Georgios Kouroupetroglou

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

This study investigates disparities in upper limb motor skills between children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), employing one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) point-and-click experiments using a mouse and a joystick and introducing one new metric for mouse cursor trajectory analysis. The participant pool c...

The objective of the study is to investigate the requirements of individuals with blindness regarding the information to be included in audio-tactile maps and other orientation and mobility aids of indoor places. The research was conducted with the participation of 115 adults with blindness aged from 18 to 64 years. The participants were asked to e...

In contrast to sighted students who acquire mathematical expressions (MEs) from their visual sources, blind students must keep MEs in their memory using the Tactile or Auditory Modality. In this work, we rigorously investigate the ability to temporarily retain MEs by blind individuals when they use different input modalities: Auditory, Tactile, and...

The scope of this paper is to examine the potential capabilities of embossed printers under the lens of Information Technology (IT). One of the main principles of IT is to manage and deliver information into accessible formats to all users with and without disabilities. The present study investigates the discriminability of lines and squares by par...

Despite the progress that has been made in Assistive Technologies and digital accessibility, not only in the technological field but also in the relevant legislation, today many print-disabled students in Higher Education Institutions still do not enjoy equal access to educational materials. We present the model we have developed for the efficient...

Assistive Technology: Shaping a Sustainable and Inclusive World, presents the proceedings of AAATE 2023, the 17th International Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe, held in Aubervilliers, France, from 30 August to 1 September 2023. For over 30 years, the biennial AAATE conference has focused on resear...

The key parameters musicians consider when they evaluate the quality of a musical instrument are its tuning (reproducing a musical scale), sound quality, and ergonomics. Musical instrument makers, even up to this day, primarily base their practice on empirical knowledge and costly physical experimentation. A computational model that combines all th...

In the framework of the EU funded Erasmus+ project InSIDE, whose goal is to build capacity to deliver inclusive Distance Education (DE) in universities of the Maghreb region, a comprehensive training for teachers and university staff have been carried out. The aim of these training is to prepare the participating universities to enable the social i...

Even though considerable efforts have been made to provide effective image descriptions for digital accessibility, a large portion of STEM images, especially complex STEM images, nowadays remains inaccessible to people with visual disability. The quality of alt text is much more critical for university STEM textbooks as image descriptions must be a...

Pr Art Karshmer started this series of sessions about access to STEM by people with visual impairment 20 years ago, aiming at presenting the state of the art of researches dedicated to non visual access to scientific content and calculation. This year we will read ten papers presenting research works using machine learning, but also computer algebr...

In the originally published version of chapter 41, some of the author names did not include special characters, in addition there were typing errors in two of the names. This has been corrected.

A significant number of Ancient Musical Instruments (AMIs) are exhibited in archaeological museums all over the world. Organized sound (music and songs) was the prominent factor in the process of both formulating and addressing intellectual activity and artistic creation. Thus, the way AMIs sound is a key element of study for many scientific fields...

Recent research into different folk vocal styles has been conducted by examining the acoustic parameters of the singing voice [1] [2] [3] [4]. On the Greek island of Crete, the acoustical parameters of a song are "strongly" depended upon the origin of the singer, due to the peculiar pronunciation which each Cretan region adopts. The most known non-...

A simulation of a musical instrument is considered to be a successful one when there is a good resemblance between the model’s synthesized sound and the real instrument’s sound. In this work, we propose the integration of physical modeling (PM) methods with an optimization process to regulate a generated digital signal. Its goal is to find a new se...

We present a simulation method for the auralization of the ancient Greek double-reed wind instrument Aulos. The implementation is based on Digital Signal Processing and physical modeling techniques for the instrument’s two parts: the excitation mechanism and the acoustic resonator with toneholes. Single-reeded instruments are in-depth studied first...

We present an investigation of the systematic differences in upper limb motor skills between children with learning disabilities (LDs) and children without LDs. The study comprised point-and-click experiments, one-dimensional (1D), and two-dimensional (2D), conducted with mouse and joystick. Eighty (80) children with LDs and forty-six (46) children...

