Exploring the viability of semi-automated document markup

Digital humanities scholarship has long acknowledged the abundant theoretical advantages of text encoding; more questionable is whether the advantages can, in practice and in general, outweigh the costs of the usually labor-intensive task of encoding. Markup of literary texts has not yet been undertaken on a scale large enough to realize many of its potential applications and benefits. If we can reduce the human labor required to encode texts, libraries and their users can take greater advantage of the hosts of texts being produced by various mass digitization projects, and can focus more attention on implementing tools that use underlying encodings. How far can automation take an encoding effort? And what implications might that have for libraries and their users? Compelled by such questions, this paper explores the viability of semi-automated text encodingunpublishednot peer reviewe

Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy

Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines several potential legal bases for personal data processing, in many cases data controllers, even when they are located outside the European Union (EU), will need to obtain consent from EU citizens for the processing of their personal data. Unfortunately, existing approaches for obtaining consent, such as pages of text followed by an agreement/disagreement mechanism, are neither specific nor informed. In order to address this challenge, we introduce our Consent reqUest useR intErface (CURE) prototype, which is based on the GDPR requirements and the interpretation of those requirements by the Article 29 Working Party (i.e., the predecessor of the European Data Protection Board). The CURE prototype provides transparency regarding personal data processing, more control via a customization, and, based on the results of our usability evaluation, improves user comprehension with respect to what data subjects actually consent to. Although the CURE prototype is based on the GDPR requirements, it could potentially be used in other jurisdictions also

HoloTrap: Interactive hologram design for multiple dynamic optical trapping

This work presents an application that generates real-time holograms to be displayed on a holographic optical tweezers setup; a technique that allows the manipulation of particles in the range from micrometres to nanometres. The software is written in Java, and uses random binary masks to generate the holograms. It allows customization of several parameters that are dependent on the experimental setup, such as the specific characteristics of the device displaying the hologram, or the presence of aberrations. We evaluate the software's performance and conclude that real-time interaction is achieved. We give our experimental results from manipulating 5 micron-diametre microspheres using the program.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Choosing to see: designing accessible video games for visually impaired players

As players when thinking of playing video games some memories come to mind, and those images and memories involve people playing around a screen, something very normal when performing such action. But what happens to those that can’t see properly? Or those that can see at all? How can they play? The word video game already includes “video” on it, something that involves the use of the sight. And in their origin video games were something that was created having in mind that the players would be able to use the visual feedback as a way to interact with the game itself. But technology and science have evolved in the last 50 years and nowadays it is possible for a completely blind player to play and finish a 30 h long video game. Of course this is not the case for the great majority of video games. Most video games developed in the last 20 years have little to no accessibility options, and even the ones that are currently released by big companies and studios rarely meet the expectations. Living in the 21st century in an advanced and technologic world where even VR games can be played at home, not having proper Accessibility options for the players seems wrong. As developers Accessibility is something that should be taken into account in each game and project worked on from now on. The objective of this paper is not to expose or criticize video game studios in the industry but quite the opposite. The goal of this paper is to inform and educate others and myself on a topic that must concern every developer and that should be something to take into account from the beginning of the development, how to make a video game more accessible for all players, especially for players with visual disabilitie