Débora Maria Barroso Paiva

An evaluation of web accessibility metrics based on their attributes

Accessibility is a concept related to providing access to Web content to people with different abilities and people using different devices. A number of metrics have been proposed in the last years to help to obtain quantitative Web accessibility levels. Each Web development project has different aspects, and the choice of a given Web accessibility metric should be carefully considered according to the needs of the project. In this paper, we present a review on the main existing Web accessibility metrics, emphasizing the main features and comparing their correlations from experimental data obtained from large scale evaluations. Project managers and evaluators should consider specific features for each given project to effectively choose a proper metric. Needs to adjust customized coefficients or to adhere to automatic evaluation tools are important issues to be observed.

Using screen readers to reinforce web accessibility education

This paper discusses an approach for Web accessibility education tacking advantage of short introductory courses. In this approach, screen readers were used toallimmerse students in the problems experienced by blind users while using the Web. Experimental results from an evaluation exercise carried out by students showedallthat the use ofallscreen readers was helpful to better understand and to reinforce the concepts of Web accessibility.

Component-Based Architecture for e-Gov Web Systems Development

In spite of the wide coverage of Internet and the need for Web systems to support various governmental tasks, the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul (Central West region) did not have a technological infrastructure which was sufficient to meet these needs in 2001. This led to setting up the Laboratory of Software Engineering (LEDES) at the Department of Computing and Statistics (DCT), the current Computing Faculty (FACOM), at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), which is now collaborating effectively with the state government providing technological solutions, especially in Web sites and Web applications (WebApps). Developing these solutions has made it possible to capture patterns, define flexible architecture and subsequently set up a process of a Software Product Line (SPL) to develop WebApps in e-gov domain, as well as create computational support tools which automatize this process. This paper presents such computational support tools, lessons learnt during the most relevant projects which have been developed since the creation of LEDES, and the architecture for e-gov web systems development, resultant from early experience.

ArtistRank – Analysis and Comparison of Artists Through the Characterization Data from Different Sources

Understanding how artists, musical styles, and the music itself evolve over time is important when analysing the process of making music. In addition, it can help to study critical music artists that are in the top rankings and why. With the emergence of new ways in which communities are exposed to music, we see the need to reassess how the popularity of an artist is measured. It is noticed that traditional popularity rankings that model artists based only on disk sales and runs on the radio are not sufficient. The presence of numerous web services that allow user interaction in the world of music, whether listening online or watching the life of an artist more closely in digital media, has changed the dynamics of the music industry. Thus, this work proposes a methodology for music artists comparison based on how they perform on different music digital media available on the web. The methodology is also prepared to allow input data from mass media, so that a study case is presented using the TV media in order to properly assess the popularity of artists. Our case study shows that relevant rankings of music artists can be revealed by employing the proposed methodology.

Analysis of Web Accessibility in Social Networking Services Through Blind Users’ Perspective and an Accessible Prototype

It is not just in architectural contexts that accessibility concern is present: accessibility in web portals is also a right guaranteed by law to people with any kind of disability in many countries, and Brazil takes part in this group. Although extensive researches focused on web accessibility were developed recently, not all areas were contemplated with these efforts. Social networking services are a great example of sites that ask for more attention in this field. They are important tools for integration of disabled people, but still lack web accessibility features. This paper presents an evaluation of the web accessibility of three major social networking services – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – by the perspective of blind users, applying the WCAG 2.0 success criteria. Analysis demonstrated that there are many issues to be addressed in order to improve web accessibility for visually impaired in this domain. Besides that, a prototype of an accessible social networking service was proposed based on an instance of Elgg framework, where the experiences about web accessibility gathered with this study were applied.

A plug-in for Eclipse towards supporting business process lines documentation

Business process models enable to understand and improve the organizations business in order to stay competitive in the market. However, this artifact is not commonly elaborated due to time and costs associated. Thus, it was observed the importance of the practice of reutilization of business process models, making use of specific techniques such as the Business Process Line (BPL) that was originated from concepts of Software Product Line (SPL). As seen in SPL, in order to aid the creation, instantiation and evolution of BPLs, the usage of computational tools is also very important in the context of BPL, due mainly to the complexity and dynamism from businesses. Despite the growing academic interest in the area, no specific tools with support to build and document BPLs using features model, BPMN and BPMN* notations were found in the literature. This paper presents an Eclipse plug-in that supports the creation and documentation of BPLs, named BPL-Framework, which uses the aforementioned notations. Based on an evaluation done by individuals with different levels of knowledge about BPL, the BPL-Framework was considered to be satisfactory in relation to functional suitability (accuracy), operability (ease of use, learnability and attractiveness) and transferability (portability, adaptability and installability) from the ISO/IEC 25010.

AccTrace: Accessibility in Phases of Requirements Engineering, Design, and Coding Software

Providing accessible web products is a challenge. In particular, the implementation of requirements is still a problem for many developers who may not have the necessary skills to perform this task, including difficulty in interpreting reference documents. This paper presents the AccTrace, a CASE tool (Eclipse plugin) that uses an ontology to specify the technical implementation of accessibility and promotes traceability of accessibility requirements from conception to the coding phases. This may give the developer useful information for the construction of accessible product.

Cambuci: A Service-Oriented Reference Architecture for Software Asset Repositories

Reuse of assets results in faster execution of a software project. Considering the importance of repositories to support reuse of assets, we highlight the benefits of using Reference Architecture (RA) to facilitate the development of repositories. Reference architectures of repositories found in the literature are specific to a particular type of asset or represent only some functionality, and they do not fully meet the expected results of the Reuse Asset Management Process of ISO/IEC 12207. This paper presents a service-oriented reference architecture for software asset repositories, named Cambuci. For this, the systematic process ProSA-RA for supporting definition of reference architectures is used. In order to investigate the quality of the Cambuci’s description, we conducted two evaluations. The first based on a checklist and the second based on one instantiation of this RA. From the results obtained, we observed improvement opportunities in the description of Cambuci and the support offered by it in the development of repositories.

BPMN* - A Notation for Representation of Variability in Business Process Towards Supporting Business Process Line Modeling

This paper proposes an extension for the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), named BPMN*, that based on the elements of the feature model (FM), commonly used to represent variability, intends to represent variability in Business Processes Line (BPL). This notation is evaluated by means of an empirical study whose main objective is to compare it with other notation named variant-rich BPMN (vrBPMN) regarding the productivity and correctness of the business process model template (BPMT), which is one of the artifacts that compose a BPL. From the results it was possible to observe that the proposed notation allows the elaboration of BPMT with less errors, although modeling time was kept almost the same.

The Evolution from a Web SPL of the e-Gov Domain to the Mobile Paradigm

Lately, the demand for mobile applications development has increased significantly mainly due to growth of use of mobile devices and the need to port existing web applications. To reduce development’s time and cost, Software Product Lines (SPLs) have also been used in the context of mobile applications. However, the existing SPLs do not worry about supporting the development of mobile applications corresponding to the existing Web applications, as it is desirable to have access to the information and main features of these applications in mobile devices. In face of this problem, this paper discusses the motivation and presents the evolution from a SPL in the e-Gov Web (e-Gov Web SPL) domain to a SPL in the mobile domain (e-Gov Mobile SPL) having in mind the need to supply market demand. The conducted evolution was supported by the PLUS approach (Product Line UML-Based Software Engineering) and by the features model. Furthermore, this work debates the main results obtained through some e-Gov Mobile SPL instantiations in the precision livestock domain.