Mobile touch interfaces for the elderly

Elderly people are not averse to buying and using electronic gadgets. However regarding certain devices there is a persistent complaint about the "buttons being too small". Therefore the arrival of mobile touch devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch should be able to circumvent that problem because the button size and arrangement is under software control. However these devices have some accessibility issues which are identified. The accessibility issues stem from the one-size-fits-all concept. A solution is proposed which involves having a range of interface styles. A new user gesture called the shake is proposed to switch between interface styles. A separate investigation is made into the different possibilities for free-text entry

Validation of dynamic web pages generated by an Embedded Scripting language

This paper attempts to provide insight as to how to guarantee a statement like: My PHP script produces WML. To expand a little, the emphasis is to ensure that a script always produces a valid WML page. The context is where pages in a web-site are being created by an embedded scripting language (like PHP, ASP, Perl) and also that the resulting pages are to conform to a strict tagged mark-up scheme like WML or XHTML. Although there are validators for static pages there is nothing available to check that a page containing embedded scripting will (always) generate valid documents. What is required is a validator for dynamic web pages

Personal information management for the elderly

Given the current desire to draw a greater percentage of the elderly population into a significant use of ICT, a reflection is presented on the suitability of computer-based personal information management systems for older people. The paper is presented from the point of view of a computer-literate grandchild trying to demonstrate to a grandparent the benefits of using an electronic system. The main focus of attention is the address book

A highly configurable query-oriented portal for a co-operative environment

Web portals and “my” portals are now commonplace but they are constructed along familiar lines with hierarchical management structure. Typically one or more owners of data will allow a larger group of people to view data in rigid, pre-planned ways. Historically data on the web was presented on static pages. Nowadays the data is likely to be drawn from a database, but it still tends to be presented in a layout defined by the supplier. This suggests that it might be fruitful to consider what designs might be natural or possible in a cooperative, trusting, egalitarian environment. Although this ideal situation is rarely, if ever, truly found in real life it may be that some of the ideas will be appealing and find application even in an imperfect environment

Document MultiView using CSS

This paper introduces a lightweight, alternative delivery technique for web-based documents which contain information for various categories of reader. Information intended for the different categories of reader is identified by markup which exploits certain features of CSS, notably "display:none". The technique is simple to use and provides a client-side solution with dynamic filtering

A lightweight Web GUI specification and realisation system and its impact on accessibility

Developments like XFORMS are supposed to encourage the web programmer to concentrate on the specification of the functionality of the web GUI rather than its appearance on screen. Instead of having the document delivery system make the same realisation choices for every user it could be better to give the user some control in order to fully exploit this degree of choice. This would be particularly important for disabled users. This work shows how a functional specification of a GUI may be rendered in different ways to different users by using personal preferences residing in a user's profile. This extends previous work on profile-based web document delivery. Because the GUI parts of pages are rendered according to their own personal preferences, the web pages become more accessible to disabled users with very much reduced effort from the author of the pages. The technique does not require a specific or modified browser and can be easily implemented using a combination of common technologies

Building a co-operative, evolutionary intranet: experience in a University department

Experience with building an intranet for staff & students of a Computer Science department is reported. The knowledge and experience of the people involved, and the requirements and budget available makes this task rather different from building a Corporate Intranet or Portal. The intranet has evolved to encompass three sites and is still growing in terms of overall size and use. The intranet is generally regarded as a success both by staff and students. This success is attributed more to policy and attitude than to technical excellence

A Lightweight Web GUI Specification and Realisation System and Its Impact on Accessibility

Developments like XFORMS are supposed to encourage the web programmer to concentrate on the specification of the functionality of the web GUI rather than its appearance on screen. Instead of having the document delivery system make the same realisation choices for every user it could be better to give the user some control in order to fully exploit this degree of choice. This would be particularly important for disabled users. This work shows how a functional specification of a GUI may be rendered in different ways to different users by using personal preferences residing in a user's profile. This extends previous work on profile-based web document delivery. Because the GUI parts of pages are rendered according to their own personal preferences, the web pages become more accessible to disabled users with very much reduced effort from the author of the pages. The technique does not require a specific or modified browser and can be easily implemented using a combination of common technologies

A formal development framework and its use to manage software production

Within an ESPRIT project called FORMAST the authors devised the concept of a ƒorm to bring together all aspects of the development of a 'module' (i.e. specification, design and verification) within a distributed asynchronous system. The use of ƒorms can be extended to other compositional system development scenarios. Using ƒorms in a top-down fashion means that the logical interaction between the modules already designed and the formal specifications of modules required to complete the implementation can readily be ascertained. Moreover, this can be done at any stage of development. Thus one can maintain an overall view of the entire system design and use this to monitor the progress of program construction. This then provides a notion of traceability from a management standpoint

Precise scenarios - a customer-friendly foundation for formal specifications

A formal specification is beyond the comprehension of the average software customer. As a result, the customer cannot provide useful feedback regarding its correctness and completeness. To address this problem, we suggest the formalism expert to work with the customer to create precise scenarios. A precise scenario describes an operation by its effects on the system state with only few simple Z concepts. The customer would find a concrete precise scenario easier to understand than its corresponding abstract schema. The Z expert derives schemas based on the precise scenarios. Precise scenarios affords user involvement that improves the odds of a formal specification fully capturing the user requirements