Athanasios Tsakiris

Designing accessible ICT products and services: the VERITAS accessibility testing platform

Among the key components of designing accessible products and services for disabled users is accessibility testing and support. The VERITAS FP7 project has developed a platform that consists of several tools that provide automatic simulation feedback and reporting for built-in accessibility support at all stages of ICT product development. In this explorative pilot study, we evaluated the usability and technology acceptance of using three of these tools in the design of accessible GUI-based ICT products in five application domains. A sample of 80 designers/developers (12 female; 68 male) evaluated the three tools by filling in the standard SUS and TAM questionnaires. Results revealed good usability and technology acceptance for all three tools as a novel accessibility testing method. The VERITAS platform can offer an intuitive solution in accessibility design and can ensure that ICT products are designed for all.

Sense of Presence and Metacognition Enhancement in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy in the Treatment of Social Phobias and the Fear of Flying

The aim of this research effort is to identify feeling-of-presence and metacognitive amplifiers over existing well-established VRET treatment methods. Patient real time projection in virtual environments during stimuli exposure and electroencephalographyi¾?EEG report sharing are among the techniques, which have been used to achieve the desired result. Initialized from theoretical inferences, is moving towards a proof-of-concept prototype, which has been developed as a realization of the proposed method. The evaluation of the prototype made possible with an expert team of 28 therapists testing the fear of public speaking and fear of flying case studies.

A Gamification Engine Architecture for Enhancing Behavioral Change Support Systems

This paper presents a gamified framework designed to offer behavioural change support and treatment adherence services to people living with Dementia (PLWD), their caregivers and medical/social professionals. A flexible and scalable ICT solution architecture was proposed to support highly personalized and gamified services for all groups involved: cognitive skills training and independent living for PLWD, training and support for caregivers and high clinical and social services for professionals. The outcomes of this approach are delivered through a set of gamification concepts running in parallel to create motivation for user commitment and for achieving the desired behavioral change. After projecting all user group expectations on a social game canvas, the impact evaluation will assess the intended effects of the proposed gamification approach on the welfare on PLWD and their caregivers.

Improvement of the Workers’ Satisfaction and Collaborative Spirit Through Gamification

Supporting the use of technology into industrial environments is an issue of mass appeal within the Industry 4.0 initiative, with a lot of promising research especially into interaction, production and training sections. In this paper, a Social Collaboration platform is introduced which creates an online community for workers as well as an Augmented Reality (AR) tool for production and training purposes both of which constitute gamified applications on which a customizable Gamification platform is applied according to impending needs. These tools have been implemented in order to become of daily use to employees in factories and incentivize them to promote collaboration, engagement, participation and work satisfaction. Every promoted industrial behavior can be described and awarded based on the offered rule engine. Thus, two gamified processes are offered regarding Social Collaboration and AR training to employees of industrial environments, so that an inference is drawn concerning participation, satisfaction and self-fulfillment. The use of the platforms is illustrated in this paper by two examples consisting one use case for a section in social collaboration and a second use case of training through AR.

Simulation-Based Accessibility Evaluation of Graphical User Interfaces Using Virtual User Models

Accessibility assessment for ICT software products and human-machine interfaces is rapidly gaining increasing significance within the research and development (R&D) cycle of new products, as the population of aging users increases. Through VERITAS automatic simulation framework, we evaluated both Virtual User Models (VUMs) and the simulation framework and its results by conducting a series of pilot tests that involved elderly users using user interfaces in Infotainment and Games. The followed methodology and simulation results are presented with respect to the scores of actual users performing the same tasks as VUMs. Finally, the comparison between the actual user’s and virtual models performance is used for VUM optimization.

Product accessibility evaluation using virtual user models

We introduce an open framework for built-in accessibility support at all stages of product development based on the Virtual User Model concept. The goal is to introduce simulation-based and VR testing into the automotive, smart living spaces, workplace, infotainment and personal healthcare applications areas. Our framework also aims to ensure that future products and services are being systematically designed for all people including those with functional limitations. An open simulation platform parted of several tools provides automatic simulation feedback and reporting for guideline/methodologies compliance and quality of service. To achieve this objective, detailed virtual user physical, cognitive, behavioral and psychological models as well as the corresponding simulation models have been integrated to support simulation and testing at all stages of product planning and development.

An open framework for immersive and non-immersive accessibility simulation for smart living spaces

In this paper, a novel open simulation platform is presented, which aims to provide a virtual prototyping and accessibility testing framework. The proposed framework is based on virtual user models which describe in detail all the physical parameters of a user with or without disabilities. Our approach covers the simulation of all major human functions including motor, vision and hearing through a unified simulation framework. The simulation is carried out in a virtual 3D or 2D representation of the design to be assessed either through an immersive or a non-immersive accessibility evaluation application.