Louis Coetzee

The national accessibility portal: an accessible information sharing portal for the South African disability sector

The National Accessibility Portal initiative is a large initiative aimed at improving the quality of life of people living with disabilities in South Africa. The initiative has several functional components, including the National Accessibility Portal, National Accessibility Portal Centers, research into developing localised client side assistive technologies and devices, advocacy as well as the development of a methodology allowing for replication in other developing countries with similar needs. The focus of this paper is on the research and development of the portal in the bigger National Accessibility Portal initiative. The portals differentiating elements measured against other content portals is the ability to provide a configurable platform (based on the users profile) for information sharing and communication in an accessible and usable fashion within the constraints of todays technologies, in the users language of choice and in the most cost effective and sustainable fashion. In this paper we describe the process involved in developing version 1.0 of the National Accessibility Portal; from gathering user requirements, addressing the issue of multilingualism, accessibility and usability challenges. We present initial user feedback comments and highlight ongoing challenges. In addition we present the technology stack and implemented functionality.

Turn me on! Using the “Internet of Things” to turn things on and off

The “Internet of Things” is the paradigm of connecting physical objects (things) with digital intelligence to the Internet. People have been connecting to the Internet for decades. It is only recently that things have been able to connect to the Internet. There are many examples of things posting their status on Twitter and allowing uni-directional access. TurnMeOn is an example of allowing bi-directional access between people and things using Internet protocols. Users can query the status of a light bulb. In addition, users can turn a light bulb on and off.

Usability evaluation of the South African National Accessibility Portal interactive voice response system

One of the most prominent problems that persons with disabilities face in South Africa, is access to relevant disability related information. To address this need the South African National Accessibility Portal (NAP Portal) was developed, that enable people with disabilities to easily get access to information. However, most people in South Africa do not have access to adequate Internet facilities. To overcome this obstacle, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) engine was connected to the NAP Portal, which allows access to information through a telephony interface. The IVR engine and scripts guide the user through information categories on the portal to the desired information, which is then voiced out to the user. In this paper, we present the evaluation of the IVR system to determine how easy or difficult users experience the whole process of retrieving information via a telephone. A usability evaluation was performed on the current NAP IVR system. Furthermore, a heuristic evaluation was done on a new design of the NAP IVR system to determine whether the major problems, that were highlighted by an expert, are addressed in the new design. Inputs from both of these evaluations will be used to design the next version of the NAP IVR system.

TRESCIMO: European union and South African Smart City contextual dimensions

Cities increasingly face challenges related to pollution, efficient use of resources (e.g. water, energy) and ensuring a good quality of life for its citizens. Solutions built on existing and emerging technologies such as Cloud computing, Internet of Things, Machine-to-Machine and data analytics can improve on or create services able to address these challenges. These solutions are seen as contributors in creating a Smart City. In Europe Smart Cities have been implemented, while South Africa has only recently started with Smart City initiatives. Current thinking has been to replicate international Smart City instances in South Africa. However, an open question is raised if this is an optimal strategy as differences in context might impact on the delivery of services. This paper extracts and compares contextual differences between Europe and South Africa, and based on those insights analyse whether full European solutions will deliver on the promise of a South African Smart City. Furthermore the question is raised if insights into a South African Smart City can strengthen European initiatives. A need for inter-continental automated testing facilities such as those developed by TRESCIMO is identified through which integrated experiments can be conducted to provide insight and answers.

Future Internet concepts for demand management

The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is a concept where animate and inanimate objects have the ability to collect and exchange data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Through the utilisation of IoT and the future Internet, fine-grained, near-real time energy demand management is increasingly becoming a reality. This is achieved through real-time billing, predictive energy costs and demand response signalling using IoT as a data platform. Installing smarter technologies at the end-user premises and communicating measurements over different network technologies provide access to information and subsequently for smarter decision making about energy management in the household. This paper presents an international research and experimental initiative linked to the Future Internet (TRESCIMO) which facilitates the validity of using these technologies as base for energy demand management. The initiative utilises a philosophy of informing customers about their energy usage behaviour through data received from smart devices that are integrated with a machine-to-machine (M2M) platform. The paper discusses opportunities presented by IoT in the management of energy use in the residential sector.

Towards programmable and scalable IoT infrastructures for smart cities

Smart Cities applications and infrastructures are actively being developed and rolled out. However, maintenance complexity is significant, often limiting deployments to small regions or small cities. To support gradual or spontaneous infrastructure scaling at region or national levels, infrastructure management that monitors end device connectivity and ensures overall IoT communication reliability becomes key. This article describes a method using intercontinental research facilities that programmatically manages smart devices and their communication with the ultimate aim to elastically deploy IoT servers in the cloud. Implementation details and experimental results of real devices are included.

A survey for service selection approaches in dynamic environments

The usage of the service selection approaches across different dynamic service provisioning environments has increased the challenges associated with an effective method that can be used to select a relevant service. The use of service selection approach should depend on certain factors. In order to address this challenge, the literature analysis is conducted on various service selection approaches. A proposed approach needs to be tested by manipulating the relevant services description of available services. This paper, proposes various aspects that needs to be considered when choosing a method of service selection. The aspects were used in a scenario to select the effective method and later the method was evaluated based on response time, recall and precision metrics. The experiments showed that the approach works better based on the results yielded among the technical algorithms applied on the approach. The content-based algorithm returned more relevant services to the user and took shorter time as compared to the collaborative filtering.

Preference-based Internet of Things dynamic service selection for smart campus

The usage of the Internet of Things technology across different service provisioning environments has increased the challenges associated with service discovery and selection. Users cannot always remember the Internet Protocol (IP) address for every service they need to utilize from the middleware registry. In order to address this challenge, an architecture that enables a representation of user preferences and manipulates relevant services description of available services is developed. This paper, an algorithm derived from the architecture that contributes towards addressing the service selection and discovery problem is proposed. The accuracy of the algorithm is evaluated based on response time, recall and precision metrics. The experiments show that the content-based algorithm works better than collaborative algorithm based on user preference. The content-based algorithm more returns relevant services to the user and takes shorter time as compared to the collaborative filtering.

Using action research for complex research initiatives

Training methods and the transfer of knowledge and information has essentially remained unchanged for many years. With the pervasiveness of information and communication technology (ICT), an opportunity has been created to fundamentally change the status quo of training. This paper presents one approach of using ICT through the innovative combination of factors such as a persons abilities, styles and preferences with a multimodal interface to facilitate enhanced training. However, many ways exist to guide the research process of such a complex research initiative. Action research is one research method that lends itself to these complex projects. The paper uses the ability based technology interventions (AbTi) research project as a case study to analyse the effectiveness of the action research methodology. The paper describes the accumulated learning as obtained from the AbTi research project, as well as the action research methodology used, in order to ultimately be in a position to effect a fundamental change in training. It is found that action research can be an effective methodology for research initiatives of a complex nature.