A STUDY TOWARDS DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATED HAPTIC USER INTERFACE (AHUI) FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE BLIND OR VISUALLY IMPAIRED

An increasing amount of information content used in schools, work and everyday living is being presented in graphical form, creating accessibility challenges for individuals who are blind or visually impaired, especially in dynamic environments, such as over the internet. Refreshable haptic displays that can interact with computers can be used to access such information tactually. Main focus of this study was the development of specialized computer applications allowing users to actively compensate for the inherent issues of haptics when exploring visual diagrams as compared to vision, which we hypothesized, would improve the usability of such devices. An intuitive zooming algorithm capable of automatically detecting significant different zoom levels, providing auditory feedback, preventing cropping of information and preventing zooming in on areas where no features were present was developed to compensate for the lower spatial resolution of haptics and was found to significantly improve the performance of the participants. Another application allowing the users to perform dynamic simplifications on the diagram to compensate for the serial based nature of processing 2D geometric information was tested and found to significantly improve the performance of the participants. For both applications participants liked the user interface and found it more usable, as expected. In addition, in this study we investigated methods that can be used to effectively present different visual features as well as overlaying features present in the visual diagrams. Three methods using several combinations of tactile and auditory modalities were tested. We found that the performance significantly improves when using the overlapping method using different modalities. For tactile only methods developed for deaf blind individuals, the toggle method was surprisingly preferred as compared to the overlapping method

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2016-2017]

This catalog contains a description of the various policies, graduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2016-2017 academic year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1072/thumbnail.jp

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2015-2016]

This catalog contains a description of the various policies, graduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2015-2016 academic year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1067/thumbnail.jp

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2007-2008]

https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2011-2012]

This catalog contains a description of the various policies, graduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2011-2012 academic year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1064/thumbnail.jp

A professional agenda: An initial step toward enhancing the quality of teaching in University Malaysia Sarawak.

This paper was originally written as a proposal to the management of the Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in the bid to enhance the quality of teaching on a university-wide basis. The recent quality assurance movement on teaching in UNIMAS is an important step to foster excellence in teaching and to eventually meet one of Malaysia’s visions of being a center for quality education by year 2020. Although teaching is one of the core businesses in institutions of higher learning, it is ironic that academics in many universities are not required to possess preparatory training in teaching, unlike schoolteachers. As a forwardlooking university, one of the initial mechanisms suggested in this paper is to conduct a workshop series to all UNIMAS academics. The workshop series comprise topics such as Introduction to University Teaching, How Humans Learn? Assessment, Instructional Design, Instructional Technology, and Learning from the Teaching Practice. The aims of the workshop series are to train the UNIMAS academics in teaching on a short-term basis, to initiate a long-term commitment toward excellence in teaching, and to develop a collaborative academic community that places special commitment to excellence in teaching. The required institutional commitment, the success factors, and the long-term plans for enhancing teaching at UNIMAS are also discussed in this paper

Undergraduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2011-2012]

This catalog contains a description of the various policies, undergraduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2011-2012 academic year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1063/thumbnail.jp

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2010-2011]

https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1000/thumbnail.jp

Graduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2014-2015]

This catalog contains a description of the various policies, graduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2014-2015 academic year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1065/thumbnail.jp

Undergraduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2010-2011]

https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1020/thumbnail.jp