Enhancing Learning Management Systems Utility for Blind Students: A Task-oriented, User-Centered, Multi-Method Evaluation Technique

This paper presents a novel task-oriented, user-centered, multi-method evaluation (TUME) tech-nique and shows how it is useful in providing a more complete, practical and solution-oriented assessment of the accessibility and usability of Learning Management Systems (LMS) for blind and visually impaired (BVI) students. Novel components of TUME include a purposeful integra-tion of a multi-theoretic foundation and multiple methods to accurately identify users’ accessibil-ity and usability problems in Web interaction and identify design problems and solutions to en-sure technical feasibility of recommendations. The problems identified by TUME remain hidden from extant evaluation methods - therefore, these problems remain in Web-based applications. As a result, evaluation of Web-based applications remains confounded by users’ Web interaction challenges; their utility for specific user types remains unclear. Without appropriate evaluation of users’ problems and challenges in using Web-based applications, we cannot begin to solve these problems and challenges. This paper demonstrates how TUME can be used to identify the unique problems and challenges of specific user types in using Web-based applications and suggests po-tential solutions. The outcome is an accurate understanding of specific design elements that pre-sent roadblocks and challenges for the user in interacting with the Web-based application and feasible design modifications to potentially improve the utility of these applications for specific user types

Understanding blind Users' Web Accessibility and Usability problems.

Our motivation for this research is the belief that blind users cannot participate effectively in routine Web-based activities due to the lack of Web accessibility and usability for non-visual interaction. We take a cognitive, user-centered, task-oriented approach to develop an understanding of accessibility and usability problems that blind users face in Web interactions. This understanding is critically needed to determine accessibility and usability requirements for non-visual Web interaction. We employ verbal protocol analysis for an in-depth examination of difficulties participants face in completing an online assessment through a course management system. We analyze the problems that hinder accessibility and usability and explain the nature of these problems in terms of design principles. Our study contributes an effective method for qualitative evaluation of Web accessibility and usability. Our findings will guide future research to develop more accessible and usable Web applications for blind users

Modeling an ontology on accessible evacuation routes for emergencies

Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. However, this is a challenging goal for researchers and professionals due to the diverse pool of prospective users, e.g. people with disabilities as well as other vulnerable groups. Moreover, in the event of an emergency situation, many people could become vulnerable because of exceptional circumstances such as stress, an unknown environment or even visual impairment (e.g. fire causing smoke). Within this scope, a crucial activity is to notify affected people about safe places and available evacuation routes. In order to address this need, we propose to extend an ontology, called SEMA4A (Simple EMergency Alert 4 [for] All), developed in a previous work for managing knowledge about accessibility guidelines, emergency situations and communication technologies. In this paper, we introduce a semi-automatic technique for knowledge acquisition and modeling on accessible evacuation routes. We introduce a use case to show applications of the ontology and conclude with an evaluation involving several experts in evacuation procedures. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

On supporting university communities in indoor wayfinding: An inclusive design approach

Mobility can be defined as the ability of people to move, live and interact with the space. In this context, indoor mobility, in terms of indoor localization and wayfinding, is a relevant topic due to the challenges it presents, in comparison with outdoor mobility, where GPS is hardly exploited. Knowing how to move in an indoor environment can be crucial for people with disabilities, and in particular for blind users, but it can provide several advantages also to any person who is moving in an unfamiliar place. Following this line of thought, we employed an inclusive by design approach to implement and deploy a system that comprises an Internet of Things infrastructure and an accessible mobile application to provide wayfinding functions, targeting the University community. As a real word case study, we considered the University of Bologna, designing a system able to be deployed in buildings with different configurations and settings, considering also historical buildings. The final system has been evaluated in three different scenarios, considering three different target audiences (18 users in total): i. students with disabilities (i.e., visual and mobility impairments); ii. campus students; and iii. visitors and tourists. Results reveal that all the participants enjoyed the provided functions and the indoor localization strategy was fine enough to provide a good wayfinding experience

Developing an understanding of the nature of accessibility and usability problems blind students face in web-enhanced instruction environments

