Blind Friendly Maps

International audienceSpace concept of the surrounding area is one of the most important preconditions of the independent mobility and orientation of the blind people. Tactile maps are considered to be the most appropriate source of spatial information. One of the main problems of the tactile maps usage is their problematic accessibility for the blind users since they are not available in time and with up-to-date content. The map production is a matter of tedious manual work and a result of expensive and time-consuming technical methods.After several years of joint effort of the support centers at Czech Technical University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno, and in cooperation with Seznam.cz company (an operator of the Mapy.cz map portal), the blind people have opportunity to use free available tactile maps of the entire Czech Republic (see http://hapticke.mapy.cz with the highest possible zoom). Using the Mapnik toolkit, source vector map data are automatically converted to special maps, which can be downloaded and printed on a microcapsule paper so they become readable by touch. The whole country is displayed on map sheets in a single scale (approximately 1:1500, which corresponds to the area of 300 × 425 meters per sheet), with a single map key and with an integrated system of the description. Street names are abbreviated and displayed in the Braille code. Technology of the microcapsule (swell) paper was selected as the most accessible technology for tactile graphics in Czech Republic (at schools and support centers for the visually impaired).Our method opens new perspectives of tactile maps usage because detailed tactile maps of a selected territory are available in a few minutes and they are updated in the same mode and from the same source data as all other web maps at the portal. Even web maps may now be "blind friendly"

Localization of visually impaired pedestrians by means of a dialog system

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá lokalizací nevidomých chodců. Práce analyzuje chování GPS signálu ve městě, dostupné podklady GIS a stručně analyzuje mluvené dialogové rozhraní pro slepé na mobilním telefonu. Po 3 iterací prototypů, práce nenachází žádnou použitelnou strategii pro lokalizaci založenou na přirozeném popisu prostředí uživatele a místo toho navrhuje a implementuje lokalizaci založenou na průběžném sběru GPS souřadnic, nebo zadání POI. Tyto metody lokalizace, dále testuje a implementuje. Práce ukazuje, že implementované metody nemůžou používat běžně dostupná API a otevřená data.This diploma thesis deals with the localization of visually impaired pedestrians. The thesis analyses the GPS signal in the city, available GIS and briefly analyses the spoken dialogue interface on mobile devices. After 3 iterations of prototypes, this thesis finds no usable strategy for a localization based on the natural description of the user's surroundings. Instead, it proposes and implements navigation based on the continuous collecting of GPS, or navigation using IBM Watson Conversation to acquire the information about the POI in the user's surroundings. This thesis implements and tests these methods. The thesis demonstrates, the implemented methods, can't be based on standard Geolocation APIs and open data

Blind Friendly Maps: Tactile Maps for the Blind as a Part of the Public Map Portal (Mapy.cz)

International audienceBlind people can now use maps located at Mapy.cz, thanks to the long-standing joint efforts of the ELSA Center at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Teiresias Center at Masaryk University, and the company Seznam.cz. Conventional map underlays are automatically adjusted so that they could be read through touch after being printed on microcapsule paper, which opens a whole new perspective in the use of tactile maps. Users may select an area of their choice in the Czech Republic (only within its boundaries, for the time being) and also the production of tactile maps, including the preparation of the map underlays, takes no more than several minutes. Keywords: Tactile Map·Tactile Perception· Blind People· Web Maps Accessibility· Automated Geodata Processin

Blind Friendly Maps: Tactile Maps for the Blind as a Part of the Public Map Portal (Mapy.cz)

International audienceBlind people can now use maps located at Mapy.cz, thanks to the long-standing joint efforts of the ELSA Center at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Teiresias Center at Masaryk University, and the company Seznam.cz. Conventional map underlays are automatically adjusted so that they could be read through touch after being printed on microcapsule paper, which opens a whole new perspective in the use of tactile maps. Users may select an area of their choice in the Czech Republic (only within its boundaries, for the time being) and also the production of tactile maps, including the preparation of the map underlays, takes no more than several minutes. Keywords: Tactile Map·Tactile Perception· Blind People· Web Maps Accessibility· Automated Geodata Processin

Blind Friendly Maps: Tactile Maps for the Blind as a Part of the Public Map Portal (Mapy.cz)

