Progetto e realizzazione di un sistema di augment browsing per l'accessibilità del Web

Questo documento di tesi descrive il progetto e l'implementazione di un sistema di augment browsing per migliorare l'accessibilità delle pagine Web attraverso l'adattamento e la transcodifica dei contenuti

Participatory Sensing and Crowdsourcing in Urban Environment

With an increasing number of people who live in cities, urban mobility becomes one of the most important research fields in the so-called smart city environments. Urban mobility can be defined as the ability of people to move around the city, living and interacting with the space. For these reasons, urban accessibility represents a primary factor to keep into account for social inclusion and for the effective exercise of citizenship. In this thesis, we researched how to use crowdsourcing and participative sensing to effectively and efficiently collect data about aPOIs (accessible Point Of Interests) with the aim of obtaining an updated, trusted and completed accessible map of the urban environment. The data gathered in such a way, was integrated with data retrieved from external open dataset and used in computing personalized accessible urban paths. In order to deeply investigate the issues related to this research, we designed and prototyped mPASS, a context-aware and location-based accessible way-finding system

A Service-Oriented Approach to Crowdsensing for Accessible Smart Mobility Scenarios

This work presents an architecture to help designing and deploying smart mobility applications. The proposed solution builds on the experience already matured by the authors in different fields: crowdsourcing and sensing done by users to gather data related to urban barriers and facilities, computation of personalized paths for users with special needs, and integration of open data provided by bus companies to identify the actual accessibility features and estimate the real arrival time of vehicles at stops. In terms of functionality, the first "monolithic" prototype fulfilled the goal of composing the aforementioned pieces of information to support citizens with reduced mobility (users with disabilities and/or elderly people) in their urban movements. In this paper, we describe a service-oriented architecture that exploits the microservices orchestration paradigm to enable the creation of new services and to make the management of the various data sources easier and more effective. The proposed platform exposes standardized interfaces to access data, implements common services to manage metadata associated with them, such as trustworthiness and provenance, and provides an orchestration language to create complex services, naturally mapping their internal workflow to code. The manuscript demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach by means of some case studies

User Centered and Context Dependent Personalization Through Experiential Transcoding

Abstract-The pervasive presence of devices exploited to use and deliver entertainment text-based content can make reading easier to get but more difficult to enjoy, in particular for people with reading-related disabilities. The main solutions that allow overcoming some of the difficulties experienced by users with specific and special needs are based on content adaptation and user profiling. This paper presents a system that aims to improve content legibility by exploiting experiential transcoding techniques. The system we propose tracks users' behaviors so as to provide a tailored adaptation of textual content, in order to fit the needs of a specific user on the several different devices she/he actually uses

Learning Landscape in Gamification: The Need for a Methodological Protocol in Research Applications

In education, the term “gamification” refers to of the use of game-design elements and gaming experiences in the learning processes to enhance learners’ motivation and engagement. Despite researchers’ efforts to evaluate the impact of gamification in educational settings, several methodological drawbacks are still present. Indeed, the number of studies with high methodological rigor is reduced and, consequently, so are the reliability of results. In this work, we identified the key concepts explaining the methodological issues in the use of gamification in learning and education, and we exploited the controverses identified in the extant literature. Our final goal was to set up a checklist protocol that will facilitate the design of more rigorous studies in the gamified-learning framework. The checklist suggests potential moderators explaining the link between gamification, learning, and education identified by recent reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses: study design, theory foundations, personalization, motivation and engagement, game elements, game design, and learning outcomes

Attitudes of Crohn's Disease Patients: Infodemiology Case Study and Sentiment Analysis of Facebook and Twitter Posts

Background: Data concerning patients originates from a variety of sources on social media. Objective: The aim of this study was to show how methodologies borrowed from different areas including computer science, econometrics, statistics, data mining, and sociology may be used to analyze Facebook data to investigate the patients’ perspectives on a given medical prescription. Methods: To shed light on patients’ behavior and concerns, we focused on Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, and the specific therapy with the biological drug Infliximab. To gain information from the basin of big data, we analyzed Facebook posts in the time frame from October 2011 to August 2015. We selected posts from patients affected by Crohn’s disease who were experiencing or had previously been treated with the monoclonal antibody drug Infliximab. The selected posts underwent further characterization and sentiment analysis. Finally, an ethnographic review was carried out by experts from different scientific research fields (eg, computer science vs gastroenterology) and by a software system running a sentiment analysis tool. The patient feeling toward the Infliximab treatment was classified as positive, neutral, or negative, and the results from computer science, gastroenterologist, and software tool were compared using the square weighted Cohen’s kappa coefficient method. Results: The first automatic selection process returned 56,000 Facebook posts, 261 of which exhibited a patient opinion concerning Infliximab. The ethnographic analysis of these 261 selected posts gave similar results, with an interrater agreement between the computer science and gastroenterology experts amounting to 87.3% (228/261), a substantial agreement according to the square weighted Cohen’s kappa coefficient method (w2K=0.6470). A positive, neutral, and negative feeling was attributed to 36%, 27%, and 37% of posts by the computer science expert and 38%, 30%, and 32% by the gastroenterologist, respectively. Only a slight agreement was found between the experts’ opinion and the software tool. Conclusions: We show how data posted on Facebook by Crohn’s disease patients are a useful dataset to understand the patient’s perspective on the specific treatment with Infliximab. The genuine, nonmedically influenced patients’ opinion obtained from Facebook pages can be easily reviewed by experts from different research backgrounds, with a substantial agreement on the classification of patients’ sentiment. The described method allows a fast collection of big amounts of data, which can be easily analyzed to gain insight into the patients’ perspective on a specific medical therapy

A Service-Oriented Approach to Crowdsensing for Accessible Smart Mobility Scenarios

This work presents an architecture to help designing and deploying smart mobility applications. The proposed solution builds on the experience already matured by the authors in different fields: crowdsourcing and sensing done by users to gather data related to urban barriers and facilities, computation of personalized paths for users with special needs, and integration of open data provided by bus companies to identify the actual accessibility features and estimate the real arrival time of vehicles at stops. In terms of functionality, the first “monolithic” prototype fulfilled the goal of composing the aforementioned pieces of information to support citizens with reduced mobility (users with disabilities and/or elderly people) in their urban movements. In this paper, we describe a service-oriented architecture that exploits the microservices orchestration paradigm to enable the creation of new services and to make the management of the various data sources easier and more effective. The proposed platform exposes standardized interfaces to access data, implements common services to manage metadata associated with them, such as trustworthiness and provenance, and provides an orchestration language to create complex services, naturally mapping their internal workflow to code. The manuscript demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach by means of some case studies

INDCOR White Paper 2: Interactive Narrative Design for Representing Complexity

This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring tools and applications. It provides definitions of the central elements of the IDN alongside its best practices, designs and methods. Finally, it describes complexity as a feature of IDN, with related examples. In summary, this white paper serves as an orienting map for the field of IDN design, understanding where we are in the contemporary panorama while charting the grounds of their promising futures.Comment: 11 pages, This whitepaper was produced by members of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR - https://indcor.eu