Accessibility levels of Portuguese Enterprise websites: Equal opportunities for all?

Artigo revisto disponível online 18 Maio, 2011 (iFirst)Web accessibility is growing in importance as time goes by. Alongside this growth we find an increasing need for access to Web resources by those with some sort of disability. The Web is very important for spreading information and for promoting interaction between the various elements in society. Given this, it is essential that the Web presents itself as a totally accessible resource, so that it can help disabled citizens and their integration in society. This obligation should be even greater for enterprises as primarily the Web is used as a marketing and business platform. With this document we present indicators regarding the [lack of] accessibility levels of Portuguese websites. This article is divided into eight parts containing theoretical and background considerations leading up to two different studies which the research team undertook. In the first study (considering WCAG 1.0) we make a comparison between the 1,000 largest Portuguese enterprises (annual sales volume) and the 1,000 best Portuguese SMEs1 using a specialized software tool. In the second study a group of recommendations towards accessibility are made; these recommendations were achieved through a focus group interaction. We do also, however, present an insight into the WCAG 2.0 influence on existent accessibility levels

Ontology driven integration platform for clinical and translational research

Semantic Web technologies offer a promising framework for integration of disparate biomedical data. In this paper we present the semantic information integration platform under development at the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) as part of our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. We utilize the Semantic Web technologies not only for integrating, repurposing and classification of multi-source clinical data, but also to construct a distributed environment for information sharing, and collaboration online. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is used to modularize and distribute reusable services in a dynamic and distributed environment. Components of the semantic solution and its overall architecture are described

Web-based multimodal graphs for visually impaired people

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Web-based multimodal graphs designed for visually impaired and blind people. The information in the graphs is conveyed to visually impaired people through haptic and audio channels. The motivation of this work is to address problems faced by visually impaired people in accessing graphical information on the Internet, particularly the common types of graphs for data visualization. In our work, line graphs, bar charts and pie charts are accessible through a force feedback device, the Logitech WingMan Force Feedback Mouse. Pre-recorded sound files are used to represent graph contents to users. In order to test the usability of the developed Web graphs, an evaluation was conducted with bar charts as the experimental platform. The results showed that the participants could successfully use the haptic and audio features to extract information from the Web graphs

The Development of Medical Record Items: a User-centered, Bottom-up Approach

Objectives: Clinical documents (CDs) have evolved from traditional paper documents containing narrative text information into the electronic record sheets composed of itemized records, where each record is expressed as an item with a specific value. We defined medical record (MR) items to be information entities with a specific value. These entities were then used to compile form-based clinical documents as part of an electronic health record system (EHR-s). Methods: We took a reusable bottom-up developmental approach for the MR items, which provided three things: efficient incorporation of the local needs and requirements of the medical professionals from various departments in the hospital, comprehensive inclusion of the essential concepts of the basic elements required in clinical documents, and the provision of a structured means for meaningful data entry and retrieval. This paper delineates our experiences in developing and managing medical records at a large tertiary university hospital in Korea. Results: We collected 63,232 MR items from paper records scanned into 962 CDs. The MR item database was constructed using 13,287 MR items after removing redundant items. During the first year of service users requested changes to be made to 235 (1.8%) attributes of the MR items and also requested the additional 9,572 new MR items. In the second year, the attributes of 70 (0.5%) of the existing MR items were changed and 3,704 new items were added. The number of registered MR items increased by 72.0 % in the first year and 27.9 % in the second year. Conclusions: The MR item concept provides an easier and more structured means of data entry within an EHR-s. By using these MR items, various kinds of clinical documents can be easily constructed and allows for medical information to be reused and retrieved as data

Using the XML Key Management Specification (and breaking X.509 rules as you go)

Abstract. Implementing X.509 based public-key infrastructure requires following a complex set of rules to establish if a public key certificate is valid. The XML Key Management Specification has been developed as one way in which the implementation burden can be reduced by moving some of this complexity from clients and onto a server. In this paper we give a brief overview of the XML key management specification standard, and describe how, in addition to the above, this system also provides us with the means to sensibly break many of the rules specified for X.509 based public key infrastructure

Force Open:Lightweight black box file repair

We present a novel approach for automatic repair of corrupted files that applies to any common file format and does not require knowledge of its structure. Our lightweight approach modifies the execution of a file viewer instead of the file data and makes use of instrumentation and execution hijacking, two techniques from software testing. It uses a file viewer as a black box and does not require access to its source code or any knowledge about its inner workings. We present our implementation of this approach and evaluate it on corrupted PNG, JPEG, and PDF files.ISSN:1742-2876ISSN:1873-202

Web Vulnerability Study of Online Pharmacy Sites

Consumers are increasingly using online pharmacies, but these sites may not provide an adequate level of security with the consumers’ personal data. There is a gap in this research addressing the problems of security vulnerabilities in this industry. The objective is to identify the level of web application security vulnerabilities in online pharmacies and the common types of flaws, thus expanding on prior studies. Technical, managerial and legal recommendations on how to mitigate security issues are presented. The proposed four-step method first consists of choosing an online testing tool. The next steps involve choosing a list of 60 online pharmacy sites to test, and then running the software analysis to compile a list of flaws. Finally, an in-depth analysis is performed on the types of web application vulnerabilities. The majority of sites had serious vulnerabilities, with the majority of flaws being cross-site scripting or old versions of software that have not been updated. A method is proposed for the securing of web pharmacy sites, using a multi-phased approach of technical and managerial techniques together with a thorough understanding of national legal requirements for securing systems

Designing location based learning experiences for people with intellectual disabilities and additional sensory impairments

The research reported here is part of a larger project which seeks to combine serious games (or games based learning) with location based services to help people with intellectual disability and additional sensory impairments to develop work based skills. Specifically this paper reports on where these approaches are combined to scaffold the learning of new routes and ultimately independent travel to new work and educational opportunities. A phased development methodology is applied in a user sensitive manner, to ensure that user feedback drives the ongoing development process. Methods to structure this include group feedback on conceptual storyboards, expert review of prototypes using usability heuristics relating to the main system goals, and finally co-discovery methods with student pairs exploring all three modes of the system in real world contexts. Aspects of developmental and cognitive psychological theories are also reviewed and it is suggested that combining games based learning approaches with location based services is an appropriate combination of technologies for an application specifically designed to scaffold route learning for this target audience