Talk your way round: a speech interface to a virtual museum

Purpose: To explore the development of a speech interface to a Virtual World and to consider its relevance for disabled users. Method: The system was developed using mainly software that is available at minimal cost. How well the system functioned was assessed by measuring the number of times a group of users with a range of voices had to repeat commands in order for them to be successfully recognised. During an initial session, these users were asked to use the system with no instruction to see how easy this was. Results: Most of the spoken commands had to be repeated less than twice on average for successful recognition. For a set of ‘teleportation’ commands this figure was higher (2.4), but it was clear why this was so and could easily be rectified. The system was easy to use without instruction. Comments on the system were generally positive. Conclusions: While the system has some limitations, a Virtual World with a reasonably reliable speech interface has been developed almost entirely from software which is available at minimal cost. Improvements and further testing are considered. Such a system would clearly improve access to Virtual Reality technologies for those without the skills or physical ability to use a standard keyboard and mouse. It is an example of both Assistive Technology and Universal Design

Service-oriented Context-aware Framework

Location- and context-aware services are emerging technologies in mobile and desktop environments, however, most of them are difficult to use and do not seem to be beneficial enough. Our research focuses on designing and creating a service-oriented framework that helps location- and context-aware, client-service type application development and use. Location information is combined with other contexts such as the users' history, preferences and disabilities. The framework also handles the spatial model of the environment (e.g. map of a room or a building) as a context. The framework is built on a semantic backend where the ontologies are represented using the OWL description language. The use of ontologies enables the framework to run inference tasks and to easily adapt to new context types. The framework contains a compatibility layer for positioning devices, which hides the technical differences of positioning technologies and enables the combination of location data of various sources

AUXie: Initial evaluation of a blind-accessible virtual museum tour

Remotely accessible audio-based virtual tours can offer great utility for blind or vision impaired persons, eliminating the difficulties posed by travel to unfamiliar locations, and allowing truly independent exploration. This paper draws upon sonification techniques used in previous implementations of audio-based 3D environments to develop a prototype of blind-accessible virtual tours specifically tailored to the needs of cultural sites. A navigable 3D world is presented using spatially positioned musical earcons, accompanied by synthesised speech descriptions and navigation aids. The worlds are read from X3D models enhanced with metadata to identify and describe the rooms and exhibits, thus enabling an audio modality for existing 3D worlds and simplifying the tour creation process. The prototype, named AUXie, was evaluated by 11 volunteers with total blindness to establish a proof of concept and identify the problematic aspects of the interface. The positive response obtained confirmed the validity of the approach and yielded valuable insight into how such tours can be further improved. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG

Web browser accessibility using open source software

A Web browser provides a uniform user interface to different types of information. Making this interface universally accessible and more interactive is a long term goal still far from being achieved. Universally accessible browsers require novel interaction modalities and additional functionalities, for which existing browsers tend to provide only partial solutions. Although functionality for Web accessibility can be found as open source and free software components, their reuse and integration is complex because they were developed in diverse implementation environments, following standards and conventions incompatible with the Web. To enable the integration of existing partial solutions within a mainstream Web browser environment, we have developed a middleware infrastructure, AMICO:WEB. This enables browser access to a wide variety of open source and free software components. The main contribution of AMICO:WEB is in enabling the syntactic interoperability between Web extension mechanisms and a variety of integration mechanisms used by open source and free software components. It als

Integrating heterogeneous open-source software into web browsers using AMICO:WEB

A web browser provides a uniform user interface to different types of information. Making this interface universally accessible and more interactive is a long term goal still far from being achieved. Universally accessible browsers require novel interaction modalities and additional functionalities, for which existing browsers tend to provide only partial solutions. Although functionality for web accessibility can be found as open-source and free software components, their reuse and integration is complex because they were developed in diverse implementation environments, following standards and conventions incompatible with the web. To enable the integration of existing partial solutions within a mainstream web browser environment, we have developed a middleware infrastructure, AMICO:WEB. This enables browser access to a wide variety of open source and free software components. The main contribution of AMICO:WEB is in enabling the syntactic interoperability between web extension mechanisms and a variety of integration mechanisms used by open-source and free software components. It also bridges the semantic differences between the high-level world of web XML-based APIs and the low-level APIs of the device-oriented world. We discuss the design decisions made during the development of AMICO:WEB in the context of web accessibility, using two typical usage scenarios: one describing a disabled user using a mainstream web browser with additional interaction modalities; another describing a non-disabled user browsing in a suboptimal interaction situation

A model to design multimedia software for learners with visual disabilities

Current interactive multimedia learning software can not be accessed by learners with disabilities. This is the case for students with vision disabilities. Modeling techniques are necessary to map real world experiences to virtual worlds by using 3D auditory representations of objects for blind people. In this paper we present a model to design multimedia software for blind learners. The model was validated with existing educational software systems. We describe the modeling of the real world including cognitive usability testing tasks by considering not only the representation of the real world but also modeling the learner’s knowledge of the virtual world. Finally, we analyze critical issues in designing software for learners with visual disabilities and propose some recommendations and guidelines.Education for the 21 st century - impact of ICT and Digital Resources ConferenceRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

The IT potential of haptics: Touch access for people with disabilities

In his licentiate thesis, Calle Sjöström sums up his own and Certec's experience from almost five years' work on haptic interfaces for people with disabilities. The haptic technology tested have great potential for future development, but need refinemen

Accesibilidad: Diseñar información electrónica para todos

Este trabajo hace una revisión de la noción accesibilidad a la información electrónica y de su implicación en su diseño. Tras desarrollar el significado de accesibilidad y partiendo del concepto de Diseño para todos se exponen a continuación las distintas discapacidades que dificultan el acceso del usuario, pasando a analizar después cuales son las barreras frecuentemente interpuestas por la propia información electrónica. Se indican cuales serían las soluciones que se están intentando dar para cada uno de los planos que integran estas barreras, los esfuerzos para promocionar la accesibilidad y la legislación existente en el momento actual. Finalmente tras unas reflexiones sobre el futuro de la accesibilidad, se incluye una selección de los recursos más importantes que pueden encontrase sobre el tema