Most of the braille embossers incorporate a mode for the creation of braille embossed graphics (BEG). Some of them can produce dots in different elevations, but also various dot densities. Dot elevation and dot density constitute the main variables that dominate the identification and conceptualization by blind users of tactile elements, such as li...

The aim of the project InSIDE is to develop accessible distance education (DE) programmes for individuals with disabilities (visual, hearing, or mobility / physical impairments). The overall objectives of the project are to: a) develop new and innovative, accessible and inclusive DE programmes improving the quality of Higher Education (HE) for indi...

The fast development of Distance Education (DE) and Blended Learning generates a wide, diverse, and fast-changing offer of Learning Management Systems (LMS). Selecting the right LMS for setting up distance education programs gets more challenging, in particular when specific requirements of teachers and learners with disabilities have to be taken i...

The aim of the project InSIDE is to develop accessible distance education (DE) programmes for individuals with disabilities (visual, hearing, or mobility / physical impairments). The overall objectives of the project are to: a) develop new and innovative, accessible and inclusive DE programmes improving the quality of Higher Education (HE) for indi...

The fast development of Distance Education (DE) and Blended Learning generates a wide, diverse, and fast-changing offer of Learning Management Systems (LMS). Selecting the right LMS for setting up distance education programs gets more challenging, in particular when specific requirements of teachers and learners with disabilities have to be taken i...

Abstract Introduction: This study investigated the user requirements of individuals with visual impairments regarding the information to be included in orientation and mobility (O&M) aids in order for optimally useful audio-tactile maps of campuses to be developed. In addition, this study aimed at investigating the importance (usefulness) that ind...

This work presents the concerns, prerequisites, and methods for building interaction interfaces for service robots. It mainly deals with Voice User Interfaces-VUI (also called Spoken Dialogue Interfaces-SDIs) but also includes issues on multimodal interfaces, involving speech and other modalities. Human-machine interaction in the area of robotics r...

This work presents the concerns, prerequisites, and methods for building interaction interfaces for service robots. It mainly deals with Voice User Interfaces - VUI (also called Spoken Dialogue Interfaces - SDIs) but also includes issues on multimodal interfaces, involving speech and other modalities. Human-machine interaction in the area of roboti...

This study presents brain electrophysiological characteristics of perspective-taking for blind individuals ver. sighted ones, aiming to extend our knowledge on social concept formation with visual sensory modality loss. A blind and a sighted group instructed to consider the moral dilemmas therein from a neutral (observer), a morally positive or a n...

The aim of this study is to investigate the user requirements of individuals with blindness regarding the information to be mapped on audio-tactile maps of city centers and neighborhoods/residential areas. Beyond that specific scope, this study aims at covering a wider research gap. That is, the investigation of the usefulness that individuals with...

Archeomusicologists commonly use methods based on the physical properties and the relative tuning system of a musical instrument in order to estimate its tones. However, because the musician often alters the tones’ frequency, for example, while playing in wind instruments by means of embouchure or by stressing the string in string instruments, the...

We present an enhanced version of the input device evaluation application (IDEA) system as an objective method for evaluating upper limb motor skills performance. By introducing three new metrics for mouse cursor trajectory analysis, along with the application of the two-dimensional (2D) experiment in the case of multiple sclerosis (MS), we examine...

Access to mathematical expressions have always been a particular problem for blind and partially sighted people, and more widely persons with a print disability, including those with dyscalculi, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other perception or processing disorders. This has a distinct negative effect in terms of careers possibilities for print disabled...

Background: Movement dysfunctions associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) include both fine motor and gross motor impairments and refer to individual motor parameters, such as velocity, coordination, balance and also contralateral voluntary free movements. Materials and methods: We designed and used an application program ca...

Mobile technologies provide radical opportunities in the domain of Assistive Technologies (AT) for persons with disabilities and the elderly by facilitating them to access multimedia content and improve their social interaction. The search for mobile AT applications that meet specific user needs is not an easy task for the disabled users, their fac...

