Gonzalo Mariscal

Applying new interaction paradigms to the education of children with special educational needs

The proliferation of new devices over the last decade has introduced new ways of interaction such us tactile (iPhone [1]) or touchless gesture (Kinect [2]) user interfaces. This opens up new opportunities for the education of children with special needs. However, it also raises new issues. On the one hand, children have to be able to manage different technologies, some of which do not enable natural ways of interaction. On the other hand, software developers have to design applications compatible with many different platforms. This paper offers a state-of-the-art discussion about how new interaction paradigms are being applied in the field of education. As a preliminary conclusion, we have detected the need for a standard on gesture-based interfaces. With this in mind, we propose a roadmap setting out the essential steps to be followed in order to define this standard based on natural hand movements.

Comparative analysis of the accessibility of desktop operating systems

This paper presents the results of ongoing research on methods for evaluating the accessibility conformance level of software and especially operating systems. Our approach is based on recommendations from software accessibility standards, and defines techniques for evaluating each of those recommendations. The proposed method has been applied to evaluate the accessibility features of one closed-source and one open-source desktop operating system, Microsoft Windows XP and the Ubuntu Linux distribution, respectively. Specifically, the functionality we have evaluated was task management and file system management. From the point of view of the evaluation process, we conclude that more work is needed on the development of support tools and techniques. And from the point of view of the specific comparison, we conclude that, taking into account the analysed functionality, the current version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution is slightly more accessible than the current Windows release, though neither of the systems fully conform to the accessibility standards.

Applying a Methodology for Educating Students with Special Needs: A Case Study

The introduction of innovative educational technologies opens up new ways of interacting with students. We propose to exploit this potential to help in the education of children with special needs. We analyze the state of the art of tools supporting the teaching process, focusing on the omissions of existing research. We propose a new framework to help throughout the whole teaching process and describe its application to Proyecto Aprender (Learn Project), an educational resource targeting children with learning difficulties. Finally, we outline some conclusions and current/future research lines.

Building Accessible Flash Applications: An XML-Based Toolkit

The use of Flash as a web-based multimedia development tool has spread lately. Although a big effort has gone into improving its accessibility, there are still accessibility gaps requiring programming or purchase from another supplier. This makes building an accessible Flash application an ad hoc, complex and time-consuming task. With the aim of lightening the accessibility-related workload, we have implemented a toolkit that helps to create accessible multimedia Flash resources. This toolkit specifies the accessibility features as XML configuration files. It includes a library that works like a wrapper abstracting the logic layer of the different events and iterations from the physical layer. This way, new functionalities can easily be added. Additionally, it has been successfully used to build teaching and teaching support systems.

Developing virtual storytellers for the virtual Alhambra

Thanks to the technological advances in the last ten years, the recreation of 3D virtual worlds is becoming increasingly popular in several application fields. Desktop virtual reality is one of the best ways of reaching a good number of users through this technology. With the aim of improving the development of desktop virtual reality applications and increasing the relevance of the virtual experience, we defined the Virtual Reality Framework (VRF). This framework supports the creation of interactive systems for personalized and group guided tours in virtual worlds. The VRF can incorporate functionalities including context-sensitive information that a virtual guide will tell a user or group of users in a personalized manner. User interaction with the environment and with the intelligent virtual guides will lead to changes in the story told during the tour. In this paper we describe the Virtual Alhambra Project, which was the project that brought the VRF into being.

A framework to support development of learning applications for disabled children

Multimedia resources are an important tool that can be used by teachers in the classroom as a learning aid for learners with disabilities or by parents and children at home. However, disabled children are not always able to use existing assistive technologies because they are not experienced enough, suffer from medium/profound disability, or simply do not have the financial resources to buy commercial tools. Additionally, todays adapted tools are not always valid for a broad spectrum of disabled users and often focus on a user group. We claim that potential applications and resources for people with special needs must self-adapt to user capabilities and skills, reducing the use of external assistive technologies. In this paper, we present a guide for developers to create accessible applications and resources that reduce workload.