The central premise of this research is that blind and visually impaired (BVI) people cannot use the Internet effectively due to accessibility and usability problems. Use of the Internet is indispensable in today's education system that relies on Web-enhanced instruction (WEI). Therefore, BVI students cannot participate effectively in WEI. Extant literature recognizes that non-visual Web interaction is inherently challenging. However, it does not explain where, how and why BVI students face accessibility and usability problems in performing academic tasks in WEI. This knowledge is necessary to adequately inform the development of interventions that improve the functional and academic outcomes of BVI students in WEI. The purpose of this doctoral research is to understand the nature of accessibility and usability problems BVI students face in WEI environments. It adopts a novel user-centered, task-oriented, cognitive approach to develop an in-depth, contextually-situated, observational and experiential knowledge of these problems. The context of WEI experience under investigation is an online exam over a typical course management system. Research design is a qualitative field study that involves a multimethod evaluation of the WEI environment. The core component of this multimethod evaluation is BVI students' assessment of the WEI environment. This is triangulated through assessments made by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and Web developers. The BVI student assessment employs an integrated problem solving model, in combination with verbal protocol analysis, to identify and understand where, how and why BVI students face a problem in completing the exam. The WCAG assessment employs automated accessibility testing and WCAG textual analysis to identify interface objects that violate accessibility standards and characterizes a problem. The Web developer assessment involves open-ended interviews to identify the source of a problem. Results show that the WEI environment consisted of innumerable interface objects that violated WCAG's standards on Web accessibility and usability. BVI participants faced many accessibility and usability problems that posed significant challenges completing the online exam. These problems fall into six major problem types as described below: 1. Confusion while navigating across WEI environment due to its frame-based page structure without unique frame names; 2. Susceptibility to submitting incomplete work when a new question page does not provide location and contextual information; 3. Difficulty understanding how to submit work when the selection controls for multiple option questions lack a consistent keyboard navigation procedure; 4. Inability to negotiate security information pop-up when the WEI environment uses an alert dialogue box; 5. Ambiguity in essay-type question page that lack meaningful labels for interface objects, including text area and text formatting toolbar; 6. Vulnerability of losing work when Backspace behaves as browser's Back button inside text area. This doctoral research contributes in three ways. It fills the knowledge gap about the nature of problems BVI students face in Web interactions for academic tasks. This kind of knowledge is necessary to determine accessibility and usability requirements for WEI. Another contribution is a set of mental model representations that explicate the thought processes of BVI students. Such representations are useful in developing user instruction and design of more accessible and usable Web sites. A third contribution is a user-centered, task-based, cognitive and multi-method approach to evaluate Web accessibility and usability

Technological Advancement for Vehicles Operable by the Visually Impaired

This senior project aims to provide blind persons with the ability to effectively experience driving. This report includes the project background, literature review, designs, methodologies, results, and conclusions with project management, human factors engineering, and electronic manufacturing focuses. Other universities and professionals have accepted the Blind Driver Challenge presented by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) or studied systems to improve vehicle feedback. The Virginia Tech vehicle, named Odin , includes tactile and audio interfaces in order to relay information to a blind driver about vehicle heading and speed. The QFD results reveal that the amount of available information from the feedback systems ranks the most important aspect of this project\u27s designs. The QFD slso shows the importance of both speed and acceleration. The final feedback designs of the vibrating vest, steering wheel, and audio provide commands, statuses, and speed updates. The programs packaged with the SICK LIDAR sensor as well as LabVIEW will serve to accomplish the necessary programming. This project contains two expensive items that push its total cost fairly high, the dune buggy and the laser scanner. Considering the over 1000 feet of electrical wire, electrical safety signifies a very large safety concern. Innovative sensor and tactile feedback technology provide the backbone for this advancement for the visually impaired

Haptic Feedback to Assist Blind People in Indoor Environment Using Vibration Patterns

