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Developer Assistance Tools for Creating Native Mobile Applications Accessible to Visually Impaired People: A Systematic Review
Abstract
Many people with visual impairments, users of screen readers, use mobile devices to interact with daily information. Despite the growing number of guidelines, standards, and recommendations for accessibility on mobile devices, there are still accessibility issues in mobile applications. Although guidelines, standards and recommendations contribute to educate developers towards universal design, difficulties in the development process discourage developers implementing accessible applications. In addition to directives, tools are needed to automate the process of integrating accessibility in the applications. Through a systematic review of the literature, this work seeks to identify the state of the art in tools for developers in the creation of native mobile applications accessible to people with visual impairment, characterizing when to use them in the development process and its degree of technological maturity.
... Para compreender as ferramentas existentes que auxiliam desenvolvedores a criarem aplicativos nativos para Android ou iOS acessíveis a pessoas com deficiência visual, conduziu-se uma Revisão Sistemática da Literatura (RSL) que foi descrita em artigo previamente publicado [12]. Seus resultados se apresentam sucintamente a seguir. ...
... Ao total de 1918 estudos iniciais, somente 13 citavam ferramentas que poderiam ser utilizadas para o desenvolvimento de aplicativos móveis nativos. Ao analisar as ferramentas citadas nos estudos, pôde-se concluir que: Após a referida RSL sobre estudos acadêmicos [12], conduziuse um segundo estudo para buscar ferramentas voltadas ao desenvolvedor de aplicativos móveis nativos em bases de ferramentas comerciais. Foram encontradas 225 ferramentas iniciais e, após aplicar os mesmos critérios de inclusão e exclusão utilizados em [12], restaram apenas 25 que poderiam ser utilizadas no desenvolvimento de aplicativos nativos. ...
... Ao analisar as ferramentas citadas nos estudos, pôde-se concluir que: Após a referida RSL sobre estudos acadêmicos [12], conduziuse um segundo estudo para buscar ferramentas voltadas ao desenvolvedor de aplicativos móveis nativos em bases de ferramentas comerciais. Foram encontradas 225 ferramentas iniciais e, após aplicar os mesmos critérios de inclusão e exclusão utilizados em [12], restaram apenas 25 que poderiam ser utilizadas no desenvolvimento de aplicativos nativos. Com essa busca pôdese concluir que, além do número baixo de ferramentas: A lista completa das ferramentas encontradas em pode ser acessada em http://tiny.cc/kr8l7y. ...
Smartphones are a powerful tool to help visually impaired people in accessing relevant services such as education, transportation and leisure through applications. Yet, despite the growing number of mobile accessibility studies, compared to website-related studies, there are still few established and well-established techniques and guidelines. As a result, development tools for building accessibility in mobile applications are scarce. They are based primarily on operating systems recommendations and guidelines, such as those provided by Google and Apple and many are useful only after the development effort has been spent. This paper presents AccessibiLint, a tool for static code verification of accessibility rules for Android native applications. AccessibiLint was developed as an extension of Android Lint tool base on a set of guidelines for visually impairment accessibility for native Android applications.
... Com o desenvolvimento da tecnologia, a interação 3D se tornou ainda mais presente em diversas áreas, seja no mercado de trabalho, no contexto acadêmico [2] ou até mesmo no entretenimento, como é o caso dos jogos utilizando o sensor Kinect da Microsoft [11]. E embora acessibilidade seja reconhecidamente importante em sistemas de informação e comunicação, diversas entidades não demonstram o devido cuidado e não implementam estes recursos [5]. Este problema é ainda mais grave em interações 3D para usuários com deficiência visual, dificultando a inclusão destes em algumas atividades, como aplicações que utilizem somente a visualização para identificação e manipulação de objetos virtuais, por exemplo, atividades que são comuns em alguns sistemas educativos ou da área médica, dentre outras. ...
... E embora recentemente o número de pesquisas em acessibilidade para deficiência visual em aplicações móveis [4,5] tenha aumentado, continua havendo uma grande escassez nessa área em aplicações 3D. ...
