Measuring the Pro-Activity of Software Agents

Despite having well-defined characteristics, software agents do not have a developed set of measures defining their quality. Attempts at evaluating software agent quality have focused on some agent aspects, like the development process, whereas others focusing on the agent as a software product have basically adopted measures associated with other software paradigms, like procedural and object-oriented concepts. Here we propose a set of measures for evaluating software agent pro-activity, the software agent's goal-driven behavioral ability to take the initiative and satisfy its goal

On the testability of WCAG 2.0 for beginners

Web accessibility for people with disabilities is a highly visible area of research in the field of ICT accessibility, including many policy activities across many countries. The commonly accepted guidelines for web accessibility (WCAG 1.0) were published in 1999 and have been extensively used by designers, evaluators and legislators. W3C-WAI published a new version of these guidelines (WCAG 2.0) in December 2008. One of the main goals of WCAG 2.0 was testability, that is, WCAG 2.0 should be either machine testable or reliably human testable. In this paper we present an educational experiment performed during an intensive web accessibility course. The goal of the experiment was to assess the testability of the 25 level-A success criteria of WCAG 2.0 by beginners. To do this, the students had to manually evaluate the accessibility of the same web page. The result was that only eight success criteria could be considered to be reliably human testable when evaluators were beginners. We also compare our experiment with a similar study published recently. Our work is not a conclusive experiment, but it does suggest some parts of WCAG 2.0 to which special attention should be paid when training accessibility evaluator

Including accessibility in higher education curricula for ICT

This paper describes the successful experience carried out by professors of the CETTICO research group of the Technical University of Madrid to incorporate accessibility in the curricula of higher education in ICT in Spain. The paper covers the legal requirements to include accessibility in curricula in Spain, the courses and modules that we have been teaching through the years and the teaching techniques and tools that we have been using

Applying A Methodology For Educating Students With Special Needs: A Case Study

The introduction of innovative educational technologies opens up new ways of interacting with students. We propose to exploit this potential to help in the education of children with special needs. We analyze the state of the art of tools supporting the teaching process, focusing on the omissions of existing research. We propose a new framework to help throughout the whole teaching process and describe its application to Proyecto Aprender (Learn Project), an educational resource targeting children with learning difficulties. Finally, we outline some conclusions and current/future research lines

El papel de la comunicación interna en la gestión del teletrabajo durante la crisis de la COVID-19

Among the changes brought about by the COVID-19 crisis, many of them affect the management of organizations. This is the case of the sudden implementation of teleworking policies, which, together with social distancing measures and periods of confinement, became widespread in the worst period of the pandemic. This research studies the role of internal communication in the management of telework during the Covid-19 crisis through document review and expert interviews. The results indicate that internal communication is a very important element for these policies and that during the pandemic its relevance in keeping employees aligned with the interests of the brands has been highlighted. To execute these policies, organizations have developed new channels, enhanced team cohesion, and fostered empathy from leaders and the separation of work and personal life. Communication with employees is the cornerstone of these telework policies, which require the implementation of strategies and tools to facilitate the well-being and happiness of remote workforces. This paper also incorporates recommendations for internal communication management concerning the new organizational needs arising during this period.Among the changes brought about by the COVID-19 crisis, many affect the management of organisations. This is the case of the sudden implementation of teleworking policies, which, together with social distancing measures and periods of confinement, became widespread in the worst period of the pandemic. This research studies the role of internal communication in the management of telework during the Covid-19 crisis through document review and expert interviews. The results indicate that internal communication is a very important element for these policies and that during the pandemic its relevance in keeping employees aligned with the interests of the brands has been highlighted. To execute these policies, organisations have developed new channels, enhanced team cohesion and fostered empathy from leaders and the separation of work and personal life. Communication with employees is the cornerstone of these telework policies, which require the implementation of strategies and tools to facilitate the well-being and happiness of remote workforces. This paper also incorporates recommendations for internal communication management in relation to the new organisational needs arising during this period.Entre los cambios que ha traído consigo la crisis de la COVID-19 muchos afectan a la gestión de las organizaciones. Es el caso de la repentina implantación de las políticas de teletrabajo, que con las medidas de distanciamiento social y los periodos de confinamiento se generalizaron en el periodo más crudo de la pandemia. Esta investigación estudia el papel de la comunicación interna en la gestión del teletrabajo durante la crisis de la Covid-19 a través de la revisión documental y de entrevistas a expertos. Los resultados indican que la comunicación interna es un elemento de gran importancia para estas políticas y que durante la pandemia se ha puesto de manifiesto su relevancia para mantener alineados a los trabajadores con los intereses de las marcas. Para ejecutarlas, las organizaciones han desarrollado nuevos canales, potenciado la cohesión de los equipos y fomentado la empatía de los líderes y la separación del tiempo laboral y la vida personal. La comunicación con los empleados resulta la piedra angular de estas políticas de teletrabajo, que requieren de la implementación de estrategias y herramientas para facilitar el bienestar y la felicidad de las plantillas que trabajan en remoto. Este trabajo también incorpora recomendaciones para la gestión de la comunicación interna en relación a las nuevas necesidades organizativas surgidas durante este periodo