The “Pathway to Universal Design for Learning” is the outcome of the “UDLnet-Universal Design for Learning: A Framework for Addressing Learner Variability” project and it aims to support the deployment of accessible educational e-content and to make available our findings, which may be used at regional, national and transnational level.

Παρουσιάζουμε τα αποτελέσματα της σχεδίασης και υλοποίησης του συστήματος GR-MathPlayer για την αυτόματη ακουστικοποίηση Μαθηματικών συμβόλων και εκφράσεων στην Ελληνική γλώσσα. Το GR-MathPlayer αποτελεί ένα σύστημα Μαθηματικών-σε-Ομιλία που μετατρέπει σε Ελληνική συνθετική ομιλία απλές ή σύνθετες Μαθηματικές εκφράσεις μέχρι και πανεπιστημιακού επι...

Σε αυτή την εργασία προτείνουμε μια μεθοδολογία βασισμένη στο πρότυπο DAISY- 3 για την παραγωγή και την ακουστική απόδοση Ψηφιακών Ακουστικών Βιβλίων (ΨΑΒ) τα οποία περιέχουν μαθηματικές εκφράσεις στην Ελληνική γλώσσα. Παρουσιάζουμε τη απαιτούμενη ροή διαδικασιών και εργασιών καθώς και όλα τα απαραίτητα εργαλεία λογισμικού. Ακολουθώντας αυτή τη ροή...

A number of software applications for the practice of the singing voice have been introduced in the last decades, but all of them are limited to equal tempered scales. In this work, we present the design and development of FONASKEIN, a novel modular interactive software application for the practice of singing voice in real time and with visual feed...

Typographic, layout and logical elements constitute visual text-signals of a document that carry semantic information over and above its content. Although they are important to the reader, most of the current Text-to-Speech (TtS) systems do not support them. As there is a lack of studies on how blind perceive them and aiming to incorporate them eff...

This Special Thematic Session (STS) on Standards, Tools and Procedures in Accessible eBook Productions intends to give insight into the State-of-the-Art procedures and tools in Accessible eBook Production and also to get to present some best-practice examples first hand. Fields that are tackled by this Special Thematic Session are: Audiobook Produc...

This session is the continuation of the STS started by Pr Arthur I. Karshmer at ICCHP since 2002. It intends to bring together experts from around the world to present and discuss the state of the art, the actual research and development activities and the future perspectives in access to mathematics, science and statistics. Its aim is to find ways...

The aim of this study is to investigate the user requirements of young adults with blindness regarding the information to be included/ mapped in two different types of audio-tactile mobility maps: (a) audio-tactile maps of indoors, and (b) audio-tactile maps of campuses. Forty young adults (aged from 18 years to 30 years) with blindness took part i...

The implementation of multisensory environments in the field of map construction for individuals with visual impairments can be a challenging area for both users and designers of orientation and mobility aids. Audio-tactile maps can utilize a large amount of spatial information represented by audio symbols, tactile symbols, audio-tactile symbols (c...

In this work we present the functional specifications, architecture and implementation of the HERMOPHILOS web-based system developed to automate and accelerate the accessible eTextbooks’ production, workflow management, and delivery in a higher education environment. We describe the redesign of the relative manual procedures and we show how HERMOPH...

The DAISY 3 MathML Modular Extension allows all of the features of a Digital Talking Book to work for math, just as they do for literary text. But this extension does not specify details about advanced MathML players on the localization (i.e. support of a specific native language), support of multilingual mathematical or textual content, cultural d...

We present a study on the identification accuracy of embossed tactile lines and squares in eight dot elevations and two dot densities. The results of correct and misclassified matched stimuli by ten congenitally blind participants are presented in confusion matrixes for the raised-dot lines and squares test stimuli. Moreover, the overall mean respo...

Current text-to-speech systems do not support the effective provision of the semantics and the cognitive aspects of the documents’ typographic cues (e.g., font type, style, and size). A novel approach is introduced for the acoustic rendition of text font based on the emotional analogy between the visual (text font cues) and the acoustic (speech pro...

