Márcia de Borba Campos

Touchscreen Mobile Phones Virtual Keyboarding for People with Visual Disabilities

This paper presents the design and initial evaluation of a Braille virtual keyboard which allows text input on touchscreen devices such as smartphones and tablets. The virtual keyboard, called LeBraille, is a metaphor of the Braille writing system that uses audio and vibration feedbacks to promote accessibility for people with visual disabilities. We integrated this keyboard into two mobile applications and implemented an initial usability evaluation with nine people with visual disabilities. The evaluation comprised activities including a comparison of text input in three types of keyboards (physical keyboard, alpha numeric virtual keyboard, and LeBraille). Initial results indicates that writing activities can be as fast as a virtual keyboard depending on the Braille expertise of the user and the degree of blindness, however, the writing pace with a virtual keyboard is lower than the writing pace with a physical keyboard.

Audio haptic videogaming for developing wayfinding skills in learners who are blind

Interactive digital technologies are currently being developed as a novel tool for education and skill development. Audiopolis is an audio and haptic based videogame designed for developing orientation and mobility (O&M) skills in people who are blind. We have evaluated the cognitive impact of videogame play on O&M skills by assessing performance on a series of behavioral tasks carried out in both indoor and outdoor virtual spaces. Our results demonstrate that the use of Audiopolis had a positive impact on the development and use of O&M skills in school-aged learners who are blind. The impact of audio and haptic information on learning is also discussed.

Tecnologias para educação especial

This work presents informations about Special Education and some desabilities as well as present the state of the art in Computer Science in the Special Education where some softwares are analyzed. Finally, some suggestions are presented to be considered in the modeling of interface of software for Special Education. Also some sites on related subjects are presented.

Enhancing orientation and mobility skills in learners who are blind through video gaming

In this work we present the results of the cognitive impact evaluation regarding the use of Audiopolis, an audio and/or haptic-based videogame. The software has been designed, developed and evaluated for the purpose of developing orientation and mobility (O&M) skills in blind users. The videogame was evaluated through cognitive tasks performed by a sample of 12 learners. The results demonstrated that the use of Audiopolis had a positive impact on the development and use of O&M skills in school-aged blind learners.

Videogaming Interaction for Mental Model Construction in Learners Who Are Blind

The purpose of this work is to present the design, development and evaluation of a videogame that allows users who are blind to gradually build up a mental model based on references between different points on a Cartesian plane, in a way that is both didactic and entertaining. Two prototypes were iteratively created, and were subjected to usability evaluations by the end users, who used the videogame in the context of a set of defined tasks. This allowed researchers to adjust, improve and validate various aspects of the interfaces that had been designed and implemented. In addition, the cognitive impact of the game on blind learners was evaluated, based on the use of the final version of the videogame, and leading to revealing results regarding the proposed objectives.

Mobile Navigation through a Science Museum for Users Who Are Blind

This paper presents the design and implementation of mAbES, a mobile, audio-based environment simulator to assist the development of orientation and mobility skills in people who are blind. The modeling scenario of mAbES was a science and technology museum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The application was designed for use by people who are blind without the supervision of a facilitator or aid. The mAbES software allows for testing the creation of mental maps when people who are blind navigate through the museum.

Modeling Videogames for Mental Mapping in People Who Are Blind

Mental maps allow users to acquire, codify and manipulate spatial information, as they are schematics that guide behavior and help to deal with spatial problems by providing solutions. This is to say that mental or cognitive maps involve processes of spatial reasoning. The purpose of this work was to design a videogame development model to serve as a framework for designing videogames to help learners who are blind to construct mental maps for the development of geometric-mathematical abilities and orientation and mobility (O&M) skills.

Usa-DSL: usability evaluation framework for domain-specific languages

Software quality is a constant concern for software engineers. Hence, they are increasingly taking advantage of new methods to evaluate their products quality. For instance, the evaluation of languages developed for specific domains, which in the literature are known as Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs), is a growing concern. DSLs are languages used by different developers to solve problems of specific domains. Regarding the evaluation of these languages, several experimental studies that subjectively evaluate usability can be found in the literature, but few of them have taken advantage of applying Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to present a usability evaluation framework for DSLs, called Usa-DSL. In order to produce a first evaluation of the framework, we use a Focus Group method, in which seven subjects met to discuss our proposed framework. This discussion resulted in modifications of our initial proposal, which were incorporated in the final framework presented in this paper.

Usability Evaluation of Domain-Specific Languages: A Systematic Literature Review

Software developers have always been concerned with the quality of the products they produce. Although software engineers use new methods to evaluate the quality of their software, there are still some concerns in several of the methods they use when developing software, for example, when using Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs). One of the main goals of DSLs is to ease the work of developers in different areas. However, to achieve this goal it is necessary to provide an evaluation of the usability of such languages. Although it is possible to find some experiments to evaluate such languages, usually this experiments are subjective and do not use techniques from the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) area. Therefore, this paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) in which a discussion on the usability of DSLs is presented. This paper also presents a mapping to show how usability has been assessed by researchers in their work.

Decision-Making for Interactive Systems: A Case Study for Teaching and Learning in Bioinformatics

This paper presents the partial results of an evaluation procedure study in which satisfaction of use is a key factor in the selection of software aimed at Bioinformatics teaching and learning strategies. The objective of this research is to understand the attitudes, feelings, preferences and values that are involved in the selection of Bioinformatics resources with similar features and compare the results with usability and ergonomics criteria. To this end, we conducted a case study applying the following methods: user observation, questionnaire, interview and documental research. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis for two (2) types of tools: biological databases and sequences and macromolecule structures viewers.