Feedback is one of the significant factors for the mental mapping of an environment. It is the communication of spatial information to blind people to perceive the surroundings. The assistive smartphone technologies deliver feedback for different activities using several feedback mediums, including voice, sonification and vibration. Researchers 0have proposed various solutions for conveying feedback messages to blind people using these mediums. Voice and sonification feedback are effective solutions to convey information. However, these solutions are not applicable in a noisy environment and may occupy the most important auditory sense. The privacy of a blind user can also be compromised with speech feedback. The vibration feedback could effectively be used as an alternative approach to these mediums. This paper proposes a real-time feedback system specifically designed for blind people to convey information to them based on vibration patterns. The proposed solution has been evaluated through an empirical study by collecting data from 24 blind people through a mixed-mode survey using a questionnaire. Results show the average recognition accuracy for 10 different vibration patterns are 90%, 82%, 75%, 87%, 65%, and 70%

O papel da quarta revolução industrial no turismo acessível: estudo e conceptualização de uma aplicação web

The world is experiencing the beginning of the fourth Industrial Revolution, responsible for implementing a new digitalization era. This revolution originated in manufacturing, with industry 4.0 bringing a new reality to organizations. However, the scope of this new technological revolution is vast, and other sectors can benefit from the new digital era. In the Services Industry, tourism is an example of that, as Tourism 4.0 is the result of the impact of the fourth industrial revolution in this sector. Tourism 4.0 is the result of the impact of the fourth industrial revolution in tourism. An interesting challenge that this technological era brings to tourism is the social inclusion of people with disabilities. The accessible tourism market reveals huge potential, but despite this, this market is still largely ignored. Several technologies that promoted the fourth industrial revolution present capabilities to promote accessible tourism by improving tourism’s access conditions to people with disabilities. The present work developed a study in accessible tourism, understanding the main requirements for this market, and conceptualizing a Web application, for promoting accessibility in tourism. This Web application work as a mediator between the principal stakeholders. To gather requirements for the system, a triangulation matrix was elaborated using three methodological approaches: i) Literature Review; ii) website accessibility analysis of hotels located in the central region of Portugal; and iii) content analysis of some concurrent platforms. The requirements triangulation matrix allowed the identification of what requirements are crucial for the system success, which were used to conceptualize the solution with UML notation. This work intends to demonstrate the technological impacts of the fourth industrial revolution on society, especially on the promotion of a more accessible tourismO mundo encontra-se hoje no início da quarta revolução industrial, responsável pela promoção de uma nova era caracterizada pela digitalização. Apesar desta revolução ter surgido no setor industrial, com o conceito de Indústria 4.0, a sua aplicação é muito mais vasta, existindo outros sectores que podem igualmente beneficiar desta nova era tecnológica. O setor dos serviços, nomeadamente o Turismo, é um exemplo disso, e o conceito de Turismo 4.0 é o resultado do impacto da quarta revolução industrial nesse setor. Um desafio interessante que esta nova era tecnológica traz para o turismo é o da inclusão social, promovendo o turismo para todos. De facto, o mercado do turismo acessível, apesar de ter imenso potencial, tem sido relegado no contexto dos negócios. Por outro lado, o potencial tecnológico associado a esta nova revolução industrial sugere uma grande capacidade na promoção do turismo acessível, na medida em que podem facilitar as condições de acesso ao turismo, por parte de pessoas com algum tipo de incapacidade e ou necessidade especial. O presente trabalho visa conduzir um estudo na área do turismo acessível, por forma compreender os principais requisitos deste tipo de mercado e, consequentemente, conceptualizar uma aplicação Web, com o propósito de promover a acessibilidade no turismo, funcionando como um mediador de informação entre os principais stakeholders. Para a obtenção dos requisitos do sistema foi feita: i) uma revisão da literatura; ii) um estudo que avalia a acessibilidade dos websites dos hotéis da zona centro de Portugal, e, ainda iii) um estudo com base em análise de conteúdo de algumas plataformas potencialmente concorrentes. Os resultados são apresentados na forma de uma matriz de triangulação, onde é possível identificar a fonte dos requisitos identificados, sendo posteriormente utilizados para conceptualizar a solução proposta com recurso à notação UML. Pretende-se com este trabalho demonstrar o potencial e o efeito que as tecnologias existentes na era designada por quarta revolução industrial podem ter na sociedade, nomeadamente na promoção de um turismo para todosMestrado em Engenharia e Gestão Industria