9,321 research outputs found
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
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
Investigating heuristic evaluation as a methodology for evaluating pedagogical software: An analysis employing three case studies
This paper looks specifically at how to develop light weight methods of evaluating pedagogically motivated software. Whilst we value traditional usability testing methods this paper will look at how Heuristic Evaluation can be used as both a driving force of Software Engineering Iterative Refinement and end of project Evaluation. We present three case studies in the area of Pedagogical Software and show how we have used this technique in a variety of ways. The paper presents results and reflections on what we have learned. We conclude with a discussion on how this technique might inform on the latest developments on delivery of distance learning. © 2014 Springer International Publishing
Towards a semantic modeling of learners for social networks
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) ontology is a vocabulary for mapping social networks. In this paper we propose an extension to FOAF in order to allow it to model learners and their social networks. We analyse FOAF alongside different learner modeling standards and specifications, and based on this analysis we introduce a taxonomy of the different features found in those models. We then compare the learner models and FOAF against the taxonomy to see how their characteristics have been shaped by their purpose. Based on this we propose extensions to FOAF in order to produce a learner model that is capable of forming the basis of a semantic social network.<br/
Adapting e-learning and learning services for people with disabilities
Providing learning materials and support services that are adapted to the needs of individuals has the potential to enable learners to obtain maximal benefit from university level studies. This paper describes EU4ALL project which has been exploring how to present customized learning materials and services for people with disabilities. A number of the technical components of the EU4ALL framework are described. This is followed with a brief description of prototype implementations. This is then followed by a discussion of a number of research directions that may enhance the adaptability, usability and accessibility of information and support systems can be used and consumed by a diverse user population
Context-driven progressive enhancement of mobile web applications: a multicriteria decision-making approach
Personal computing has become all about mobile and embedded devices. As a result, the adoption rate of smartphones is rapidly increasing and this trend has set a need for mobile applications to be available at anytime, anywhere and on any device. Despite the obvious advantages of such immersive mobile applications, software developers are increasingly facing the challenges related to device fragmentation. Current application development solutions are insufficiently prepared for handling the enormous variety of software platforms and hardware characteristics covering the mobile eco-system. As a result, maintaining a viable balance between development costs and market coverage has turned out to be a challenging issue when developing mobile applications. This article proposes a context-aware software platform for the development and delivery of self-adaptive mobile applications over the Web. An adaptive application composition approach is introduced, capable of autonomously bypassing context-related fragmentation issues. This goal is achieved by incorporating and validating the concept of fine-grained progressive application enhancements based on a multicriteria decision-making strategy
Development of an ontology for the inclusion of app users with visual impairments
Approximately 15% of the world’s population have some form of disability and the majority
use apps on their mobile devices to help them in their daily lives with communication, healthcare, or for
entertainment purposes. It is not, however, easy for users with impairments to choose the most suitable apps
since this will depend on their particular personal characteristics or circumstances in a specific context, and
because such users require apps with certain accessibility features which are not always specified in the app
description. In order to overcome such difficulties, it is necessary to obtain a user profile that gathers the
user’s personal details, abilities, disabilities, skills, and interests to facilitate selection. The basis for our
research work is to develop an app that recommends a set of apps to users with disabilities. In this respect,
the focus of this paper is to obtain a semantic user profile model on which more precise search requests can
be performed. The disability we have chosen to concentrate on is that of visual impairment. We propose an
ontology-based user profile that matches users’ characteristics, disabilities, and interests, and which not
only simplifies the classification process but also provides a mechanism for linking them with existing
disability ontologies, assistive devices, accessibility concepts, etc. Moreover, thanks to the inclusion of
semantic relations and rules, it is possible to reason and infer new information that can be used to make
more personalized recommendations than a simple app store search.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Agencia Estatal de Investigacion)
PID2019-109644RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/50110001103
Investigating the use of semantic technologies in spatial mapping applications
Semantic Web Technologies are ideally suited to build context-aware information retrieval applications. However, the geospatial aspect of context awareness presents unique challenges such as the semantic modelling of geographical references for efficient handling of spatial queries, the reconciliation of the heterogeneity at the semantic and geo-representation levels, maintaining the quality of service and scalability of communicating, and the efficient rendering of the spatial queries' results. In this paper, we describe the modelling decisions taken to solve these challenges by analysing our implementation of an intelligent planning and recommendation tool that provides location-aware advice for a specific application domain. This paper contributes to the methodology of integrating heterogeneous geo-referenced data into semantic knowledgebases, and also proposes mechanisms for efficient spatial interrogation of the semantic knowledgebase and optimising the rendering of the dynamically retrieved context-relevant information on a web frontend
Accessibility and Activity-Centered Design for ICT Users: ACCESIBILITIC Ontology
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are involved in daily human activities.
Accessibility guarantees that individuals with different abilities can interact with ICTs. User pro le models
are an explicit representation of the characteristics of an individual and are used to reason about what users
need. They are implemented through ontologies. After identifying common and different aspects among
important ontologies in the domain of accessibility and e-inclusion, we designed and implemented the
ACCESIBILITIC ontology applying the NeOn methodology, speci cally by reusing and reengineering these
ontologies. The strengths of our model include the user's ability to develop a high variety of activities despite
his/her disabilities, support for inference processes, and providing answers to several competency questions.
ACCESIBILITIC allows the representation of suitable technical support based on the user's capabilities
when interacting with ICTs. To this end, we use an activity-centered design (ACD), which allows us to
identify daily activities and to match these activities with a suitable technology to perform them.This research work is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness - Agencia Estatal de InvestigaciĂłn - with
European Regional Development Funds (AEI/FEDER, UE) through the project ref. TIN2016-79484-R
- …