Antonio Scorcia

Flexible tool support for accessibility evaluation

The increasing need to check Web site accessibility has stimulated interest in tools to aid the various activities involved. While some tools for this purpose already exist, we believe that there is a demand for making their support more flexible. In particular, there is often a need for validation of multiple sets of guidelines, repairing Web pages and providing better reports for the evaluators. In this paper, we discuss such issues and how we have addressed them in the design of MAGENTA, our new tool for supporting inspection-based evaluation of accessibility and usability guidelines.

Automatically adapting web sites for mobile access through logical descriptions and dynamic analysis of interaction resources

While several solutions for desktop user interface adaptation for mobile access have been proposed, there is still a lack of solutions able to automatically generate mobile versions taking semantic aspects into account. In this paper, we propose a general solution able to dynamically build logical descriptions of existing desktop Web site implementations, adapt the design to the target mobile device, and generate an implementation that preserves the original communications goals while taking into account the actual resources available in the target device. We describe the novel transformations supported by our new solution, show example applications and report on first user tests.

Ambient Intelligence for Supporting Task Continuity across Multiple Devices and Implementation Languages

Nowadays users are surrounded by environments characterized by an abundance of devices and appliances that they use for carrying out their everyday activities. In order to improve user experience, the surrounding environments should be intelligent enough to allow users to freely move around and be able to perform their tasks in a continuous manner, without forcing them to start their interactive session from scratch at each device change. In this paper, we present an agent-based solution able to support migration of interactive applications among various devices, including digital TVs and mobile devices, and therefore useful for users freely moving about in the home and outdoor. The aim is to provide users with a seamless and supportive environment for ubiquitous access in multi-device contexts of use. The proposed open architecture for migratory user interfaces (UIs) is composed of several agents. It exploits their functionalities and is able to automatically build logical descriptions of existing interactive Web applications and then dynamically generate UIs that are adapted to various types of target devices and implementation languages, including non-Web languages, with the state updated to the point at which it was left off in the previous device.

User Interface Migration between Mobile Devices and Digital TV

In this paper we present a demonstration of the Migrantes environment for supporting user interface migration through different devices, including mobile ones and digital TV. The goal of the system is to furnish user interfaces that are able to migrate across different devices, in such a way as to support task continuity for the mobile user. This is obtained through a number of transformations that exploit logical descriptions of the user interfaces to be handled. The migration environment supports the automatic discovery of client devices and its architecture is based on the composition of a number of software services required to perform a migration request.

Preserving Rich User Interface State in Web Applications across Various Platforms

This paper aims to provide thorough discussion of the aspects that compose the state of a Web application user interface, and show how it can be preserved across multiple devices with different interaction resources when the user interface dynamically migrates. The approach proposed exploits a migration server along with logical user interface descriptions.

Easing web guidelines specification

More and more accessibility and usability guidelines are being proposed, especially for Web applications. Developers and designers are experiencing an increasing need for tools able to provide them with flexible support in selecting, editing, handling and checking guidelines. In this paper, we present an environment for addressing such issues. In particular, an interactive editor has been designed to assist designers and evaluators in abstracting and specifying new and existing guidelines in an XML-based Guideline Abstraction Language (GAL). Our tool has been designed in such a way to be able to check any guidelines specified in this language without requiring further changes in the tool implementation.