A Review of Selected E-Recruiting Websites: Disability Accessibility Considerations

Ten job boards1 and 31 corporate E-recruiting websites were evaluated for accessibility for people with disabilities. The examination was performed using both an automated accessibility testing software (Bobby v3.2) and an examination of a sub-sample of the sites through a “simulated” application process. The simulated application process was performed utilizing only the information available to a screen reader and navigating the site using only keyboard commands, duplicating how a blind individual would typically navigate the web. The purpose of this second method was to see if it would be possible to successfully proceed through the entire multi-step job search and application process. None of the job board pages (home, job search, signup, or resumé submittal pages) evaluated by Bobby were found to be accessible. The vast majority of corporate E-recruiting sites also failed Bobby’s tests. The simulated application process evaluation was slightly more promising, but still only three of the nine job boards and three of the twelve corporate sites evaluated were accessible enough to work through the entire process of registration, job searching, resumé submittal, and application for a position. Many of the issues encountered could easily be corrected through the consistent use of alternative text for essential submit image buttons (i.e. “apply,” “post resumé”)

Evolution of Information Retrieval System: Critical Review of Multimedia Information Retrieval System Based On Content, Context, and Concept

In recent years the explosive growth of information affects the flood of information. The amount of information must be followed by the development of the effective Information Retrieval System (IRS) so that the information will be easily accessible and useful for the user. The source of Information contains various media format, beside text there is also image, audio, and video that called multimedia. A large number of multimedia information rise the Multimedia Information Retrieval System (MIRS). Most of MIRS today is monolithic or only using one media format like Google1 for text search, tineye2 for image search, youtube3 for video search or 4shared4 for music and audio search. There is a need of information in any kind of media, not only retrieve the document in text format, but also retrieve the document in an image, audio and video format at once from any kind media format of the query. This study reviews the evolution of IRS, regress from text-based to concept- based MIRS. Unified Multimedia Indexing technique is discussed along with Concept-based MIRS. This critical review concludes that the evolution of IRS follows three paces: content-based, context-based and concept-based. Each pace takes on indexing system and retrieval techniques to optimize information retrieved. The challenge is how to come up with a retrieval technique that can process unified MIRS in order to retrieve optimally the relevant document

Hands-On Universe: A Global Program for Education and Public Outreach in Astronomy

Hands-On Universe (HOU) is an educational program that enables students to investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math, and technology. Using the Internet, HOU participants around the world request observations from an automated telescope, download images from a large image archive, and analyze them with the aid of user-friendly image processing software. This program is developing now in many countries, including the USA, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and others. A network of telescopes has been established among these countries, many of them remotely operated, as shown in the accompanying demo. Using this feature, students in the classroom are able to make night observations during the day, using a telescope placed in another country. An archive of images taken on large telescopes is also accessible, as well as resources for teachers. Students are also dealing with real research projects, e.g. the search for asteroids, which resulted in the discovery of a Kuiper Belt object by high-school students. Not only Hands-On Universe gives the general public an access to professional astronomy, but it is also a more general tool to demonstrate the use of a complex automated system, the techniques of data processing and automation. Last but not least, through the use of telescopes located in many countries over the globe, a form of powerful and genuine cooperation between teachers and children from various countries is promoted, with a clear educational goal.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of the ADASS X conference, Boston, October 2000, ASP conf. pro

Accessibility-based reranking in multimedia search engines

Traditional multimedia search engines retrieve results based mostly on the query submitted by the user, or using a log of previous searches to provide personalized results, while not considering the accessibility of the results for users with vision or other types of impairments. In this paper, a novel approach is presented which incorporates the accessibility of images for users with various vision impairments, such as color blindness, cataract and glaucoma, in order to rerank the results of an image search engine. The accessibility of individual images is measured through the use of vision simulation filters. Multi-objective optimization techniques utilizing the image accessibility scores are used to handle users with multiple vision impairments, while the impairment profile of a specific user is used to select one from the Pareto-optimal solutions. The proposed approach has been tested with two image datasets, using both simulated and real impaired users, and the results verify its applicability. Although the proposed method has been used for vision accessibility-based reranking, it can also be extended for other types of personalization context

Experiences of aiding autobiographical memory using the sensecam

Human memory is a dynamic system that makes accessible certain memories of events based on a hierarchy of information, arguably driven by personal significance. Not all events are remembered, but those that are tend to be more psychologically relevant. In contrast, lifelogging is the process of automatically recording aspects of one's life in digital form without loss of information. In this article we share our experiences in designing computer-based solutions to assist people review their visual lifelogs and address this contrast. The technical basis for our work is automatically segmenting visual lifelogs into events, allowing event similarity and event importance to be computed, ideas that are motivated by cognitive science considerations of how human memory works and can be assisted. Our work has been based on visual lifelogs gathered by dozens of people, some of them with collections spanning multiple years. In this review article we summarize a series of studies that have led to the development of a browser that is based on human memory systems and discuss the inherent tension in storing large amounts of data but making the most relevant material the most accessible