The World Health Organization estimates that there are 285 million people with severe visual impairment in the world. With the advent of technology, virtual 3D environments are increasingly being used in several applications. Many of these applications, however, are not accessible to users with visual impairment. Our goal is to develop an innovative technique for 3D interaction to allow the identification of virtual objects with autonomy by the users, exploring only proprioception, audio feedback and low cost devices. We developed a prototype application implementing this technique and then ran an experiment with 8 visually impaired participants, who should use it to differentiate between virtual objects. Results were rather positive, with approximately 84% of correct answers without any prior training. This suggests that our proposed technique can benefit people with visual impairment in tasks that require interaction with 3D virtual objects in different areas of application, including in education. And it does so with good usability and accessibility as well as using only existing devices with relatively low cost and good availability.
... Accessibility, on the other hand, describes the obstacles to user communication with mobile applications. It describes a mobile application design that gives users the ability to see, understand, navigate, and interact with the application while delivering content (de Oliveira & Filgueiras, 2018). According to Butler (2011), a modified Linux kernel serves as the foundation for the Android operating system (Fidure 1). ...
The acceleration of infrastructure development, which is a government program, requires effective control of the implementation of construction work due to various factors that have the potential to impact the quality, time, and cost of a project. Furthermore, the rapid development of information technology in the construction sector is accelerating. Virtual building technology, based on the Building Information Modeling (BIM) principle, is capable of creating 3D (three dimensions), 4D (four dimensions), and 5D (five dimensions) models in the construction industry. Controlling the completion of work schedules, which has an impact on the cost and quality of work, requires an innovation strategy that encourages a culture of transparency and accountability. Real-time reporting of daily work progress using the android-based application "Strip Map-in" is a form of digital transformation in project management. This program facilitates the implementation of BIM in a project by calculating the progress of each item of construction work that turns into BIM data input. The weekly progress of a project will be calculated automatically by this program. This application delivers accuracy, acceleration, and simplicity in monitoring each work item and the overall project progress.
... Moreover, digital technologies constitute the structure of interactive and sensory environments through which to adapt the physical space of a museum to the user with disabilities [36]. Finally, devices such as frameworks, APIs or repositories have been developed, thanks to which it is possible to enjoy fully accessible mobile applications [37]. Mobile devices, in particular, offer huge potential for the promotion of accessibility especially for people with visual disabilities, as they incorporate a number of accessories, sensors or instruments that can efficiently meet the needs of this category [38]. ...
Accessibility to museums is one of the cornerstones of a modern museum enhancement, a feature highlighted by many policy makers, which also translates as a greater openness to different museum audiences. Among these public, the one represented by vulnerable people is linked to a precise management, based mainly on the removal and overcoming of physical and sensory barriers and on the use of the experience related to the works. In the museum field, the pandemic has accelerated the processes of digitization, leading many companies to develop strategies and practices to make their heritage accessible also at the digital level. This work emphasizes that this greater accessibility to museums linked to digital, is not limited only to a process of reproduction of works or places but increases the experience of the visit with additional information that is integrated with the basic experience, enabling the user to active value co-creation processes regarding the visit experience. A qualitative data analysis was carried out by using a multiple case study, analyzing top museums to understand which are the main digital strategies to improve accessibility to the most fragile public and what impact these strategies can have on management: to do this, a logic of repetition, in order to highlight the differences and similarities. These findings contribute to a better understanding of accessibility in cultural institutions and a series of managerial implications are proposed.
... Se observa en la figura 3, el porcentaje de efecto de las propuestas científicas en las distintas bases de datos escogidas en este estudio, en la que cuál se obtuvo que Scopus e IEEExplore devuelven más publicaciones que abarcan el asunto de investigación con un 36% cada una, Web of Science con un 15% y Springer con un 12%. Para la pregunta, ¿En qué tipo de publicaciones es común hallar la producción científica en el campo de la inteligencia artificial?; se obtiene que el 52% el porcentaje de documentos son de conferencias [9], [11], [12], [13], [15], [17], [19], [20], [29], [35], [25], [42], [36], [26], [27], [43], [30], el 42% correspondiente a trabajos de investigación o artículos científicos [14], [34], [38], [24], [37], [44], [45], [46], [31], [32], [33], [28], [47], [39], y un 6% son trabajos de revisión de literatura [18], [48]. ...
