How to develop serious games for social and cognitive competence of children with learning difficulties

In this paper some experiences are described, from requirements gathering to design and implementation, in the European project 'Intelligent Serious Games for Social and Cognitive Competence'. The main goal of the project is to develop serious games for social and cognitive competence of children with learning difficulties. The aim of these games is to teach youth with mild disabilities about social skills, basic skills, key cognitive competence skills and work skills. Using these interactive mobile games and 3D simulations helps the social integration and personal development of these children and youth. The project uses serious games and 3D simulations so that teaching and learning becomes interesting, playful, attractive and efficient

State of the art paper Augmented reality in neurosurgery

A b s t r a c t Neurosurgery is a medical specialty that relies heavily on imaging. The use of computed tomography and magnetic resonance images during preoperative planning and intraoperative surgical navigation is vital to the success of the surgery and positive patient outcome. Augmented reality application in neurosurgery has the potential to revolutionize and change the way neurosurgeons plan and perform surgical procedures in the future. Augmented reality technology is currently commercially available for neurosurgery for simulation and training. However, the use of augmented reality in the clinical setting is still in its infancy. Researchers are now testing augmented reality system prototypes to determine and address the barriers and limitations of the technology before it can be widely accepted and used in the clinical setting

Investigation of COVID-19 Vaccine Information Websites across Europe and Asia Using Automated Accessibility Protocols

Websites content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) ensure that websites should be perceivable, understandable, navigable, and interactive. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the importance of accessible websites and online content grew throughout the world. Therefore, in this study, we examined COVID-19-related official government websites. This research covered 21 government websites, with 13 websites from European countries and 8 websites from Asian countries, to evaluate their accessibility following WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 guidelines. The overall goal of this study was to identify the frequent accessibility problems that might help the website owners to identify the shortcomings of their websites. The target websites were evaluated in two steps: in step-1, evaluation was performed through four automatic web accessibility testing tools such as Mauve++, Nibbler, WAVE, and WEB accessibility tools; in step-2, evaluation went through human observation, such as system usability testing and expert testing. The automatic evaluation results showed that few of the websites were accessible; a significant number of websites were not accessible for people with disabilities. In addition, system usability testing found some complexity in website organization, short explanations, and outdated information. The expert testing suggested improving the color of the websites, organization of links, buttons, and font size. This study might be helpful for associated authorities to improve the quality of the websites in the future

Identification of Markers in Challenging Conditions for People with Visual Impairment Using Convolutional Neural Network

People with visual impairment face a lot of difficulties in their daily activities. Several researches have been conducted to find smart solutions using mobile devices to help people with visual impairment perform tasks. This paper focuses on using assistive technology to help people with visual impairment in indoor navigation using markers. The essential steps of a typical navigation system are identifying the current location, finding the shortest path to the destination, and navigating safely to the destination using navigation feedback. In this research, the authors proposed a system to help people with visual impairment in indoor navigation using markers. In this system, the authors have re-defined the identification step to a classification problem and used convolutional neural networks to identify markers. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) A system to help people with visual impairment in indoor navigation using markers. (2) Comparing QR codes with Aruco markers to prove that Aruco markers work better. (3) Convolutional neural network has been implemented and simplified to detect the candidate markers in challenging conditions and improve response time. (4) Comparing the proposed model with another model to prove that it gives better accuracy for training and testing

An Integrated Variable-Magnitude Approach for Accessibility Evaluation of Healthcare Institute Web Pages

The World Wide Web has become an important platform for sharing a wide array of information within the world community. In the post-COVID-19 scenario, the web become a primary source of information in the context of healthcare information dissemination. Healthcare institutions, such as hospitals and clinics, utilize this platform to provide services to reach their target users. It is essential to evaluate the web pages of healthcare institutions and compute their accessibility score for people with disabilities or special needs. This paper presents a variable-magnitude approach to compute the accessibility score of healthcare web pages, considering several requirements of people with disabilities. To compute the accessibility score through the proposed approach, we considered two different components and integrated them to compute the accessibility score through the proposed algorithm. The proposed approach was experimentally applied to sixteen healthcare institutes’ web pages in Hungary. Based on the experiment’s results and the received feedback from an accessibility specialist, a set of suggestions is provided to minimize the accessibility barrier and improve the accessibility score for people with disabilities to access web resources without difficulty. The main contribution of this work is in enhancing awareness of web platform accessibility for web practitioners to improve accessibility, so that people with disabilities can effectively access web resources

Making Shopping Easy for People with Visual Impairment Using Mobile Assistive Technologies

People with visual impairment face various difficulties in their daily activities in comparison to people without visual impairment. Much research has been done to find smart solutions using mobile devices to help people with visual impairment perform tasks like shopping. One of the most challenging tasks for researchers is to create a solution that offers a good quality of life for people with visual impairment. It is also essential to develop solutions that encourage people with visual impairment to participate in social life. This study provides an overview of the various technologies that have been developed in recent years to assist people with visual impairment in shopping tasks. It gives an introduction to the latest direction in this area, which will help developers to incorporate such solutions into their research

Sustaining Inclusive, Quality Education during COVID-19 Lockdowns

With the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic forcing countries to close schools, the education of students worldwide had become a major challenge. Schools were forced to switch to online education, as that proved to be the only feasible option considering the adverse circumstances. The purpose of this research is to facilitate a quick transition to distance education should another lockdown be implemented. This is achieved by performing a literature review to determine how online education is regarded by students, along with what its advantages and challenges are. A survey has also been administered, with the purpose of assessing the usability of certain web conferencing platforms used in online education. The findings and results indicate an improving attitude towards degrees and courses acquired by online education, whilst also including the pitfalls and challenges teachers currently face during online education. The results of the survey suggest that certain web conferencing platforms appeal to the students more, with Big Blue Button being the platform most respondents rated favourably in the survey. Student feedback indicates that the transition to online education was successful, albeit somewhat challenging

Suitability of the Kinect Sensor and Leap Motion Controller—A Literature Review

As the need for sensors increases with the inception of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the suitability of the two Kinect devices and the Leap Motion Controller. When evaluating the suitability, the authors’ focus was on the state of the art, device comparison, accuracy, precision, existing gesture recognition algorithms and on the price of the devices. The aim of this study is to give an insight whether these devices could substitute more expensive sensors in the industry or on the market. While in general the answer is yes, it is not as easy as it seems: There are significant differences between the devices, even between the two Kinects, such as different measurement ranges, error distributions on each axis and changing depth precision relative to distance

On the timing of gestures of a Virtual Physiotherapist

Ruttkay ZM, van Welbergen H. On the timing of gestures of a Virtual Physiotherapist. In: Lanyi CS, ed. 3rd Central European Multimedia and Virtual Reality Conference. Veszprém, Hungary: Pannonian University Press; 2006: 219-224