Mobile Phones as Assistive Technologies: Gaps and Opportunities

In the last decade, mobile phones have become invaluable allays in the everyday lives of people with disabilities. Even in low and middle income countries mobile phones are highly popular and the penetration rate of mobile technology is almost three times higher than for desktop computers and broadband lines. Despite their diffusion and their importance, large datasets on how people with disabilities in lower resourced settings use mobile phones, the services they access and the barriers they encounter when interacting with mobile technology, are scarce. This article presents data from a survey with 1000 participants that explored how people with disabilities use mobile phones and the impact that mobile technology has on their daily lives. Findings highlight the presence of a mobile gap with many people with disability struggling to acquire and operate mobile phones independently. Most respondents had only access to basic or feature phones that lacked appropriate accessibility features and offered limited functionality. However, participants still described mobile phones as invaluable tools that could increase access to basic services and offer support in many important activities in their daily lives

Accessible On-Body Interaction for People With Visual Impairments

While mobile devices offer new opportunities to gain independence in everyday activities for people with disabilities, modern touchscreen-based interfaces can present accessibility challenges for low vision and blind users. Even with state-of-the-art screenreaders, it can be difficult or time-consuming to select specific items without visual feedback. The smooth surface of the touchscreen provides little tactile feedback compared to physical button-based phones. Furthermore, in a mobile context, hand-held devices present additional accessibility issues when both of the users’ hands are not available for interaction (e.g., on hand may be holding a cane or a dog leash). To improve mobile accessibility for people with visual impairments, I investigate on-body interaction, which employs the user’s own skin surface as the input space. On-body interaction may offer an alternative or complementary means of mobile interaction for people with visual impairments by enabling non-visual interaction with extra tactile and proprioceptive feedback compared to a touchscreen. In addition, on-body input may free users’ hands and offer efficient interaction as it can eliminate the need to pull out or hold the device. Despite this potential, little work has investigated the accessibility of on-body interaction for people with visual impairments. Thus, I begin by identifying needs and preferences of accessible on-body interaction. From there, I evaluate user performance in target acquisition and shape drawing tasks on the hand compared to on a touchscreen. Building on these studies, I focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of an accessible on-body interaction system for visually impaired users. The contributions of this dissertation are: (1) identification of perceived advantages and limitations of on-body input compared to a touchscreen phone, (2) empirical evidence of the performance benefits of on-body input over touchscreen input in terms of speed and accuracy, (3) implementation and evaluation of an on-body gesture recognizer using finger- and wrist-mounted sensors, and (4) design implications for accessible non-visual on-body interaction for people with visual impairments

USER INTERFACES FOR MOBILE DEVICES: TECHNIQUES AND CASE STUDIES

The interactive capabilities of portable devices that are nowadays increasingly available, enable mobile computing in diverse contexts. However, in order to fully exploit the potentialities of such technologies and to let end users benefit from them, effective and usable techniques are still needed. In general, differences in capabilities, such as computational power and interaction resources, lead to an heterogeneity that is sometimes positively referred to as device diversity but also, negatively, as device fragmentation. When designing applications for mobile devices, besides general rules and principles of usability, developers cope with further constraints. Restricted capabilities, due to display size, input modality and computational power, imply important design and implementation choices in order to guarantee usability. In addition, when the application is likely to be used by subjects affected by some impairment, the system has also to comply with accessibility requirements. The aim of this dissertation is to propose and discuss examples of such techniques, aimed to support user interfaces on mobile devices, by tackling design, development and evaluation of specific solutions for portable terminals as well as for enabling interoperability across diverse devices (including desktops, handhelds, smartphones). Usefulness and usability aspects are taken into great consideration by the main research questions that drove the activities of the study. With respect the such questions, the three central chapters of the dissertation are respectively aimed at evaluating: hardware/software solutions for edutainment and accessibility in mobile museum guides, visualization strategies for mobile users visiting smart environments, and techniques for user interface migration across diverse devices in multi-user contexts. Motivations, design, implementation and evaluation about a number of solutions aimed to support several dimensions of user interfaces for mobile devices are widely discussed throughout the dissertation, and some findings are drawn. Each one of the prototypes described in the following chapters has been entirely developed within the research activities of the laboratory where the author performed his PhD. Most activities were related to tasks of international research projects and the organization of this dissertation reflects their evolution chronology

AWA, marco metodológico específico en el dominio de la accesibilidad para el desarrollo de aplicaciones web