Este trabajo realiza una revisión sistemática de literatura centrada en la atención a la discapacidad visual apoyada por la inteligencia artificial categorizando la relevancia de aportaciones sobre machine learning. El objetivo principal es determinar técnicas que se aplican para la atención a la discapacidad visual mediante inteligencia artificial durante los años 2017 al 2021 de diferentes estudios relevantes hallados en bases indexadas como Scopus, Web of Science, IEEExplore y Springer. De un total de 545 publicaciones se determinaron 33 artículos categorizados en cuatro ámbitos, aprendizaje automático, redes neuronales artificiales, procesamiento de lenguaje natural y visión artificial relacionadas al ámbito de la discapacidad visual. Se evidencian tendencias de aplicación con técnicas que involucran a la inteligencia artificial y que permiten abrir campos donde la tecnología tiene un desafío que en cierta medida es un apoyo a las personas que presentan baja visión y plantean mecanismos para mejorar la calidad de vida.
... This system has the capability of making the driver alert regarding the amount of alcohol consumed and depicting the same on an LCD screen. In addition it generates a warning using a buzzer to make the driver mindful of his or her own particular situation and to fag others in the encompassing zone [5]. The security segment proposed by this framework is the driver in an unusually abnormal state of tipsiness isn't allowed to drive an automobile as the start framework will be shut down. ...
... A meta-model was suggested by Kaklanis to permit the manifestation of the entire user competences and incapacities [12]. It delivers a general explanation of any type of disabilities with the influenced tasks on it comprised, while the capability model was in turn basic to excerpt from it only those parts related to the auditory and speech abilities, and supplemented with features that writers mentioned as applicable for the field of speech treatment in children, such as noise level, dialog frequency and language [13]. It provides the general explanation of any type of disability with the pretentious tasks on it [14]. ...
Neurological disorders are frequently reported across the world. Patients affected with neurological disorders requires a definite rehabilitation. Various speech and auditory rehabilitation systems have been developed over the period and reported in literature as well. However, modern technological trends require prompt development of complex systems with simplicity. Model Driven Architecture (MDA) has served the purpose for variety of domains and the area of Neurorehabilitation also requires exploration in the context of MDA. This article introduces an MBN (Model-Based Neurorehabilitation) framework. It consists of a meta-model, tree editor, Sirius based graphical modeling tool with drag and drop palette and a model to text transformation engine that transforms the modeled scenario into java code. The framework has the capability to assign various activities like physiotherapy sessions for patients having neuro disorders using Kinect Sensor V2. Currently, our Sirius based graphical modeling tool allows modeling and visualization of various activities that are assigned to patients in order to overcome a specific disorder. The validity of proposed framework is demonstrated via a case study The results from the case study prove that our framework is very effective and capable of modeling and visualizing activities successfully.
Identification of Potential Marker Genes and Key Pathways in Breast Cancer
using Bioinformatics Analysis
Abstract
Breast Cancer has been a prime concern worldwide due to the alarming increase in the number of diagnosed cases every year. The heterogeneous properties of breast cancer subtypes ignite the demand for strong prognostic markers to significantly decline the occurrence and death rates due to BRCA. This study aimed to identify breast cancer associated genes and enriched biological pathways. The gene expression profiling revealed deregulated genes directly involved in cancer related
pathways and may serve as potential biomarkers for improved prognosis of breast cancer. In total, 19 hub genes and the associated key pathways were obtained from systematic bioinformatics analysis. The findings from this study revealed the biomarker genes identified based on their biological process and their role in the carcinogenic pathways. Additionally, among the differentially expressed genes we found few genes which were strongly linked to breast cancer as reported in earlier studies. This study suggests that pathway dependent gene interactions between FGF2, ACSL1, IGF1, LIPE, DGAT2, CIDEC, PCK1, LPL, PLIN1 and LEP may play a vital role in the incidence and progression of BRCA by activating carcinogenic pathways.
Energy crisis and pollution caused by vehicle emissions are one of the most important issues in the present society. Due to the charging time of battery of electric vehicle, requirement of charging on board is explored as option. This project deals with the design of a hybrid model of a solar and wind, which uses the battery asits storage system. This system allows the two sources to supply the load separately or simultaneously depending on the availability of the energy sources. The power generated from the wind and solar is fluctuating in nature.
