Toni Granollers

Impact of Accessibility Barriers on the Mood of Blind, Low-vision and Sighted Users

Two versions of a website, a non-accessible site (NA-website) and an accessible site (A-website), were tested by 13 participants who were: a) blind users, b) low-vision users and c) users without identified disabilities. The mood of the users and their interaction efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction were recorded as they encountered several web content accessibility barriers. Results show which elements were the major causes of frustration to each user group, and how blind users displayed less criticism than expected to the barriers.

Methodology for identifying and solving accessibility related issues in web content management system environments

This work presents a methodology that allows identifying and solving accessibility related issues in web pages using Web Content Management System (CMS) environments. In this sense, the methodology establishes a series of steps to be performed in order to ensure that the content managed by CMSs is accessible. A study has been performed on two different CMSs to check the validity of the steps defined in the methodology. The paper includes the methodology used, the evaluation performed on both CMS (OpenCMS and Typo3) and the key findings of the analysis. The results of the study have been positive as the objective of providing CMS environments that allow developing accessible web pages has been fulfilled.

On the Assessment of the Interaction Quality of Users with Cerebral Palsy

This paper is the continuation of a series of related work about experimentation of alternative ways of interaction with computers for disabled people (concretely with users suffering from cerebral palsy). In order to define an effective methodology to evaluate the usability and/or accessibility levels for this user profile, here, we start studying and evaluating (a) different interactive devices and interaction techniques that enable the use of computers for this people and, (b) existing metric techniques from human-computer interaction field. With this basis the article proposes a new evaluation method that simplifies the existing ones reducing the complexity to the minimum. This proposal is extensively explained and field research will soon be started

Subjective and Objective Assessment of Mashup Tools

Mashup tools are platforms that enable end users to combine components from multiple sources and thus create, deploy, and share their own web applications. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the findings of two empirical studies on evaluation of mashup tools by means of subjective and objective measuring instruments. In the first study, data were gathered with the employment of SUS post-use questionnaire and Tobii eye-tracking device, and in the second, by applying the retrospective thinking aloud method. The analysis of collected data uncovered strengths and weaknesses of evaluated mashup tools. In addition, the relevance that users assign to quality in use attributes in the context of mashup tools has been determined.

A Nonformal Interactive Therapeutic Multisensory Environment for People With Cerebral Palsy

A new multisensory system that aims at fostering the interaction of people with cerebral palsy is presented. This article describes the strategies and technologies used to provide people who have moderate to severe cerebral palsy with playful and fun activities designed according to their abilities. These activities are based on interactive systems that use computer vision and generate graphics and sounds in real time. The well-being that is achieved through the use of these activities is the result of gaining a significant degree of autonomy by the users. The presented system was first developed in the Cerebral Palsy Centre of Tarragona, Spain. Its motivation came from the low rate of users able to interact with computers. Although several assistive technology gadgets and special software applications (e.g., cause–effect and educational activities, simple navigation environments, etc.) were used, most users simply did not understand the interaction mechanisms. It was thought that a highly interactive activity (reinforced with sounds and images closely related with gestures) would be more accessible to most users in spite of their sensory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Tests with impaired users show that the proposal promotes participation, engagement, and play. In this article, the experimental methodology, the used and developed tools, and the results that were obtained are explained.

OPEN-HEREDEUX: open heuristic resource for designing and evaluating user experience

The need of enhancing design and evaluation of user experience exists. We propose a resource which helps to semi automate the design and evaluation of user experience.

A design process for exhibiting design choices and trade-offs in (potentially) conflicting user interface guidelines

In the last decades a huge amount of knowledge about user interface design has been gathered in the form of guidelines. Quite often, guidelines are compiled according to user interface properties (e.g. usability, accessibility) and/or application domains (e.g. Web, mobile). In many situations designers have to combine several guideline sets in order to address the specific application domain and the desired set of properties corresponding to the application under consideration. Despite the fact that the problems related to the selection of guidelines from different sources are not new, the occurrence and management of conflicting guidelines are poorly documented leaving designers with little help in order to handle conflicts in a rationale and consistent way. In this paper we revise the questions related to selection and management of conflicting guidelines and we propose a systematic approach based on design rationale tools and techniques for exhibiting choices and trade-offs when combining different guidelines sets. This paper illustrates how such as an approach can also be used to deepen the knowledge on the use of user interface guidelines recording decisions across projects in an iterative way.

Newspaper Archives on the Semantic Web

The introduction of information technologies in the news industry has marked a new evolutionary cycle in the journalistic activity. The creation of new infrastructures, protocols and exchange standards for the automatic or on-demand distribution and/or sale of information packages through dif-ferent channels and transmission formats has deeply transformed the way in which news industry players communicate with each other. One inter-esting consequence of this technological transformation has been the emergence, in very few years, of a whole new market of online services for archive news redistribution, syndication, aggregation, and brokering. Newspaper archives are a highly valuable information asset for the widest range of information consumer profiles: students, researchers, historians, business professionals, the general public, and not the least, news writers themselves. Providing technology for news archive construction, manage-ment, access, publication, and billing, is an important business nowadays. The information collected from everyday news is huge in volume, very loosely organized, and grows without a global a-priori structure. This ever-growing corpus of archived news results from the coordinated but to much extent autonomous work of a team of reporters, whose primary goal is not to build an archive, but to serve the best possible information product for

Influence of web content management systems in web content accessibility

Web Content Management Systems (CMS) are traditionally used in institutions to allow web content management by people without technical skills. This study intends to check the influence of the CMS in the accessibility of the contents they handle. First, an accessibility analysis of six widely used CMS is performed base don the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG). Second, an accessibility analysis of a series of city council web pages managed by abovementioned CMS by using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Results of the study show that although web pages managed by the CMS with a better degree of ATAG fulfilment provide better accessibility, there is no direct correlation between results obtained in both evaluations. Information about what aspects cause accessibility errors in the CMS and the impact of such aspects in accessible web content management is also provided.

User experience specification through quality attributes

The concept of user experience includes different facets which have still not reached a consensus. On the other hand, the ISO/IEC 25010:2011 standard shows a structured quality model which permits us to obtain quality systems and software. The main aim is the specification of user experience based on the facets which are implicitly considered in the standard.