Regina de Oliveira Heidrich

Corpo e tecnologia: um estudo das redes sociais na Web

A partir dos estudos Rheingold (1996), Castells (2003), Recuero (2005) e Lemos (2007), as redes sociais na Web sao entendidas como sistemas fundamentados na interacao social, constituindo novas formas de sociabilidade. Este trabalho aborda um estudo comparativo entre tres redes sociais na Web, buscando identificar as diferentes propostas, especialmente em relacao a representacao do sujeito, recursos de comunicacao e formacao de redes. O presente estudo constitui uma primeira etapa de pesquisa, que busca investigar o potencial das redes sociais na Web como espacos de inclusao de pessoas com deficiencia.

Evaluation of the Relationship Between Virtual Environments and Emotions

This study describes the emotional responses to the use of virtual reality (VR) environments. Namely the relation between different environments and axial emotional dimensions: valence, arousal and dominance. To better understand this relation, were also evaluated presence, concentration, relaxation. We evaluated the experience of 146 participants in three virtual environments: Helix® (a roller coaster experience); Yana® (a beach sunset/sunrise experience); Surge® (an abstract environment transformation experience). Helix® proved to be a facilitator of presence and arousal. Surge® results are like the Helix® except that levels of relaxation are lower. Yana® is a facilitator of dominance but levels of arousal and presence was the lowest of the three. The presence was positively related with arousal. Relaxation had a negative relation with arousal and presence. The emotional appraisals were different for each environment. These results are useful in developing virtual environments to model emotional experience.

Development of BCI Based Softwares to Assist People with Mobility Limitations in the School Inclusion Process

Inclusive Education has been the agenda at all levels and modalities of the education system, which discusses how the school will face the diversity and teach students who have disabilities. According to the 2010 Census, in Brazil, people with physical disabilities account for almost 7% of the population. This project aims to design Digital Learning Constructs (DLC) as an inclusive education model implemented by use of Brain Computer Interface (BCI). Thus, it is intended to assist people with mobility limitations in the process of school inclusion. A DLC is any entity or device devised or built in a multidisciplinary way in the form of an educational game, helping players to build or redesign their knowledge. It has as features, dual nature, as an object of learning and also a game, working procedurally the contributions of each area without any subordination between them. Thus, via BCI, the user will not use mouse, but a specific low cost hardware, which will command the computer via brain waves. Future studies with the user will be conducted through a qualitative, quantitative and ergonomic design approach. The study subjects are people with motor and communication problems, of the municipal education network. The importance of studies linked to the autonomy of these subjects is due to the fact that many do not have freedom of movement, because of motor impairments. The aim of this project is to open paths for people with motor impairments and degenerative diseases, so they can use the computer in the classroom context.

A comparative study: use of a Brain-computer Interface (BCI) device by people with cerebral palsy in interaction with computers

This article presents a comparative study among people with cerebral palsy and healthy controls, of various ages, using a Brain-computer Interface (BCI) device. The research is qualitative in its approach. Researchers worked with Observational Case Studies. People with cerebral palsy and healthy controls were evaluated in Portugal and in Brazil. The study aimed to develop a study for product evaluation in order to perceive whether people with cerebral palsy could interact with the computer and compare whether their performance is similar to that of healthy controls when using the Brain-computer Interface. Ultimately, it was found that there are no significant differences between people with cerebral palsy in the two countries, as well as between populations without cerebral palsy (healthy controls).

Design Inclusivo - desenvolvendo e utilizando tecnologias de informação e comunicação para alunos com necessidades educacionais especiais

Este artigo relata a experiencia de um grupo interdisciplinar de pesquisa intitulado Estudos em Design na linha de pesquisa Design Inclusivo de Equipamentos, Brinquedos e Vestuario do Centro Universitario Feevale, localizado na cidade de Novo Hamburgo, no estado do RS. O grupo e composto por pessoas das areas de design, fisioterapia, psicopedagogia e engenharia eletronica que estao trabalhando com o objetivo de incluir alunos com necessidades educacionais especiais.

Text Vocalizing Desktop Scanner for Visually Impaired People

There are many devices and applications dealing with text vocalization and some of them are easily accessible and implemented in mobile devices. These apparatuses are used to enable the access of visually impaired people to texts (without figures), in native or foreign language. However, there are too few devices that meet the deformity correction (typical of books), and picture improvements (enhancing the performance of the vocalization) requirements and low cost, really matters if the target group is found in the public Brazilian schools. From a domestic point of view, there is a gap in the products that fulfill these requirements. This work presents the development of a device that contributes to the autonomy of visually impaired people during their books and common documents reading. The equipment implements an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process converting the textual content into speech, without the use of a computer, performing the task in an autonomous mode.

Post-correction of OCR Errors Using PyEnchant Spelling Suggestions Selected Through a Modified Needleman–Wunsch Algorithm

In this article, the efforts made by the Vocalizer project development team to correct errors from texts generated by OCR Tesseract are described. Vocalizer consists of a device that captures images from books, converts them into plain texts with the aid of an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. It also prepares the post-processing of the obtained text, and converts its textual content into voice. The whole process is performed autonomously. In the post-processing step, a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm was applied to select the suggestions made by the spellchecker PyEnchant. The results obtained were reasonable, which encourages further research.

Scanner for Visually Impaired People

This project involves a multidisciplinary professional team from different areas of expertise such as Physics, Mathematics, Electronic Engineering, Computing, and Design. It aims to develop a desktop scanner that besides scanning a book or a document can also read texts aloud. The scanner will operate without being connected to any devices. This work is based on the Inclusive Design and User-Centered Design approaches. The Inclusive Design Toolkit was designed by a group of researchers from The Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre. The key design issues were solved through successive cycles of exploring needs, creating concepts, and evaluating options, guided by the project management, analyzed by the qualitative methodology of the study case. The diversity of users encompasses a range of capabilities, needs, and aspirations. The developed product allows the user to handle the scanner sitting on a chair, since the equipment will be placed on a desk, facilitating the performance of the task. As a result, the usability evaluation was presented in the software and product interface development. It is intended to present the development phases of the product to users who are visually impaired. Based on the studies presented in this article, the product is aimed to develop a simple, intuitive interface that allows blind and low vision users to easily access all the necessary resources needed to use the desk scanner.

Questing Ruins: A Game for a Digital Inclusion

The inclusion of people with cerebral palsy is not an easy path, because many of them preserve their cognitive abilities, despite being unable to speak, walk, or even both. This paper presents a study on the games applied in the education of people with cerebral palsy using Brain Computer Interface (BCI). Children affected by Cerebral Palsies have a disturbance in the control of their postures and body movements as a result of a brain injury. These injuries are the result of several causes. The most frequent is linked to the lack of oxygen flow to the brain, occurring either during or immediately after birth. The objective of the current research is to study the evaluation of the game we developed, called Questing Ruins. The methodology used was that of qualitative approach and case study. At the end we present Questing Ruins, an adventure game for entertainment and environmental awareness.

Preparing for OCR of Books Handled by Visually Impaired

The objective of this work is to synthesize the difficulties an algorithm must handle in book digitization for subsequent OCR application, such as angle correction, image distortion and words segmentation in addition to being operated by blind or visually impaired people real-time by video stream without further assistance. The developed method seems reliable, and provides good OCR results on a page by page basis. The results show improvements above 99,3 % in OCR performance in some cases, although execution time has increased. “The Vocalizer Project” emerged from a demand from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and Education for application in schools and public libraries. It aims to create more inclusive smart cities. Furthermore, it is destined for the inclusion of visually impaired and blind people to the vast bibliographic material existent.