This study examines how the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale became, through various mutations, an innovation policy tool of the European Union (EU), and summarizes the risks and opportunities created along the way. The paper presents a comparative study about the evolution of two innovation-related policies that share a common concept. This document-centric study relies on position papers, white papers, government documents, policy documents and research program descriptions. The paper establishes that the concreteness and sophistication of the TRL scale gradually diminished as its usage spread outside its original context (space programs). A discipline-specific tailoring of the scale is essential in every area before application. Yet for a number of disciplines this has not happened, while in some other areas the available customizations and handbooks are not used in EU context. This uncritical usage of the scale in the current EU framework program seems to carry more risks than advantages. In the absence of discipline-specific guides, TRLs will predictably become a source of confusion and a subject of abuse in efforts to obtain EU funding.
Digital accessibility contributes to digital and social inclusion of people. Faced with this potential contribution, in 2006, the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) presented the "Participative and universal access to knowledge for the Brazilian citizen" as one of the great challenges of computing in Brazil for a decade (i.e., 2006-2016). Through this challenge, SBC sought to stimulate and support research in Brazil related to the theme that includes initiatives to promote accessibility. Ten years after the launch of great challenges of SBC, there is a demand to characterize the researches in digital accessibility in Brazil in order to demonstrate the investments and evolution in this area. This work presents an overview of the investments in digital accessibility in Brazil, through the comparative characterization of the research carried out in the country ten years before and ten years after the challenge launched by SBC. The perspective of the presented characterization is relevant because it allows reflecting on how this theme has been explored in the country in the scientific scope, besides evidencing the relevance of maintaining digital accessibility as an important investment area in Brazil.
Implementing usable and accessible user interfaces is a challenge, especially for mobile applications. App developers have to include accessibility in an additional step during the implementation, very often they overlook this extra workload.
There are concepts which combine Model Driven Development (MDD) for apps or semi-automatic support to create accessible software. But helpful tools to support accessibility features for apps during the implementation are hardly discussed in literature.
The aim of this paper is a concept of model-based software development for accessible apps. Within the domain of transportation apps, we provide a model to create an app scaffold with the required elements and accessibility features included from the beginning.
Mobile navigation applications help improve the quality of life and self-confidence of visually impaired people. In order to understand the issues of communication between visually impaired user and mobile navigation application, qualitative analysis related to the structure of navigation process should be used. Therefore we propose a design of new usability evaluation tool that is based on the functional model of a general navigation system for blind. We implemented the tool and evaluated it with data from our recent experiment on mobile navigation aid. Results showed that the tool allows analysis of navigation problems and investigation of specific user behavior, specifically issues related to timing of the navigation dialog in relation to the position of visually impaired user and verification of correct execution of navigation instructions.
The efficiency of weather forecasting model is determined by the speed of its execution process. However, for about 50 years, its increasing performance has come from the underlying processor improvements, not due to large scale parallelism. This work aimed to evaluate whether a low-cost heterogeneous CPU/GPU computing architecture using hybrid parallelization method of CUDA and OpenMP will increase the speed of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The parallelization of many-core GPU using CUDA was implemented to run WSM5, a crucial but computationally intensive fine-grained parallelism part of WRF. The results obtained indicate that the speedup of WSM5 CUDA on Tesla C2050 GPU has increased significantly until 403x compared to WSM5 Fortran being run on a single core Intel Xeon X5650 CPU. This hybrid method has also increased a total speed of WRF model up to 12x faster than its implementation on a single core CPU and 27% faster than its implementation using OpenMP on 12-core CPUs. It was also revealed that a fast-math option in WSM5 CUDA code has not significantly influence the accuracy of overall WRF forecasting results.
The provision of e-government services using mobile applications (known as m-government) has had a significant growth in recent years. However, it is very important that such applications be accessible to people with disabilities in order to ensure inclusive access. Using appropriate accessibility auditing methods is very important to help identify accessibility problems in interactive systems during their development. However, there has been little support in terms of formal standard accessibility guidelines to help develop and evaluate mobile applications. In this paper, we present a case study with the evaluation of four e-government mobile applications in Brazil using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. The paper discusses the methodological adaptations of WCAG 2.0 for the context of mobile applications and its current limitations. The results of the evaluations performed in the four applications in the case study showed that many elementary accessibility problems widely known by HCI researchers were encountered extensively in the applications evaluated. This highlights the importance of furthering research in accessibility design and evaluation of mobile applications, in order to provide more inclusive access to essential applications used by all citizens, such as e-government services.