Persons with motor limitations constitute a group-challenge when building indoor navigation and Location-Based Services (LBS). The authors present here the systematic approach they have developed that has to be taken into account in the user needs analysis of persons with motor disabilities when an advanced system for indoor navigation and LBS is d...

During this study we planned an alternative teaching process, designed and based οn inclusion, for tutoring the basic concepts of Observational Astronomy (OA) in an elementary school, taking into consideration the difficulties faced by both congenitally blind and sighted students. Following basic design-for-all principles, during a forty-five minut...

Upper limb functionality is an integral part of everyday interaction with the environment right from the very first minutes of human life. This paper investigates the experimental application of the IDEA (Input Device Evaluation Application) system on patients with multiple sclerosis at an early stage and without clinically overt motor deficits, in...

This book contains the proceedings of the 1st International Interdisciplinary Musicological Conference of the Department of Psaltic Art and Musicology of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies. The Conference was held in the Conference Centre of the Holy Metropolis of Demetrias and Almyros, in Melissiatika, Volos, Greece, from June 29 to July 3,...

In this work we present a methodological approach of applying Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for modeling of both the air temperature (AT) and relative humidity (RH) spatial and temporal distributions over complex terrains. A number of implementation issues are discussed, along with their relative advantages and limitations. Moreover, after the i...

The entry of smartphones and tablets in the market yields new opportunities in the domain of Assistive Technology (AT) for persons with disabilities. The search process for mobile AT applications that fulfill specific user needs is not an easy task for the end-users, their facilitators as well as the professionals in the area of rehabilitation. Eve...

Grounded on new research in neuroscience and the Design for All principles, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) constitutes an educational approach that promotes access, participation and progress in the general curriculum for all learners. The difficulty is in all cases translating the UDL principles and guidelines into practice. Though the UDL po...

In this work we present a methodological approach of applying Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for modeling of both the air temperature (AT) and relative humidity (RH) spatial and temporal distributions over complex terrains. A number of implementation issues are discussed, along with their relative advantages and limitations. Moreover, after the i...

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of 6-dot and 8-dot braille code on the reading comprehension ability of individuals with severe visual impairments and/or blindness when the latter receive typographic meta-data (bold and italic) by touch through a braille display. Also, patterns of hand movements were investigated and re...

Web-content accessibility plays an important role in internet based learning, including e-learning, distance learning and mobile learning. Current Text-to-Speech systems, commonly used for web-content accessibility, do not include an effective and standard acoustic provision of the semantics and the cognitive aspects of the visual (such as typograp...

1st International Interdisciplinary Musicological Conference, 29 June-3 July 2014, Volos, Greece, Book of Abstracts

Byzantine chants constitute a form of monophonic vocal music characterized by lengthy phrases and by musical scales with intervals smaller than the western music semitones. Byzantine churches have extremely long Reverberation Time and their acoustics is dominated by the contributions of the diffuse sound field. Thus, the sound character of Byzantin...

Το άρθρο 24 της Σύμβασης του ΟΗΕ για τα Δικαιώματα των Ατόμων με Αναπηρία αναφέρει ότι πρέπει να διασφαλίζεται στα άτομα με αναπηρία το δικαίωμα στην εκπαίδευση χωρίς αποκλεισμούς. Τα συμβαλλόμενα κράτη θα πρέπει να διασφαλίζουν ότι τα παιδιά με αναπηρία και ειδικές εκπαιδευτικές ανάγκες δεν αποκλείονται από τη δωρεάν και υποχρεωτική πρωτοβάθμια ή...

This paper presents our recent efforts towards advanced document accessibility by supporting not only the accessibility of the text content of a document, but also the accessibility of the text signals, i.e. the writing devices that emphasizes aspects of a text's content or structure. After the introduction of an appropriate document's architecture...

The aim of the present study was to specify transition rules from the 6-dot to the 8-dot braille code regarding advanced mathematical and scientific notation as they are determined in the Nemeth braille code. A generic design methodology was used to transform 6-dot braille scientific characters into 8-dot braille code for a specific set of scientif...

