UEFI BIOS Accessibility for the Visually Impaired

People with some kind of disability face a high level of difficulty for everyday tasks because, in many cases, accessibility was not considered necessary when the task or process was designed. An example of this scenario is a computer's BIOS configuration screens, which do not consider the specific needs, such as screen readers, of visually impaired people. This paper proposes the idea that it is possible to make the pre-operating system environment accessible to visually impaired people. We report our work-in-progress in creating a screen reader prototype, accessing audio cards compatible with the High Definition Audio specification in systems running UEFI compliant firmware.Comment: 6 page

Seeing the smart city on Twitter: Colour and the affective territories of becoming smart

This paper pays attention to the immense and febrile field of digital image files which picture the smart city as they circulate on the social media platform Twitter. The paper considers tweeted images as an affective field in which flow and colour are especially generative. This luminescent field is territorialised into different, emergent forms of becoming ‘smart’. The paper identifies these territorialisations in two ways: firstly, by using the data visualisation software ImagePlot to create a visualisation of 9030 tweeted images related to smart cities; and secondly, by responding to the affective pushes of the image files thus visualised. It identifies two colours and three ways of affectively becoming smart: participating in smart, learning about smart, and anticipating smart, which are enacted with different distributions of mostly orange and blue images. The paper thus argues that debates about the power relations embedded in the smart city should consider the particular affective enactment of being smart that happens via social media. More generally, the paper concludes that geographers must pay more attention to the diverse and productive vitalities of social media platforms in urban life and that this will require experiment with methods that are responsive to specific digital qualities

Virtual library:a technical implementation for a virtual reality library interface

Abstract. Libraries, as traditional information storages, serve an important role in providing free access to civilization’s knowledge to the public. In the advent of the information society, conventional means of knowledge seeking slowly become obsolete. As technologies advance, libraries shall discover how available inventions could be utilized in enhancing library services and raising public awareness. The offer to discover Virtual Library project was given to the author by the Center for Ubiquitous Computing in the University of Oulu, with the idea originating from Oulu City Library. The goal of the project was to implement an interactive application that would provide a unique experience for library users and show off capabilities of modern virtual technologies. The requirements for it were elicited and refined in a series of participatory design workshops held in Oulu City Library, and as a result, the content of initial web prototype was utilized in the creation of standalone virtual reality application on Unreal Engine 4. The application works with Oculus Rift headset and Oculus Touch motion controllers and lets the user explore the virtual model of Oulu City Library premises as well as some fictional places, added for diverse experience, and experience several activities. Virtual Library was evaluated in a series of testing sessions held in the Oulu City Library with a total of 12 participants, which were primarily the library’s staff members. Overall, the application was positively acclaimed, providing an interesting and unusual library experience, and presenting capabilities of modern virtual reality technologies.Virtuaalikirjasto : tekninen kuvaus virtuaalitodellisuutta hyödyntävälle kirjastopalvelulle. Tiivistelmä. Kirjastoilla on perinteisesti tärkeä rooli tiedon välittäjinä ja tallentajina. Kirjastojen tulee myös mahdollistaa pääsy tiedon ääreen. Siirryttäessä lähemmäksi tietoyhteiskuntaa, perinteiset tavat käsitellä ja havainnoida tietoa ovat jäämässä historiaan. Myös kirjastot kehittyvät ja oppivat kuinka uusia teknologioita on mahdollista hyödyntää tiedon välittämisessä yhteisöille. Virtuaalikirjasto-projekti lähti Oulun kaupungin kirjaston pyynnöstä Oulun yliopiston Jokapaikan tietotekniikan tutkimusryhmälle. Projektin päämääränä oli toteuttaa interaktiivinen sovellus, joka tarjoaisi kirjaston asiakkaille elämyksellistä sisältöä samalla havainnollistaen virtuaalitodellisuuden ja siihen liittyvien teknologioiden mahdollisuuksia. Sovelluksen toteutusta hiottiin Oulun kaupunginkirjastossa sarjalla osallistavan suunnittelun mukaisia työpajoja. Virtuaalitodellisuussovellus toteutettiin Unreal Engine 4 -pelimoottorilla. Se toimii Oculus Rift -virtuaalilaseilla ja Oculus Touch -ohjaimilla. Sovelluksessa on mahdollista kulkea vapaasti virtuaalisessa Oulun kaupunginkirjastossa, sekä tilaan liitetyissä mielikuvituksellisemmissa maailmoissa. Virtuaalikirjasto-sovellus evaluoitiin Oulun kaupunginkirjastossa sarjalla käyttäjätestejä. Testikäyttäjiä oli kaikkiaan 12 ja he olivat pääosin kirjaston työntekijöitä. Sovelluksen vastaanotto oli positiivinen. Käyttäjät totesivat sen havainnollistavan käytettävissä olevan tekniikan mahdollisuuksia samalla tarjoten mielenkiintoisen ja epätavallisen kirjastokokemuksen

Wave Form, wave function.

The project Wave form, wave function is conceived as an examination of the relational dynamics of form and function in contemporary implementations of electronic media in the visual arts. Creative work comprising installation of digital and analogue media equipment, projection of live rendered and pre-programmed immersive computer graphics, high energy kinetic and video sculpture - in relational configurations, leads the research. The electronic media being intrinsically signals based, consideration is given to a broad definition of the signal encompassing electronic analogue waveforms, digital encodings, programmatic flow control structures and semiotic and language based signal exchange. The electronic media are considered as rhetorical devices that use an expanded language of visual and procedural rhetoric in their processes. The project is premised on a position that considers scientific realism to be a questionable basis for understanding. Quantum physics has demonstrated the entanglements of matter and energy, of object and observer, as relational and transmissible, somewhat magical processes. In this context aspects of form and function in the produced artwork are discussed as poietic work, the process of engaging in ongoing cultural discourse that is world building. A poetic license is allowed in translating between the literal and literary as Scientific Realist and socially constructed models of reality are compared. Noesis, knowing and being in the world, is examined for how contemporary artists employ technoesis, that is cultural production through technological media. Such work is considered as sympoietic, evoking symbiotic, hybrid modes of poiesis. Working with contemporary electronic media in the visual arts entails a grasp of the nature of the medium that extends to the metaphysical

Display system software for the integration of an ADAGE 3000 programmable display generator into the solid modeling package C.A.D. software

A software system that integrates an ADAGE 3000 Programmable Display Generator into a C.A.D. software package known as the Solid Modeling Program is described. The Solid Modeling Program (SMP) is an interactive program that is used to model complex solid object through the composition of primitive geomeentities. In addition, SMP provides extensive facilities for model editing and display. The ADAGE 3000 Programmable Display Generator (PDG) is a color, raster scan, programmable display generator with a 32-bit bit-slice, bipolar microprocessor (BPS). The modularity of the system architecture and the width and speed of the system bus allow for additional co-processors in the system. These co-processors combine to provide efficient operations on and rendering of graphics entities. The resulting software system takes advantage of the graphics capabilities of the PDG in the operation of SMP by distributing its processing modules between the host and the PDG. Initially, the target host computer was a PRIME 850, which was later substituted with a VAX-11/785. Two versions of the software system were developed, a phase 1 and a phase 2. In phase 1, the ADAGE 3000 is used as a frame buffer. In phase II, SMP was functionally partitioned and some of its functions were implemented in the ADAGE 3000 by means of ADAGE's SOLID 3000 software package