In this paper, The mobile application field has been receiving astronomical
attention from the past few years due to the growing number of mobile app
downloads and withal due to the revenues being engendered .With the surge in
the number of apps, the number of lamentable apps/failing apps has withal been
growing.Interesting mobile app statistics are included in this paper which
might avail the developers understand the concerns and merits of mobile
apps.The authors have made an effort to integrate all the crucial factors that
cause apps to fail which include negligence by the developers, technical
issues, inadequate marketing efforts, and high prospects of the
users/consumers.The paper provides suggestions to eschew failure of apps. As
per the various surveys, the number of lamentable/failing apps is growing
enormously, primarily because mobile app developers are not adopting a standard
development life cycle for the development of apps. In this paper, we have
developed a mobile application with the aid of traditional software development
life cycle phases (Requirements, Design, Develop, Test, and, Maintenance) and
we have used UML, M-UML, and mobile application development technologies.
People with disabilities often have difficulty using ICT and similar technologies because of a mismatch between their needs and the requirements of the user interface. The wide range of both user abilities and accessibility guidelines makes it difficult for interface designers who need a simpler accessibility framework that still works across disabilities. A modality-independent interaction framework is proposed to address this problem. We define modality-independent input as non-time-dependent encoded input (such as that from a keyboard) and modality-independent output as electronic text. These formats can be translated to provide a wide range input and output forms as well as sup-port for assistive technologies. We identify three interfaces styles that support modality-independent input/output: command line, single-keystroke command, and linear navigation interfaces. Tasks that depend on time, complex-path, simultaneity, or experience are identified as providing barriers to full cross-disability accessibility. The framework is posited as a simpler approach to wide cross-disability accessibility.
Accessibility is the ability to access and use of environments, products and services by any person and in different contexts. To reduce the problems presented by users when interacting with Web systems, studies have been conducted in order to minimize them in general. Their results are summarized in standards/guidelines to be followed in order to provide better usability and accessibility for all the diversity of users. In this context, this study intends to investigate a developer support system that cares about its content available in accessible to all. In this paper, is reported in a study about the state of the art engineering techniques to Web accessibility from a software development methodology formalized. The selection and analysis of the studies were performed by means of selected activities of the method of systematic review. The results include the analysis obtained by the synthesis of 65 studies selected from an initial pool of 301. From the data analyzed in this study, it was concluded that research on Web Accessibility has grown a lot since 2007. Although there are many accessibility techniques in software development, the study also indicates some activities related to Engineering Web are still sparse techniques for accessible applications.
Creating accessible mobile applications involves several important design decisions in order to accommodate the needs of disabled users, especially people with visual disabilities who use screen readers. The goal of the study presented in this paper was to analyze the adequacy of interface components to implement mobile applications, in order to identify the main accessibility problems that could be encountered by developers when using them, and the main strategies to overcome those issues. We performed an accessibility evaluation of a sample of 30 Android interface components present in 3 prototypes of mobile applications, employing the development techniques of native applications with and withoug Web components and hybrid development using the Apache Cordova framework. The results showed that the prototypes developed using web components were more compatible with accessibility criteria in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and with the screen reader Talkback. The most frequent accessibility problems in such components occurred in tables, headings and multimedia elements. Based on the current challenges for accessibility in mobile applications, we highlight the limitations of some interface components and emphasize that more studies need to be carried out to consolidate accessibility guidelines and good practices for mobile devices.
When applications intend to support accessibility, aspects of usability must be reviewed to adapt or extend common functional requirements that are implemented to ensure an easy use of applications. However, initiatives to develop guidelines for accessible mobile applications are recent and several approaches present only suggestions rather than a concrete list of requirements. This work presents an ample study on this subject, analyzing 247 scientific and technical articles to identify requirements that are discussed related to different types of impairments. This identification and further consolidation are carried out in a contextualized way via a classification schema proposed in this work. An observation based on analysis with real users is then performed to confirm and extend the initial requirements list and support our understanding about the limitations and needs of impaired users regarding the use of mobile technology. As result, this paper presents the main points of a guideline proposal for functional requirements, which should be considered by mobile applications to ensure accessibility with usability.