This paper presents the design principles and the development results of the UDLnet Inventory for Good Practices that follow the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. It aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice in applying UDL. Good Practices included in this Inventory incorporate methods, techniques, approaches or lessons, which...

We present a comparative performance analysis between the patterns resulting from the Kohohen’s Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and the k-means clustering approaches in the domain of atmospheric circulation type classification. The study utilizes mean daily sea level pressure (MSLP) data for the spring months of a 62-year period (1948 to 2009) on a grid...

Byzantine chants constitute a form of monophonic vocal music characterized by lengthy phrases and by musical scales with intervals smaller than the western music semitones. Byzantine churches have extremely long reverberation Time and their acoustics is dominated by the contributions of the diffuse sound field. Thus, the sound character of Byzantin...

This two-volume book contains the proceedings of the Joint Conference ICMC14|SMC|2014 (http://icmc14-smc14.net) the 40th International Computer Music Conference and the 11th Sound and Music Computing conference, held in Athens, Greece, from 14 to 19 September 2014 and organized by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Music Department...

This two-volume book contains the proceedings of the Joint Conference ICMC14|SMC|2014 (http://icmc14-smc14.net) the 40th International Computer Music Conference and the 11th Sound and Music Computing conference, held in Athens, Greece, from 14 to 19 September 2014 and organized by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Music Department...

The paper outlines the process of creating a new voice in the MARY Text-to-Speech Platform, evaluating and proposing extensions on the existing tools and methodology. It particularly focuses on the development of the phoneme set, the Grapheme to Phone (GtP) conversion module and the subsequent process for generating a corpus for building the new vo...

In this work, a language-independent design methodology for the systematic development of an 8-dot braille code, has been applied to the Nemeth code. First, we set the design principles: compression, intra-similarity, inter- similarity, unambiguity, consistency and foresight. Then, we follow the Nemeth principles: non enclosure, just in time inform...

We introduce and compare three approaches to calculate structureand content-based performance metrics for user-based evaluation of math audio rendering systems: Syntax Tree alignment, Baseline Structure Tree alignment, and MathML Tree Edit Distance. While the first two require “manual” tree transformation and alignment of the mathematical expressio...

The main focus of the present study lies on patterns and characteristics of hand movements when participants with blindness receive typographic meta-data (bold and italic) by touch through a braille display. Patterns and characteristics were investigated by the use of six-dot braille and eight-dot braille code in conjunction with types of reading e...

Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states that persons with disabilities should be guaranteed the right to inclusive education at all levels, regardless of age, without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity. State Parties should ensure that children with disabilities are not excluded from free...

Grounded on new research in neuroscience Universal Design for Learning (UDL) constitutes an educational approach that promotes access, participation and progress in the general curriculum for all. UDL recognises the need to create opportunities for the inclusion of diverse learners by providing curricula and instructional activities that allow for...

We present an investigation of formant tuning in the context of the Byzantine Ecclesiastic chant voice. The recordings selected for the analysis are part of the DAMASKINOS prototype acoustic corpus of Byzantine Ecclesiastic voices. More specifically, we analyzed recordings from ten different professional chanters in ascending musical scales of the...

In this study we introduce a novel experimental approach towards the evaluation of emotional prosodic models in Expressive Speech Synthesis. It is based on the dimensional emotion expressivity and adopts the Self-Assessment Manikin Test. We applied this experimental approach to evaluate an emotional prosodic model for Greek expressive Text-to-Speec...

The main research aim of the present study focuses on issues of reading comprehension, when users with blindness receive typographic meta-data by touch through a braille display. Levels of reading comprehension are investigated by the use of 6-dot and 8-dot braille code in matched texts for the cases of bold and italic meta-data. The results indica...

This paper discusses the design of a web interface for policy argumentation modeling. Given the complexity of the interface the WAI-ARIA descriptions were used to ensure that the data were accessible and the visual-heavy presentation was simplified. Conclusions were drawn as to the usefulness of the WAI-ARIA guidelines to an elaborate design of use...

