Wolfgang L. Zagler

Computers Helping People with Special Needs

The Special Thematic Session of ICCHP 2014 entitled Accessible Media promises to yield exciting research and development from around the world in the areas of access to television and audio-video content, eBooks, and social media. The scholarly works in this session report on and discuss a wide range of activities under the umbrella of this important theme, which are all working towards the United Nations specified goal of providing more equal access to the cultural environment for person with disabilities.

Kinect-Based Five-Times-Sit-to-Stand Test for Clinical and In-Home Assessment of Fall Risk in Older People

Background: Accidental falls remain an important problem in older people. The five-times-sit-to-stand (5STS) test is commonly used as a functional test to assess fall risk. Recent advances in sensor technologies hold great promise for more objective and accurate assessments. Objective: The aims of this study were: (1) to examine the feasibility of a low-cost and portable Kinect-based 5STS test to discriminate between fallers and nonfallers and (2) to investigate whether this test can be used for supervised clinical, supervised and unsupervised in-home fall risk assessments. Methods: A total of 94 community-dwelling older adults were assessed by the Kinect-based 5STS test in the laboratory and 20 participants were tested in their own homes. An algorithm was developed to automatically calculate timing- and speed-related measurements from the Kinect-based sensor data to discriminate between fallers and nonfallers. The associations of these measurements with standard clinical fall risk tests and the results of supervised and unsupervised in-home assessments were examined. Results: Fallers were significantly slower than nonfallers on Kinect-based measures. The mean velocity of the sit-to-stand transitions discriminated well between the fallers and nonfallers based on 12-month retrospective fall data. The Kinect-based measures collected in the laboratory correlated strongly with those collected in the supervised (r = 0.704-0.832) and unsupervised (r = 0.775-0.931) in-home assessments. Conclusion: In summary, we found that the Kinect-based 5STS test discriminated well between the fallers and nonfallers and was feasible to administer in clinical and supervised in-home settings. This test may be useful in clinical settings for identifying high-risk fallers for further intervention or for regular in-home assessments in the future.

First user test results with the Predictive Typing system FASTY

This paper gives a brief overview about the partially EU funded project IST-2000-25420 FASTY in the IST program. The objective of FASTY was the creation of a system for increasing the text generation rate of disabled persons by Predictive Typing and dedicated advanced input devices. The system was developed for the Dutch, French, German, and Swedish language, the concept, however, is useable for most European languages. Some results from the user tests with the first prototype during the year 2003 are shown herein and were used to build the second and last prototype. A commercial version of the FASTY software is expected to be available in the second half of 2004.

A Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living in the Municipality of Schwechat

This paper describes the Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and services in the city of Schwechat. Local authorities, social service providers, elderly persons, carers, research entities and companies have started to cooperate closely as full partners in this Living Lab in order to invent, discuss, explore, implement, and evaluate innovative technologies to support the independent living of senior citizens. This approach allows focusing on the actual needs of the future users by involving them right from the beginning. The paper gives an overview on the approach of the Living Lab, it describes some pilot projects currently being carried out and discusses the preliminary experiences gathered since 2006. The first findings in the Living Lab are promising, especially the feedback from the user community is very positive.

Involvement of elderly citizens as potential end users of assistive technologies in the living lab Schwechat

This paper describes the efforts of the city of Schwechat in creating a local information society by supporting the Schwechat Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and services. Local authorities, social service providers, elderly persons, carers, research entities and companies have started to cooperate closely as full partners in this Living Lab in order to invent, discuss, explore, implement, and evaluate innovative technologies to support the independent living of senior citizens. This approach allows focusing on the actual needs of the future users by involving them right from the beginning. The paper gives an overview on the approach of the AAL Living Lab, it describes some projects currently being carried out and discusses the experiences gathered since 2006. The findings in the Living Lab are promising, especially the feedback from the user community is very positive

A Videophone Prototype System Evaluated by Elderly Users in the Living Lab Schwechat

Elderly people often experience difficulties in using modern Information and Communication Technologies. This paper presents findings of an evaluation and a field test of a touch screen based internet videophone system mounted in a wooden frame in order to provide a non technical appearance. During a 14-day lasting field test in real-life environment the goal was to evaluate if and to what extent the elderly participants would benefit from using such a modern multimodal way of communication. Four prototype systems were installed in four private homes and were tested successfully by six persons. It was found that the elderly users actually benefited from the touchscreen control, the proportionally large-scale GUI and the VoIP-and video-telephone functions. Despite the small scale of the evaluation the gathered data demonstrates the potential this technology might have in daily life in particular for the emerging ambient assisted living (AAL) area.

Technical assistance for severely motor- and multiple impaired children

Up from a certain degree of impairment, motor and multiple disabled children are rarely able to use conventional environmental control and augmentative communication systems. To attain this ability, in many cases customer-tailored user interfaces plus a long training process is necessary. Even learning the relation between reason and effect and experiencing self effectiveness (being able to make something happen in the environment) is the first big challenge and often an entire new experience. Hence, a technical system able to meet the needs of these users has to fulfill three criteria: (1) give optimal support to the training process; (2) support the facilitators with a tool to easily adapt the system to the rapidly changing user needs; (3) be able to grow from the first experience of self effectiveness up to a multi functional, multi purpose technical aid. The paper discusses an innovative technical assistance system developed at the Vienna University of Technology which is especially for multiple impairments and the training process. The authors look back on one and a half years of practical evaluation of the technical assistance system in a support center for motor and multiple impaired persons. After introducing the concept of the technical assistance system and pointing out its special features, two case studies illustrate the practical application of the system.

A method for generating CSS to improve web accessibility for old users

We propose a method to improve Web Accessibility. First, we generate a list of Cascading Style Sheet CSS for Websites depending on users needs and meaningful contextual information. Second, we rank this list in order to best fit with the current user. In order to provide means for that, formally connected knowledge in user interaction processes are used to support a reasoning unit, which is based on Answer Set Programming (ASP). Finally, visual aspects of user interfaces such as sizes of user interface elements, colours, relative position of the elements or navigation devices are specified. In Web environments, user interface adaptation is needed to tailor user interfaces to older peoples needs and impairments while preserving their independence.

Investigations to Develop a Fully Adjustable Intelligent Toilet for Supporting Old People and Persons with Disabilities - The Friendly Rest Room (FRR) Project

The FRR (Friendly Rest Room) project creates and evaluates prototypes of a more user friendly intelligent toilet for old persons and for persons with disabilities. Additionally, applicable knowledge regarding needs and wishes of old and/or disabled persons and their care persons are documented. In this paper the user driven research approach, ethical aspects and the iterative user centred design process are outlined. First results from user tests of lighting, human computer interface and preferred seating heights are described.

Das Technische Assistenzsystem - Unterstützung der Selbständigkeit bewegungs- und mehrfachbehinderter Personen

Von links nach rechts: Dipl.Ing. Paul Panek und Dipl.Ing. Christian Flachberger sind Mitarbeiter der Forschungsgruppe für Rehabilitationstechnik am Institut für Allgemeine Elektrotechnik und Elektronik an der Technischen Universität Wien. Dr. Wolfgang L. Zagler leitet diese Gruppe, die seit zehn Jahren besteht und sich mit Forschung und Entwicklung von neuen technischen Hilfsmitteln zur Unterstützung behinderter Personen beschäftigt. \