene and help contextualize the user within the surrounding space, enhancing their mobility, navigation and cognitive mapping of a new environment.

Transforming e-Procurement Platforms for PEPPOL and WCAG 2.0 Compliance

The increase in the complexity inherent to public administrative activities, including public procurement, has led ANO to develop a public e-procurement platform in order for Portuguese public entities to perform their contracts and acquisitions. Given the introduction of European PEPPOL standards and the requirement for all Portuguese e-procurement platforms to be WCAG 2.0 level A compliant, ANO company established a consortium with the UTAD University in order to improve their platform and develop the required features. By using a specially designed stage-based work methodology, the R&D project was carried out with success and all initial goals were achieved.

Probe and Sensors Development for Level Measurement of Fats, Oils and Grease in Grease Boxes

The wide spread of food outlets has become an environmental and sanitation infrastructure problem, due to Fats, Oils and Grease (FOG). A grease box is used at the industrials facilities to collect the FOG, in a specific time window, while its quality is good for recycling (e.g., biodiesel) and it is economically valuable. After this period, it will be disposed at a cost. For the proper management of the grease boxes, it is necessary to know the quantity of FOG inside the boxes, which is a major problem, as the boxes are sealed and permanently filled with water. The lack of homogeneity of the FOG renders it not detectable by current probes for level detection in liquids. In this article, the design, development and testing of a set of probes for FOG level measurement, based on the principles used in sensors for the detection of liquids inside containers, is described. The most suitable probe, based on the capacitance principle, together with the necessary hardware and software modules for data acquisition and transmission, was developed and tested. After the development phase, the probe was integrated on a metropolitan system for FOG collection and grease box management in partnership with a grease box management company.

An Information System to Remotely Monitor Oncological Palliative Care Patients

For oncological patients, the introduction of palliative care in the early stages of the disease’s progression can have great benefits. The Portuguese government recently introduced a program to provide home palliative care support by creating specialized mobile teams, able to track, visit and address the patients’ problems. These teams must be available for the patient, when necessary and if necessary. The teams must also have updated knowledge about the daily evolution of the patients’ health. The Douro Sul Healthcare Centers, together with the University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, developed and implemented an ICT system to track the status of each and every one of the patients. The system has several components, including: a mobile app for the patients or their caregivers to report daily how the patient’s symptoms have evolved over the last 24 h; a web app for the teams to browser their patients’ status.

Context-aware, Accessibility and Dynamic Adaptation of Mobile Interfaces in Business Environments

Abstract Technology entered in our lives and changed not only the way we communicate and interact with each other, but also our habits and the experiences in the real and digital worlds. However, due to the rapid progress, we use technology in every moment of our day and sometimes this causes some frustration because the way we interact with the applications is not the most effective for the context we are in. This problem is even more significant in the business environments, where effectively the time we take to finish some kind of task can mean profit or loss for the business. The key to these problems can be in the adaptation of the interface to user needs and constrains as it happens in solutions for situational induced impairment and disabilities (SIID). This can be made by inference the context in which the user it is by using different sensors available on mobile platform and different sources of information such as user profile, agenda and usage history. In this paper we propose a review of the main challenges of the dynamic adaptation of interfaces, with a case of application in a business environment.