11,402 research outputs found
Mobile recommender apps with privacy management for accessible and usable technologies
The paper presents the preliminary results of an ongoing survey of the use of computers and mobile devices, interest in recommender apps and knowledge and concerns about privacy issues amongst English and Italian speaking disabled people. Participants were found to be regular users of computers and mobile devices for a range of applications. They were interested in recommender apps for household items, computer software and apps that met their accessibility and other requirements. They showed greater concerns about controlling access to personal data of different types than this data being retained by the computer or mobile device. They were also willing to make tradeoffs to improve device performance
Web-Based Student Processes at Community Colleges: Removing Barriers to Access
Colleges and universities are making extensive use of the Internet for collecting admission and financial aid applications. Benefits from online application services are enjoyed by both the educational institution and the prospecÂŹtive student who applies online. It is vital that web sites offering these services be made accessible so that students with disabilities are afforded the same benefits of online applications as their non-disabled peers.
Cornell Universityâs Employment and Disability Institute was funded by the U.S. Department of Educationâs National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) to conduct a project with the following three objectives: 1) survey student services professionals at community colleges to examine the extent of use of the internet for providing services and the awareness of internet accessibility issues, 2) evaluate a sample of community college websites for accessibility and usability by students with and without disabilities, and 3) develop a toolkit for improving access to internet-based services at community colleges
Towards a user-centric and multidisciplinary framework for designing context-aware applications
Research into context-aware computing has not sufficiently addressed human and social aspects of design. Existing design frameworks are predominantly software orientated, make little use of cross-disciplinary work, and do not provide an easily transferable structure for cross-application of design principles. To address these problems, this paper proposes a multidisciplinary and user-centred design framework, and two models of context, which derive from conceptualisations within Psychology, Linguistics, and Computer Science. In a study, our framework was found to significantly improve the performance of postgraduate students at identifying the context of the user and application, and the usability issues that arise
Towards Enhanced Usability of IT Security Mechanisms - How to Design Usable IT Security Mechanisms Using the Example of Email Encryption
Nowadays, advanced security mechanisms exist to protect data, systems, and
networks. Most of these mechanisms are effective, and security experts can
handle them to achieve a sufficient level of security for any given system.
However, most of these systems have not been designed with focus on good
usability for the average end user. Today, the average end user often struggles
with understanding and using security mecha-nisms. Other security mechanisms
are simply annoying for end users. As the overall security of any system is
only as strong as the weakest link in this system, bad usability of IT security
mechanisms may result in operating errors, resulting in inse-cure systems.
Buying decisions of end users may be affected by the usability of security
mechanisms. Hence, software provid-ers may decide to better have no security
mechanism then one with a bad usability. Usability of IT security mechanisms is
one of the most underestimated properties of applications and sys-tems. Even IT
security itself is often only an afterthought. Hence, usability of security
mechanisms is often the after-thought of an afterthought. This paper presents
some guide-lines that should help software developers to improve end user
usability of security-related mechanisms, and analyzes com-mon applications
based on these guidelines. Based on these guidelines, the usability of email
encryption is analyzed and an email encryption solution with increased
usability is presented. The approach is based on an automated key and trust
man-agement. The compliance of the proposed email encryption solution with the
presented guidelines for usable security mechanisms is evaluated
Evaluating Security and Usability of Profile Based Challenge Questions Authentication in Online Examinations
© 2014 Ullah et al.; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Student authentication in online learning environments is an increasingly challenging issue due to the inherent absence of physical interaction with online users and potential security threats to online examinations. This study is part of ongoing research on student authentication in online examinations evaluating the potential benefits of using challenge questions. The authors developed a Profile Based Authentication Framework (PBAF), which utilises challenge questions for studentsâ authentication in online examinations. This paper examines the findings of an empirical study in which 23 participants used the PBAF including an abuse case security analysis of the PBAF approach. The overall usability analysis suggests that the PBAF is efficient, effective and usable. However, specific questions need replacement with suitable alternatives due to usability challenges. The results of the current research study suggest that memorability, clarity of questions, syntactic variation and question relevance can cause usability issues leading to authentication failure. A configurable traffic light system was designed and implemented to improve the usability of challenge questions. The security analysis indicates that the PBAF is resistant to informed guessing in general, however, specific questions were identified with security issues. The security analysis identifies challenge questions with potential risks of informed guessing by friends and colleagues. The study was performed with a small number of participants in a simulation online course and the results need to be verified in a real educational context on a larger sample sizePeer reviewedFinal Published versio
Voice-For-Blind: An Utilizable Email Client for Visually Impaired Users
For people who are sighted, visually impaired, or blind, electronic mail has evolved into a vital tool for collaboration and communication. However, the current email-related activities on smartphones cause a number of problems due to insufficient mapping of haptic feedback, complex text-entry layouts, a variety of screen sizes and orientations, illogical ordering of navigational items, and inconsistent interface design. The Components on touch-screen interfaces that can't be seen can be difficult for blind people to precisely access, making it difficult for them to carry out common mailing tasks such as receiving, sending, organising, managing spam, deleting, searching, and filtering. Due to these issues, blind people are having trouble using smartphones and completing a number of tasks related to email. Junk and Spam email frustration and cognitive overload are additional effects. We proposed Voice-For-Blind an utilizable email client that is friendly to visully imapired individuals to get around the obstacles relating to the usability and accessibility of smartphone-related mailing activities. 38 blind participants in an empirical study who carried out 14 email-related tasks are used to evaluate the proposed email client. The outcomes of this prototype's use demonstrate an elevated accuracy in complettion, improved user experience, and improved touchscreen interface control for basic tasks like email management. The findings show that Voice-For-Blind is an email client that is inclusive of accessibility, giving blind individuals an enhanced user - interface experience and reducing cognitive load when managing emails
From usability to secure computing and back again
Secure multi-party computation (MPC) allows multiple parties
to jointly compute the output of a function while preserving
the privacy of any individual partyâs inputs to that function.
As MPC protocols transition from research prototypes to realworld
applications, the usability of MPC-enabled applications
is increasingly critical to their successful deployment and
widespread adoption. Our Web-MPC platform, designed with
a focus on usability, has been deployed for privacy-preserving
data aggregation initiatives with the City of Boston and the
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. After building and
deploying an initial version of the platform, we conducted a
heuristic evaluation to identify usability improvements and
implemented corresponding application enhancements. However,
it is difficult to gauge the effectiveness of these changes
within the context of real-world deployments using traditional
web analytics tools without compromising the security guarantees
of the platform. This work consists of two contributions
that address this challenge: (1) the Web-MPC platform has
been extended with the capability to collect web analytics
using existing MPC protocols, and (2) as a test of this feature
and a way to inform future work, this capability has been
leveraged to conduct a usability study comparing the two versions
ofWeb-MPC. While many efforts have focused on ways
to enhance the usability of privacy-preserving technologies,
this study serves as a model for using a privacy-preserving
data-driven approach to evaluate and enhance the usability of
privacy-preserving websites and applications deployed in realworld
scenarios. Data collected in this study yields insights
into the relationship between usability and security; these can
help inform future implementations of MPC solutions.Published versio
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