Native mobile applications are applications developed by using the SDK and programming language specific to the mobile platform. The key limitation of these mobile applications is the inability to transfer applications to another platform, without writing the application from scratch. This situation has led to new requirements, such as tools that enable generation of mobile applications with a single codebase. This paper presents a way of generating such applications using the Apache Cordova. It allows developers to implement applications on multiple platforms, using a single codebase. Applications are executed in a platform-specific native container.
With this paper we intend to present a systematic literature review on Web accessibility. During this research project, 782 papers were identified and by following a set of inclusion criteria, 38 stood out and were extensively analyzed. On this context we approach a set of Web accessibility critical issues, such as: guidelines, standards and regulations; mobile accessibility; organizations and user perspectives on the topic. During the full scope of this document we adopt a positive position, always focused on presenting solutions to ensure websites accessibility.
Moving rapidly into digital economy expands the need for accessibility coming from the growing number of people with disabilities, in various contexts. Additionally, ubiquitous computing has amplified the need for interactive systems to be able to adapt to their context of use, enhancing their utility while preserving usability. Cloud4all project [0] aims to develop a complete new paradigm in accessibility, by replacing adaptation of individual products and services, with auto-configuration of any mainstream product or service, using cloud technologies to activate and augment any natural accessibility the product or service has, based upon a set of the user’s Needs & Preferences (N&Ps). In order to assess this goal, Cloud4all has developed an evaluation framework, as part of the User Centred Design (UCD) iterative process. This paper provides an overview of the 1st pilots’ evaluation framework, together with ideas and plans about the general framework of the pilot test.
ICT have been moving rapidly into people’s lives nowadays. Even if living without access to ICT would be a barrier in the past, today access to ICT is required for most education, employment, and commerce, and is increasingly required for travel, health, safety, daily living and participation in most of our society. In this paper we present the evaluation of an all-inclusive ICT infrastructure from the perspective of different type of users that use it for different purposes based on their abilities, needs and preferences.
People with hearing impairments have difficulties in their access to Thai in situ authentic culture because they have problems with understanding spoken information during their visit. An extensive review of the literature found that there was no framework to guide developers in developing technology solutions for such face-to-face situations for people with hearing impairment, other disabilities or no disabilities. This paper describes a Technology Enhanced Interaction Framework (TEIF) and Method that have been shown by experiments and questionnaires to have the potential to help developers make local Thai museums more accessible for disabled visitors. The mean number of correct requirements was significantly higher for participants using the TEIF Method than the Other Methods. The TEIF Method helped developers select a solution significantly more often than the Other Methods that was not worse than a solution rated best by the experts. The TEIF Method also helped developers rate the best solution significantly closer to the experts' ratings than the Other Methods.
This manuscript presents the results of the trials that have been realized with student developers in the context of the AEGIS Integrated Project of the 7th European Framework. The aim was to evaluate the added value and the expected impact of two open-source toolkits that have been developed within AEGIS, aiming to support developers in the creation of accessible mobile applications, namely the Android Accessibility Designer Toolkit and the Accessibility Advisor tool. Furthermore, this evaluation process allowed collecting comments for further optimization of the tools before their final release. Evaluation concerned the assessment of the tools themselves by student developers participating in the trials, but also of the accessible applications that student developers were requested to develop with these tools, which were then provided to expert low-vision users for further assessment of their accessibility. Developers were equally distributed into two groups: one Control Group and one Experimental Group. Developers from both groups were given the same exercise and had to meet the same requirements. The Experimental Group tried the AEGIS toolkits for their developments, whereas the Control Group developers freely chose other, non-AEGIS tools. Results showed that 18 % total development time was saved when AEGIS tools were used, and that these developer tools have a big potential to help developers create easily accessible applications.
Large groups in society lack the necessary skills to be sufficiently self-reliant and are in need of personal assistance. These groups could be supported by information and information technology (ICT), but only if this technology is designed to fit their (cognitive) abilities. Inclusive design theory and methods have already been developed in research contexts, but there is still a gap between theory and practice. There is a need for a practical aid, that helps to create awareness of inclusive design among ICT developers, and offers easy-to-use information and tools to actually apply the methods for diverse target groups. This paper describes the first steps taken towards an inclusive design toolbox for developing ICT applications that offer cognitive support for self-reliance. Dutch ICT companies were interviewed and participated in a co-design workshop, leading to a number of initial needs, user requirements, and an on-line community, that form input for further development of the toolbox.