Audio rendering of mathematical expressions has accessibility benefits for people with visual impairment. Seeking a systematic way to measure participants’ perception of the rendered formulae with audio cues, we investigate the design of performance metrics to capture the distance between reference and perceived math expressions. We propose EAR-Mat...

Vibrato’s existence has been recently presented in the context of Byzantine Chant Music (BMC); but further studies on the phenomenon require a robust method for the detection of vibrato segments inside large acoustic corpora. In this work we present a digital signal processing approach for vibrato detection in (BCM) recordings and report the accura...

Ambient air temperature forecasting is one of the most significant aspects of environmental and climate research. Accurate temperature forecasts are important in the energy and tourism industry, in agriculture for estimating potential hazards, and within an urban context, in studies for assessing the risk of adverse health effects in the general po...

In this study we present the digital signal processing of formant frequency tuning in the context of the Byzantine chant voices. The DAMASKINOS prototype acoustic corpus of Byzantine Ecclesiastic professional voices was adopted for the selection of the recordings for the analysis. We have investigated recordings from 2 different professional chante...

This study presents an analysis and comparison between the application of self-organizing maps (SOM) and the kmeans clustering approaches in the field of atmospheric circulation classification, focusing in the area of southeastern Europe. Circulation type classification is a significant aspect of climate research in terms of examining the large-sca...

This paper sets out the key requirements for effective use of Text to Speech (TtS) synthesis in automated spoken dialogue systems. It identifies basic shortcomings of current TtS systems in human-machine, task oriented Greek dialogues. It further verifies and completes phonological descriptions of Greek prosody with regards to the specific genre, f...

The present study aims to compare the intelligibility of words produced in natural and synthetic speech both with normal and fast speaking rate. The effect of several individual parameters on intelligibility of synthetic speech was also investigated. Thirty adults with visual impairment took part in the research. The experimental design consisted o...

Although Text-to-Speech (TtS) is considered a mature technology capable to produce synthetic speech of very high quality, current TtS systems do not include effective acoustic provision of the semantics and the cognitive aspects of the visual (such as the typographic cues) and non-visual (such as the logical structure) knowledge embedded in the ric...

Byzantine music is typically monophonic and is characterized by (i) prolonged music phrases and (ii) Byzantine scales that often contain intervals smaller than the Western semitone. As happens with most religious music genres, reverberation is a key element of Byzantine music. Byzantine churches/cathedrals are usually characterized by particularly...

Adequate and reliable lexical resources are essential for effective sentiment analysis and opinion mining. This paper proposes a methodology for the emotional assessment and annotation of words. The process is based on the Self Assessment Manikin test, and is coupled with two psychometric measurements for identifying possible bias due to the annota...

Persons with motor limitations constitute a group-challenge when building indoor navigation and Location-Based Services (LBS). The authors present here the systematic approach they have developed that has to be taken into account in the user needs analysis of persons with motor disabilities when an advanced system for indoor navigation and LBS is d...

As technology becomes an increasingly vital aspect of modern social interaction, the field of disability informatics and web accessibility has made significant progress in consolidating theoretical approaches and exploring new application domains for those with motor and cognitive disabilities. Disability Informatics and Web Accessibility for Motor...

Individuals with disabilities that impede their range of motion often have difficulty accessing technologies. With the use of computer-based assistive technology; devices, tools, and services can be used to maintain and improve the functional capabilities of motor disabilities. Assistive Technologies and Computer Access for Motor Disabilities inves...

We present an investigation of formant tuning in the context of the Byzantine Ecclesiastic chant voice. The recordings selected for the analysis are part of the DAMASKINOS prototype acoustic corpus of Byzantine Ecclesiastic voice. More specifically, we analyzed recordings from 10 different chanters in ascending musical scales of the diatonic genre,...

In this work we study the vibrato rate, extent and intonation in Byzantine Music. Two methods of analysis have been applied: the first based on the analytical signal and the second on the crests and troughs of the waveform of the vibrato signal. Tones - samples were extracted from ascending and descending music scales, chanted by five famous singer...