International audienceBlind people can now use maps located at Mapy.cz, thanks to the long-standing joint efforts of the ELSA Center at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Teiresias Center at Masaryk University, and the company Seznam.cz. Conventional map underlays are automatically adjusted so that they could be read through touch after being printed on microcapsule paper, which opens a whole new perspective in the use of tactile maps. Users may select an area of their choice in the Czech Republic (only within its boundaries, for the time being) and also the production of tactile maps, including the preparation of the map underlays, takes no more than several minutes. Keywords: Tactile Map·Tactile Perception· Blind People· Web Maps Accessibility· Automated Geodata Processin

Novel computational techniques for mapping and classifying Next-Generation Sequencing data

Since their emergence around 2006, Next-Generation Sequencing technologies have been revolutionizing biological and medical research. Quickly obtaining an extensive amount of short or long reads of DNA sequence from almost any biological sample enables detecting genomic variants, revealing the composition of species in a metagenome, deciphering cancer biology, decoding the evolution of living or extinct species, or understanding human migration patterns and human history in general. The pace at which the throughput of sequencing technologies is increasing surpasses the growth of storage and computer capacities, which creates new computational challenges in NGS data processing. In this thesis, we present novel computational techniques for read mapping and taxonomic classification. With more than a hundred of published mappers, read mapping might be considered fully solved. However, the vast majority of mappers follow the same paradigm and only little attention has been paid to non-standard mapping approaches. Here, we propound the so-called dynamic mapping that we show to significantly improve the resulting alignments compared to traditional mapping approaches. Dynamic mapping is based on exploiting the information from previously computed alignments, helping to improve the mapping of subsequent reads. We provide the first comprehensive overview of this method and demonstrate its qualities using Dynamic Mapping Simulator, a pipeline that compares various dynamic mapping scenarios to static mapping and iterative referencing. An important component of a dynamic mapper is an online consensus caller, i.e., a program collecting alignment statistics and guiding updates of the reference in the online fashion. We provide Ococo, the first online consensus caller that implements a smart statistics for individual genomic positions using compact bit counters. Beyond its application to dynamic mapping, Ococo can be employed as an online SNP caller in various analysis pipelines, enabling SNP calling from a stream without saving the alignments on disk. Metagenomic classification of NGS reads is another major topic studied in the thesis. Having a database with thousands of reference genomes placed on a taxonomic tree, the task is to rapidly assign a huge amount of NGS reads to tree nodes, and possibly estimate the relative abundance of involved species. In this thesis, we propose improved computational techniques for this task. In a series of experiments, we show that spaced seeds consistently improve the classification accuracy. We provide Seed-Kraken, a spaced seed extension of Kraken, the most popular classifier at present. Furthermore, we suggest ProPhyle, a new indexing strategy based on a BWT-index, obtaining a much smaller and more informative index compared to Kraken. We provide a modified version of BWA that improves the BWT-index for a quick k-mer look-up

Персональне освітнє середовище – як один із трендів сучасної освіти

To meet the needs of the modern information society one must constantly improve the education system. The effectiveness of teaching today’s students fully depends on the implementation and use in the study of modern information and communication technologies, including network services that allow you to create an appropriate pedagogy and technology support base of modern information systems for educational purposes, and effectively organize the electronic learning university environment. An analysis of e-learning environments of modern domestic and foreign universities demonstrates quite a high level of qualitative and quantitative indicators of the implementation of electronic resources for educational purposes. However, despite the relatively high level of organization and content of university portals, the creation and implementation of students‘ personalized e-learning environment, which in turn is based on personalization in a global network, student-centered learning, which acts as a basis for the formation of ICT and key competencies of modern student, is still an open issue. The selfspontaneous creation of personalized e-learning environment does not cover the training needs of students, but is only partially able to satisfy them, as knowledge students cannot improve the quality of both formal and informal learning. This paper focuses on the study of students‘ ICT competencies and their ability to use information and communication technologies to carry out information activities in their professional field. The authors also discuss the results of studies on personalized and adaptive learning, based on consideration of learning styles. Based on a statistical analysis of the pedagogical experiments, some recommendations are suggested for technology training for teachers and students in order to to improve training efficiency