Klaus Miesenberger

Computers Helping People with Special Needs

The Special Thematic Session of ICCHP 2014 entitled Accessible Media promises to yield exciting research and development from around the world in the areas of access to television and audio-video content, eBooks, and social media. The scholarly works in this session report on and discuss a wide range of activities under the umbrella of this important theme, which are all working towards the United Nations specified goal of providing more equal access to the cultural environment for person with disabilities.

Towards a Universal Maths Conversion Library

The study of Mathematics and Sciences have always been a difficult problem for blind students especially because of the complexity of Braille mathematical notations. Various projects developed converters allowing people to translate a formula from mainstream notations (like LATEX or MathML) to Braille notations and vice versa. Today a new generation of tools aims at facilitating the understanding of the formulas by blind users, and the communication between sighted and Braille users. The project of Universal Maths Conversion Library is born from the decision of 6 organisations both American and European to join their efforts in that field.

UMA: a system for universal mathematics accessibility

We describe the UMA system, a system developed under a multi-institution collaboration for making mathematics universally accessible. The UMA system includes translators that freely inter-convert mathematical documents transcribed in formats used by unsighted individual (Nemeth, Marburg) to those used by sighted individuals (LaTeX, Math-ML, OpenMath) and vice versa. The UMA system also includes notation-independent tools for aural navigation of mathematics. In this paper, we give an overview of the UMA system and the techniques used for realizing it.

A software model to support collaborative mathematical work between braille and sighted users

In this paper we describe a software model that we have developed within the framework of the MaWEn project (Mathematical Working Environment). Based on the MathML standard, this model enables collaboration between sighted people and users of Braille. It allows for synchronisation of Braille and graphical views of scientific contents as well as offering improved navigational functions for Braille users, in both reading and editing modes. The UMCL (Universal Maths Conversion Library) is used to support various national Braille Mathematical notations. After presenting the model, its implementation in MaWEn prototypes is described.

Design for all in information technology: a universal concern

The concept of Design for All is not well understood, and the issues of accessibility and inclusion are often relegated to specialists and dedicated conferences. This paper introduces the concept of Design for All dispelling some of the misunderstandings that surround it, and situating it within the Information Technology context, as distinct from wider considerations such accessibility in the built environment. Some of the reasons for undertaking Design for All are discussed, and, making use of the analogy of the printed book, the paper then shows how Design for All in combination with Information technologies are enablers in the widest sense of the term. Finally, it is noted that Design for All is a process, not a product, and while there are people who specialise in eAccessibility, the research agenda demands more involvement from information technologists of all kinds. These are issues that concern us all, in our roles as designers and implementers of information technology, as well as in our role as consumers of information and participants in the Information Society.

Mathematical Working Environment for the Blind Motivation and Basic Ideas

The past three decades saw considerable progress in access to information for the group of blind and visually impaired people: Thanks to modern information technology in the mainstream and to very specialized adaptive and assistive technologies, blind and visually impaired people are now able to deal independently and efficiently with almost every piece of information that is composed of pure text. Despite current strong trends towards graphical presentation, text still covers the majority of relevant contents for private and professional life, such that information access for the target group is currently accomplished to a very large extent. Despite intensive research efforts carried out over the last years, blind and visually impaired people are still excluded from an efficient usage and handling of graphical contents. Since Mathematics is presented in a highly graphical way most of the time, this exclusion implies considerable restrictions in access to Mathematics, too. Although “accessibility” is put in place, “usability” and especially support functionalities in “doing” mathematics are very low. This paper analyses the major issues, outlines the existing approaches to a possible solution and describes the current activities at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, institute “integriert studieren” (Austria) towards a comprehensive software answer to this problem.

A Computer Game Designed for All

Computer games are one of the most challenging applications concerning accessibility and usability for people with disabilities. There are only a few games available, which are accessible and most of the time only for a special group of people with specific needs, e.g. games for blind people. Due to this designing games for all and implementing accessibility in mainstream games is a rather new challenge. This paper presents a game designed for all and will discuss the benefits of different accessibility features to several groups of people with disabilities.

Supporting blind students in navigation and manipulation of mathematical expressions: basic requirements and strategies

In [10], the problems faced by a blind or visually impaired student in doing Mathematics were analyzed, and the basic ideas of a MAWEN (Mathematical Working Environment), a software solution to help overcome these pressing difficulties, were described. The present paper builds upon the latter one, refining the ideas sketched there. After a thorough description of the state of the art, we present some general considerations on the problems met by a blind pupil when navigating within mathematical expressions and when doing calculations. Finally, through several case studies taken from mainstream school books, strategies to provide computer aided support to overcome the problems are outlined.

Accessibility of Brainstorming Sessions for Blind People

Today, research focuses on the accessibility of explicit information for blind users. This gives only partly access to the information flow in brain-storming sessions, since non-verbal communication is not supported. Advances in ICT however allow capturing implicit information like hand gestures as important part of non-verbal communication. Thus, we describe a system that al-lows integrating blind people into a brainstorming session using a mind map.

Accessibility Issues in Game-Like Interfaces

This is a short position paper which invites to put game accessibility on the agenda of accessibility and assistive technology research. Games are important for social inclusion and concepts of game interfaces enter into standard HCI and web interfaces. This makes game accessibility subject to standard software and web accessibility and asks for according R&D activities. New tools and interfaces have to be developed to bring games accessibility into the mainstream games.