Evangelos Vlachogiannis

Universal access to information services—the need for user information and its relationship to device profiles

Users access information services with a variety of devices and with different interaction modes that depend on personal characteristics (including disabilities) and on the context of usage. With the appearance of mobile devices, the industry has focused its efforts on the standardization of device characteristics, thus giving to information providers some content adaptation facilities. However, little attention has been paid to the standardization of user profiles that will allow further customization and adaptation capabilities in mainstream services. This paper will present the authors’ experiences in outlining and implementing user profiles, as well as possible integration paths with device characteristics.

Major HCI challenges for open source software adoption and development

The aim of the paper is to identify and discuss major challenges for OSS from an HCI perspective, so as to aid the adoption and development processes for end-users, developers and organizations. The paper focuses on four important HCI concerns: product usability, support for user and development communities, accessibility and software usability and proposes areas for further research on the basis of related work and own experiences.

Intelligent content personalisation in internet TV using MPEG-21

This paper introduces a novel approach for intelligent content personalisation in internet TV using the new MPEG-21 standard in the framework of an ongoing project, which aims at the delivery of interactive TV (iTV) services to disabled children. The approach includes the development of an authoring tool for a diversity of multimedia resources supporting a metadata model according to MPEG-21. The authoring tool works in conjunction with a simulation platform, acting as an interaction interface between our internet TV architecture and the prospective viewer. Based on that, interactivity in IP Television accessibility services is faced through metadata and adaptation.

Test case description language (TCDL): test case metadata for conformance evaluation

Automatic benchmarking of evaluation and repair tools (ERT) has been recently the subject of several studies as there is a growing interest because of legal and commercial issues on Web compliance with different criteria and standards. This paper addresses the development of a description language targeted to formally represent test case metadata. This language was used to develop a WCAG 2.0 test suite that will support the benchmarking of ERT with regard to the aforementioned W3C recommendation

The Usability of Web Accessibility Guidelines: An Approach for Evaluation

This paper aims at contributing to the evaluation of web accessibility and thus promoting design for all, considering the design process as an iterative process containing evaluation as a fundamental component. More specifically, the paper: 1) rethinks Web Accessibility Evaluation notion and its abstract requirements, 2) investigates the usability of W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0), and 3) proposes an approach for an evaluation of the usability of accessibility guidelines.

Towards iTV accessibility: the MPEG-21 case

In this paper, the accessibility of the interactive television is being discussed seen as a primary factor for its satisfactory adoption and commercial success. This is a presentation of work undertaken in the context of a research project aiming at delivering iTV services to disabled children. The project approaches this objective through the utilization of the upcoming MPEG-21 ISO standard. Based on that, iTV accessibility is faced through metadata and adaptation. This work approaches the accessibility of iTV in a wider manner contrary to previous studies that focus mostly onto the users with low vision. Such a case study is being presented accompanied with a discussion of relevant architectures, technologies and faced design issues.

Accessible interactive television using the MPEG-21 standard

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.

The BenToWeb Test Case Suites for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

This paper presents work carried out under the umbrella of the EU-funded project BenToWeb to develop XHTML test case suites for three drafts of WCAG 2.0 (June 2005, April 2006, May 2007). These suites of test cases demonstrate pass and failure examples for WCAG 2.0 and its accompanying Techniques document. The test cases were validated during the BenToWeb project and are currently being migrated to the WAI Test Sample Development Task Force, where the work will be continued.

Accessibility of internet portals in ambient intelligent scenarios: re-thinking their design and implementation

Internet portals are gateways to the World Wide Web, which offer an amalgamation of services, like search engines, online shopping information, email, news, weather reports, stock quotes, community forums, maps, travel information, etc. Furthermore, with the arrival of the Mobile Web, they are also frequently used in Ambient Intelligence scenarios. This paper will discuss basic design considerations inspired by systems theory fundamental principles, where the portal as a whole and its components (known as portlets) are analyzed. This analysis also includes a set of user requirements for people with special needs gathered in previous user studies from the authors.