Using collaborative learning to teach WCAG 2.0

La versión 2.0 de las Directrices de Accesibilidad para el Contenido Web (WCAG) se publicó en diciembre de 2008. WCAG 2.0 tiene un idioma diferente, una estructura diferente y una lógica diferente a las WCAG 1.0. Todos estos influyen en la forma de enseñar a la accesibilidad web. En este artículo se presenta un enfoque innovador que se ha seguido en un módulo de accesibilidad web que se imparte en la Escuela de Informática de la UPM en el marco de la licenciatura en Ciencias de la Computación Beng. Nuestro enfoque combina varios métodos de enseñanza: las clases magistrales, sesiones de aprendizaje colaborativo, un breve ejercicio de evaluación de sitios web y, por último, un proyecto a corto que consiste en el desarrollo de un sitio web accesible. En el trabajo se describen los métodos utilizados y los resultados

Hera-FFX: a Firefox add-on for Semi-automatic Web Accessibility Evaluation

Website accessibility evaluation is a complex task requiring a combination of human expertise and software support. There are several online and offline tools to support the manual web accessibility evaluation process. However, they all have some weaknesses because none of them includes all the desired features. In this paper we present Hera-FFX, an add-on for the Firefox web browser that supports semi-automatic web accessibility evaluation

Evaluating new interaction paradigms in SEN teaching: defining the experiment

New devices have made their way into everyday life in recent years, opening the doors to new ways of interacting with computers, providing different, and potentially better, solutions to some problems. But this raises the question of if there is any way of measuring whether or not these new devices are suitable. This paper presents a strategy for evaluating the suitability of new interaction devices in the context of teaching children with special educational need

Developing Hera-FFX for WCAG 2.0

WCAG 2.0 was published in December 2008. It has many differences to WCAG 1.0 as to rationale, structure and content. Two years later there are still few tools supporting WCAG 2.0, and none of them fully mirrors the WCAG 2.0 approach organized around principles, guidelines, success criteria, situations and techniques. This paper describes the on-going development of an update to the Hera-FFX Firefox extension to support WCAG 2.0. The description is focused on the challenges that we have found and our resulting decisions

Requirements for a Method of Software Accessibility Conformity Assessment

Given the current trend of public procurement of accessible products and services, including software, there is a need for the suppliers to demonstrate that a software product conforms to accessibility requirements. This is called software accessibility conformity assessment. Today, the evaluation process, and the techniques and tools required to do this, is not as well defined as it is in other contexts, such as web accessibility. Based on our experience in evaluating accessibility, this paper outlines a set of requirements for a method of software accessibility conformity assessment. These requirements will apply across the four conformity assessment functions: selection, determination, review and attestation, and, finally, surveillance