Nikolaos Kaklanis

Open Touch/Sound Maps: A system to convey street data through haptic and auditory feedback

Abstract The use of spatial (geographic) information is becoming ever more central and pervasive in today’s internet society but the most of it is currently inaccessible to visually impaired users. However, access in visual maps is severely restricted to visually impaired and people with blindness, due to their inability to interpret graphical information. Thus, alternative ways of a map’s presentation have to be explored, in order to enforce the accessibility of maps. Multiple types of sensory perception like touch and hearing may work as a substitute of vision for the exploration of maps. The use of multimodal virtual environments seems to be a promising alternative for people with visual impairments. The present paper introduces a tool for automatic multimodal map generation having haptic and audio feedback using OpenStreetMap data. For a desired map area, an elevation map is being automatically generated and can be explored by touch, using a haptic device. A sonification and a text-to-speech (TTS) mechanism provide also audio navigation information during the haptic exploration of the map.

Haptic Navigation in the World Wide Web

This paper presents a methodology for mapping a web page onto a 3D virtual reality environment enriched with haptic feedback and an application that has been developed according to the proposed methodology and gives blind people the opportunity to navigate through the internet by touch. According to the proposed haptic navigation in the world wide web, haptic and virtual modalities are combined together in order to enhance user experiences for multiple users: a normal sighted person is able to interact with the virtual reality scene via the visual or/and the auditory or/and the haptic information channel, a blind person is able to interact with the virtual reality scene by hearing and touch, a person having a small visual impairment benefits from the haptic feedback to reinforce the visual channel. The haptic navigation overcomes some of the shortcomings posed by audio rendering of web pages, such as the sequential navigation.

Virtual user models for the elderly and disabled for automatic simulated accessibility and ergonomy evaluation of designs

This paper presents a framework for automatic simulated accessibility and ergonomy testing of virtual prototypes of products using virtual user models. The proposed virtual user modeling framework describes virtual humans focusing on the elderly and people with disabilities. Geometric, kinematic, physical, behavioral and cognitive aspects of the user affected by possible disabilities are examined, in order to create virtual user models able to represent people with various functional limitations. Hierarchical task and interaction models are introduced, in order to describe the user’s capabilities at multiple levels of abstraction. The use of alternative ways of a user task’s execution, exploiting different modalities and assistive devices, is supported by the proposed task analysis. Experimental results on the accessibility and ergonomy evaluation of different workplace designs for the use of a telephone and a stapler show how the proposed framework can be put into practice and demonstrate its significant potential.

HapticRiaMaps: towards interactive exploration of web world maps for the visually impaired

Existing information on the Web and especially maps are graphically-orientated and in most cases visually impaired users have very restricted access and find it difficult to recognize this kind of visual representation. For visually impaired people and especially for blind users alternative information presentation ways must be found, which would replace visual information. We investigate the potential role of haptics in augmenting the visualization of maps exist on the Web. HapticRiaMaps is a free open source web application enforces the accessibility of maps for the visually impaired users. Issues of multimodal interaction, relevant sonifications, and haptic technologies enable efficient map exploration of preferable and well known 2D maps (retrieves maps from OpenStreetMap web application).

WaaT: personalised web accessibility evaluation tool

Our approach introduces an advanced and new personalized Web accessibility evaluation methodology, allowing for Web content accessibility evaluation regarding different selectable disability profiles (impairments, personas) as well as Assistive technologies and devices. We define an evaluation approach based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and the Barrier Walkthrough, with the goal of providing support to Web developers and designers to conduct rapid, yet specialized, accessibility assessments focused on different disability types and user preferences for Web applications.

3D HapticWebBrowser: towards universal web navigation for the visually impaired

When viewed at a macroscopic scale, an interesting emergent property of the Web is that it constantly evolves towards being the most important entry point for information production and consumption by everyone. This purpose is defeated right if a single user with a disability cannot access a given piece of information on the Web. However, information on the Web is graphically-orientated and in most cases visually impaired users have very restricted access and find it difficult to recognize this kind of visual representation. For visually impaired people and especially for blind users alternative information presentation ways must be found, which would replace visual information. 3D HapticWebBrowser, is a free open source web browser to address the problems of visually impaired in accessing the Web. Issues of multimodal interaction and haptic technologies enable universal navigation of web pages and efficient map exploration of preferable 2D maps.

Novel human factors for ergonomy evaluation in virtual environments using virtual user models

The present paper introduces a set of ergonomic factors which are evaluated by a framework that performs automatic, simulated ergonomic analysis of virtual environments. The proposed framework uses virtual user models describing users with or without physical deficiencies and evaluates the ergonomy of virtual environments for the specific users. Two novel ergonomic factors regarding comfort are introduced and compared to known physical metrics, such as torque, impulse and energy. The factors used are described in detail, according to their theoretical basis as well as their practical meaning. Experimental results illustrate the use of the proposed framework in two realistic application scenarios: a common car interior and a typical workplace design.

Towards standardisation of user models for simulation and adaptation purposes

The use of user models can be very valuable when trying to develop accessible and ergonomic products and services taking into account users’ specific needs and preferences. Simulation of user–product interaction using user models may reveal accessibility issues at the early stages of design and development, and this results to a significant reduction in costs and development time. Moreover, user models can be used in adaptive interfaces enabling the personalised customisation of user interfaces that enhances the accessibility and usability of products and services. This paper presents the efforts of the Virtual User Modelling and Simulation Standardisation ‘VUMS’ cluster of projects towards the development of an interoperable user model, able to describe both able-bodied and people with various kinds of disabilities. The VUMS cluster is consisted by the VERITAS, MyUI, GUIDE, and VICON FP7 European projects, all involved in user modelling from different perspectives. The main goal of the VUMS cluster was the development of a unified user model that could be used by all the participant projects and that could be the basis of a new user model standard. Currently, within the VUMS cluster, a common user model has been defined and converters that enable the transformation from each project’s specific user model to the VUMS user model and vice versa have been developed enabling, thus, the exchange of user models between the projects.

Accessibility through Preferences: Context-Aware Recommender of Settings

A proposal for merging context-awareness and user preferences in the same software system is provided. Several modules from the on-going CLOUD4All project (European Commission Seventh Framework Programme) are enhanced with Context Awareness, including the Semantic Matching Framework, the RuleBased Matchmaker (with new rules) and the Statistical Matchmaker (with new features to be used as predictors). Some other components are created exclusively to deal with context features, as the Context Aware Server (to add context from motes) and the Minimatchmaker (to save computation and network resources for well-known situations)

An analysis of personalized web accessibility

This paper presents an experimental study designed to understand the differences of performing personalized Web accessibility evaluations or generic evaluations. We used the WaaT evaluator, which can perform personalized WCAG 2.0 based evaluation. We claim that these tools can be used by an individual to understand if a page is accessible to himself, before wasting time browsing its content. Our study shows that there are considerable differences between the generic and the personalized evaluation results. It also shows that the number of barriers found in accessing pages is in average considerably lower for users with upper limb and cognitive impairments than for those with vision and hearing impairments. Finally, we argue that common accessibility evaluation metrics are inadequate to understand the differences between these user perspectives of the same page. For a particular metric, we show that score differences are diminished and sometimes even mislead the perception of the accessibility quality.