La Web es la herramienta principal para poder ejercer como ciudadanos en la Sociedad de la Información en la que estamos inmersos. A través de ella se accede a múltiples servicios y sin embargo, muchos de estos servicios no son accesibles a todas las personas. Las barreras de accesibilidad afectan en mayor grado a las personas con discapacidad, pero hay otros muchos grupos de usuarios en riesgo de exclusión. El uso equitativo de la Web es un derecho para todas las personas. A pesar de que en muchos países este derecho está regulado por ley, los datos indican que hay muchos sitios y aplicaciones web no accesibles. Existen importantes iniciativas, a distintos niveles, con el objetivo de que se diseñe una Web universal y accesible, pero se han detectado obstáculos en el camino para conseguirlo, que se revelan en este trabajo. Como propuesta de solución a esta situación, desde la perspectiva de la Ingeniería, se presenta el soporte metodológico AWA (Accessibility for Web Applications). AWA proporciona un espacio de trabajo para incluir el requisito de la accesibilidad en las organizaciones dedicadas al desarrollo web. AWA proporciona guías a los profesionales de la ingeniería para incorporar requisitos de accesibilidad desde distintas perspectivas: (a) en las organizaciones y empresas, integrando políticas de accesibilidad y calidad; (b) en el proceso de desarrollo siguiendo un enfoque metodológico, que aporte sistematización en la integración de la accesibilidad desde el inicio y, por último, (c) siguiendo un enfoque de Diseño Centrado en el Usuario (DCU) que sitúe al usuario como protagonista y le haga participar del proceso de diseño. Todo ello en un marco de Diseño Inclusivo, para contemplar a los usuarios con discapacidad, contextos de uso desfavorables, en definitiva, teniendo en mente toda la diversidad funcional existente. Como resultado de aplicar el enfoque AWA las páginas web finales y la interfaz de usuario de la aplicación serán accesibles siguiendo las Pautas de Accesibilidad al Contenido en la Web (WCAG) de la Iniciativa de la Accesibilidad Web (WAI). Los requisitos de accesibilidad se han obtenido mediante una abstracción de las WCAG en el contexto del proceso de desarrollo de software. De igual manera, se han acomodado en el proceso de desarrollo las actividades del DCU a través de la integración de diversos mecanismos de accesibilidad, resultado de utilizar de manera combinada un conjunto de técnicas de usabilidad con inclusión. Distintas partes del marco metodológico AWA se han aplicado en tres escenarios reales: en el diseño e implementación de un sitio web, utilizando un Content Management System (CMS) de código abierto; en el desarrollo de una plataforma personalizable de acceso público a Internet para personas con discapacidad, llevado a cabo en una empresa de desarrollo de software, siguiendo un enfoque ágil de generación dinámica de páginas web y, por último, se ha llevado a cabo una propuesta de integración de AWA sobre el Método de Ingeniería Web OOWS (Object Oriented Web Solutions) siguiendo una estrategia MDA (Model Driven Architecture).------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Web is the main tool for being able to act as citizens in the Information Society in which we are immersed. Through it you access to multiple services, yet many of these services are not accessible to everyone. The accessibility barriers affect in a higher degree to people with disabilities, but there are many other user groups at risk of exclusion. The equitable use of the Web is a right for all people. Although in many countries this right is regulated by law, the data indicate that there are many web sites and applications that are not accessible. There are important initiatives, at different levels, with the goal of designing a universal and accessible Web, but obstacles have been detected in the path to obtain this goal, which are revealed in this work. As a proposed solution to this situation, from the engineering perspective, the methodological support AWA (Accessibility for Web Applications) is presented in this thesis. AWA provides a workspace in order to include the accessibility requirement in the organizations devoted to web application development. AWA provides guidance to engineering professionals to incorporate accessibility requirements from different perspectives: (a) in organizations and businesses, integrating accessibility and quality policies, (b) in the development process following a methodological approach that provides systemization in the integration of accessibility from the outset and, finally, (c) following a User-Centered Design (UCD) approach that places the user as a the main figure and makes him/she participate in the design process. All this is considered in a framework of Inclusive Design, for contemplating the disabled users, unfavorable contexts of use, in short, keeping in mind all the existing functional diversity. As a result of applying the AWA approach the final web pages and the user interface of the application will be accessible following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Accessibility requirements have been obtained by means of an abstraction of the WCAG in the context of the software development process. Similarly, the activities of the UCD have been adapted in the development process through the integration of various accessibility mechanisms, being the result of using in a combined way a set of techniques of usability with inclusion. Different parts of the AWA methodological framework have been applied in three real scenarios: in the design and implementation of a web site using a open source Content Management System (CMS); in the development of a customizable platform for public Internet access for people with disabilities, conducted in a software development company, following an agile approach to create dynamic web pages and, finally, carrying out a proposal of integration of AWA on the Web Engineering method OOWS (Object Oriented Web Solutions) following an MDA (Model Driven Architecture) strategy