Maria Cecília Calani Baranauskas

Web accessibility and people with dyslexia: a survey on techniques and guidelines

Although the dyslexia has significant occurrence in the global population, ranging from 15 to 20%, not much is known about how developers, designers, and content producers should respect differences and consider people with dyslexia in the Web. In this paper we present a survey regarding the state of the art on dyslexia and Web Accessibility. From the results, we present a set of 41 guidelines that may support website stakeholders (i.e., people directly involved with the design, development, and content) in phases involving design, coding, and Web content insertion. Moreover, we propose a mapping of these guidelines considering the responsibilities of different roles of websites stakeholders. Informed by this survey we expect development teams to objectively consider abilities of people with dyslexia in order to remove accessibility barriers.

A value-oriented and culturally informed approach to the design of interactive systems

Cultural aspects such as values, beliefs, and behavioral patterns influence the way technology is understood and used, and the impact it may cause on the environment and on people. Although there is influential literature devoted to the subject of values and culture in Human-Computer Interaction, there is still a lack of principled and practical artifacts and methods to support researchers and practitioners in their activities. In this paper, we present a Value-oriented and Culturally Informed Approach (VCIA) to sensitize and support Computer Science and Engineering professionals in taking values and culture into consideration throughout the design of interactive systems. The approach is grounded on theoretical and methodological bases of Organizational Semiotics, Building Blocks of Culture, and Socially Aware Computing. VCIA offers a set of artifacts and methods articulated to support the design process in its different stages and activities: from the identification of stakeholders and their values, to the organization of requirements and the evaluation of the designed solution. In this paper, we present VCIAs principles, artifacts, and illustrate its usefulness in bringing values into consideration, supporting a socially aware system design. Values and culture are approached in design in a joint, explicit and informed way.Theoretical and methodological basis from different areas are articulated.Introduction and explanation of informed artifacts created to support designers.Instantiation of a process for involving values and culture in design activities.Case study explains the process in action and shows its contributions.

WELFIT: A remote evaluation tool for identifying Web usage patterns through client-side logging

Abstract Although websites evaluation tools use different data sources (e.g., Web pages, server logs, and mouse tracks), few of them support remote evaluation using detailed observational data. Without considering data that represent the user’s real interaction with the interface, usability problems and/or accessibility barriers may remain unknown. This work contributes to the field by providing a tool to identify usage patterns based on client-side event logs and by presenting event stream composition characteristics. The work results from a long-term project and the tool is now available to the community. The system records usage data during real use, identifies usage patterns, and indicates potential user interface design problems. The proposed tool was experimented, counting on 180 participants, during a 15 month period collecting data from website usage. Results obtained are promising regarding the identification of usage patterns and the characterization of event streams based on the types of events that compose them.

Accessibility and interactive TV: design recommendations for the Brazilian scenario

TV can be regarded as the most far-reaching media in Brazil. Its presence is noticed in 90% of Brazilian homes and it is the main source of information for a major part of the population. The moment of definition and consolidation of the digital TV technology provides us with a unique opportunity for analyzing and discussing this media accessibility. Making sure that TV contents and devices are flexible enough so that people are able to perceive, understand and interact with them is a main asset for its use and an essential requirement for the democratization of information via TV broadcasting. This paper analyzes interactive digital TV accessibility in informal, formal, and technical levels, considering the Brazilian context. In addition, it presents recommendations to design accessible interfaces by referring to the W3C guidelines 2.0 for Web accessibility and specific recommendations for iDTV.

Desafios de design para a TV digital interativa

Taking in account the social relevance of the terrestrial TV in Brazil and the transition to the digital technology - meaning new opportunities for exploring interactivity on TV - this paper is a worldwide review of HCI studies applied to interactive TV. Organizational semiotics artifacts are used in order to identify the main questions related to the interactive TV in the Brazil scene. The main design challenges are also pointed out by this study.

Designing Inclusive Social Networks: A Participatory Approach

The Brazilian society is characterized by vast differences with regard to socio-economics, culture as well as access to technology and knowledge. In this scenario, Information and Communication Technology, especially hypermedia systems, could benefit citizen, allowing access to knowledge, communication and collaboration. Current social networks systems were not conceived to address the challenges of an inclusive society. In this paper, we discuss some relevant design issues, elicited from a participatory approach, to the design of such systems. The exploratory design process starts with the elicitation of the different views among users, designers and developers, passes through design concepts definition and gets to a first approximation to a user interfaces design.

Value Pie: A Culturally Informed Conceptual Scheme for Understanding Values in Design

Interactive technologies have spread from the context of the workplace to our homes and everyday lives, and people use them for different purposes, through different devices, and in quite different and complex contexts. In the last years, the HCI research community has devoting attention to the subject of values, pointing out to the need for placing values in the core of technology design, and for studies that support researchers, designers and practitioners in doing so. In this paper, we introduce the Value Pie: a theoretically grounded artifact created to support the understanding and involvement of values in design. The paper presents the grounds used to create the artifact and discusses on how it can favor a comprehensive and informed understanding of values and their cultural context.

Creating an iDTV Application from Inside a TV Company: A Situated and Participatory Approach

TV is a highly social and massive media that is worldwide available. The Interactive Digital TV represents a new device that is still constructing its identity. Designing applications for it is a challenging task, partially because of its intrinsic complex context and the lack of theoretical and methodological referential to support design activities. In this paper, we argue for a Socially Aware Computing approach to the design of iDTV applications, articulating artifacts and methods from Organizational Semiotics and Participatory Design. A case study on requirements for the design of an iDTV application is situated in the practical context of a Brazilian broadcasting TV Company. The results show benefits of using informed artifacts and methods in participatory and situated practices, indicating that it is possible and viable to make socially aware design in industrial settings.

An Agile Process Model for Inclusive Software Development

The Internet represents a new dimension for software development. It can be understood as an opportunity to develop systems to promote social inclusion and citizenship. These systems impose a singular way for developing software, where accessibility and usability are key requirements. This paper proposes a process model for agile software development, which takes into account these requirements. This method brings together multidisciplinary practices coming from Participatory Design, and Organizational Semiotics with concepts of agile models. The paper presents the instantiation of the process model during the development of a social network system, which aims to promote the social and digital inclusion. The results and the adjustments of the proposed development process model are also discussed.

Semiotics as a basis for educational software design

Semiotics has recently been used to support formalisms for software design. On the other hand, every program has a certain educational potential as it exposes the user to a world of entities with which to interact. In this paper, we present a group of semiotic principles for software design and use them to show how they explain different educational possibilities. Our approach is illustrated by Theatre in the Computer: a software environment for children to experience the theatre.