Major strides have been made to improve the accessibility of text-based documents for blind users, however, visualizations still remain largely inaccessible. The AISP framework represents an attempt to streamline the design process by aligning the information seeking behaviors of a blind user with those of a sighted user utilizing auditory feedback. With the recent popularity of touch-based devices, and the overwhelming success of the talking tactile tablet, we therefore suggest that the AISP framework be extended to include the sense of touch. This research-in-progress paper proposes such an extended design framework, MISD. In addition, the article also presents the preliminary work done in designing an accessible weather map based on our theory-driven design. A discussion and an outline of future work conclude the manuscript.
His paper presents a tool facilitating developers of user interfaces (UIs) to experience accessibility limitations that can be posed from various disabilities during the interaction of impaired users with their developments. In this respect, various aspects of visual, hearing, physical and cognitive impairments have been modelled through filters providing approximate, yet, realistic simulations over them. These filters have formed the basis for the developed tool, which can be used either on its own (as a standalone application), or be embedded in the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment. The tool, named DIAS, allows for impairment simulations to be performed over Java, mobile and web applications. Moreover, it integrates two of the most common assistive technologies (ATs), namely a screen reader and a magnifier. As a result, developers of UIs can not only experience how interaction would be affected from various impairments, but they can also understand how their developments would be perceived by impaired users through an AT. This work aims to provide an integrated, practical solution for impairment simulation, which could be easily adopted by developers, thus realistically increasing the possibilities for the future development of interactive applications that are more accessible to users with disabilities.
While mobile technologies, such as smart phones offer the benefits of portability and ubiquity, the small visual display can introduce a variety of challenges for users. Tactile feedback provides one solution to reduce the burden on the visual channel. However, the vibro-tactile signals presented by existing commercial mobile devices are relatively simple in nature and limited in number and hence cannot communicate broad set of semantic meanings or commands used in mobile applications and technologies. The research proposed in this paper, focuses on investigating how tactile feedback can be designed specifically for mobile interfaces, with the aim of improving and enriching user interactions when the visual channel is blocked or restricted (e.g. for blind or situationally-impaired users). More specifically, the aim is to investigate ways to widen the tactile bandwidth, through the manipulation of the parameters of touch. The resulting effects will be integrated within a range of mobile applications, and evaluated under a variety of common scenarios where distracters exist, to address the efficacy of the tactile icons developed. A framework of assistive tactile icons will be developed for mobile interface designers for reference, when aiming to improve non-visual access to mobile applications.
Factors Influncing Quality of Mobile Apps: Role of Mobile App Development Life Cycle
- N Venkata
- Divya D Inukollu
- Taeghyun Keshamoni
- Manikanta Kang
- Inukollu
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Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Methods, Techniques, and Best Practices
- Geordie Graham
- Sambhavi Chandrashekar
- Graham Geordie
Geordie Graham and Sambhavi Chandrashekar. 2016. Universal Access in
Human-Computer Interaction. Methods, Techniques, and Best Practices.
Springer International Publishing, Cham.
Validation of Toolkits for developing third-generation Android accessible mobile applications
- Maria Gemou
- B M Juan
- Maria F Colomer
- Silvia Cabrera-Umpierrez
- Maria T De Los Rios
- Evangelos Arredondo
- Bekiaris
Maria Gemou, Juan B. M. Colomer, Maria F. Cabrera-Umpierrez, Silvia de los
Rios, Maria T. Arredondo, and Evangelos Bekiaris. 2016. Validation of
Toolkits for developing third-generation Android accessible mobile
applications. Universal Access in the Information Society 15, 1: 101-127.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0377-9
An Overview of Researches on Digital Accessibility before and after the Great Challenges of SBC
- Thais Coelho
- A R Glívia
- Ismael S Barbosa
- Flávio R Silva
- S Coutinho
- Fábio R Da Silva
Thais Coelho, Glívia A. R. Barbosa, Ismael S. Silva, Flávio R. dos S.
Coutinho, and Fábio R. da Silva. 2017. An Overview of Researches on Digital
Accessibility before and after the Great Challenges of SBC 2006-2016.
Proceedings of the 16th Brazilian symposium on human factors in computing
systems. IHC'17, ACM Press, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3160504.3160537