A flexible software architecture concept for the creation of accessible PDF documents

This paper presents a flexible software architecture concept that allows the automatic generation of fully accessible PDF documents originating from various authoring tools such as Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word. The architecture can be extended to include any authoring tools capable of creating PDF documents. For each authoring tool, a software accessibility plug-in must be implemented which analyzes the logical structure of the document and creates an XML representation of it. This XML file is used in combination with an untagged non-accessible PDF to create an accessible PDF version of the document. The implemented accessibility plug-in prototype allows authors of documents to check for accessibility issues while creating their documents and add the additional semantic information needed to generate a fully accessible PDF document

Barrierefreier Tourismusraum Bodensee

Das Projekt "Barrierefreier Tourismusraum Bodensee" ist ein Projekt des IBH Living Labs AAL1, das von der Internationalen Bodensee Hochschule IBH gefördert wird und bei dem Hochschul- und Praxispartner aus der Schweiz, Deutschland und Österreich beteiligt sind. Das Ziel dieses Projekts ist die systematische Identifikation von Barrieren, die Menschen mit Assistenzbedarf antreffen, wenn sie Ferien im Bodenseeraum verbringen oder eine Ferienreise dort unternehmen wollen. Sodann soll erforscht werden, wie gut heute existierende Assistenztechnologien und -services helfen, die identifizierten Barrieren zu überwinden. Zu diesem Zweck werden einerseits sogenannte Hotel-Living-Labs etabliert, die mit verschiedenen Assistenztechnologien und -services ausgestattet sind, um die identifizierten Barrieren soweit möglich abzubauen. Basierend auf diesen Hotel-Living-Labs wird schliesslich ein umfassender Service für Ferien und Ferienreisen entwickelt, um Menschen mit Assistenzbedarf möglichst barrierefreie Ferien und Ferienreisen zu ermöglichen. Die Feriengäste haben zudem während ihres Ferienaufenthaltes die Möglichkeit, weitere Assistenztechnologien und -services auszuprobieren, die ihnen auch zu Hause nützlich sein könnten

New mobile service development process

Mobile applications play an ever growing role in everybody’s life around our globe and the leading app stores currently offer more than 2 million different apps each for their users. It is well accepted that the usage context is much more important in the UI and UX design of these apps than when designing desktop applications. It is important to realize that a lot of these apps are part of a mobile service that defines their usage context and the UX of the mobile app is not only determined by the interaction with it but by the value creation of the whole service. We therefore propose in this paper a joint service and app design process that not only optimizes the user interaction with the mobile app but also the UX of the whole service in order to provide an optimal value proposition to the service customer of the mobile service

Dust and Cobalt Levels in the Austrian Tungsten Industry: Workplace and Human Biomonitoring Data

In general, routine industrial hygiene (IH) data are collected not to serve for scientific research but to check for compliance with occupational limit values. In the preparation of an occupational retrospective cohort study it is vital to test the validity of the exposure assessment based on incomplete (temporal coverage, departments) IH data. Existing IH data from a large hard metal plant was collected. Individual workers’ exposure per year and department was estimated based on linear regression of log-transformed exposure data for dust, tungsten, and cobalt. Estimated data were back-transformed, and for cobalt the validity of the estimates was confirmed by comparison with individual cobalt concentrations in urine. Air monitoring data were available from 1985 to 2012 and urine tests from the years 2008 to 2014. A declining trend and significant differences among departments was evident for all three air pollutants. The estimated time trend fitted the time trend in urine values well. At 1 mg/m3, cobalt in the air leads to an excretion of approximately 200 µg/L cobalt in urine. Cobalt levels in urine were significantly higher in smokers with an interaction effect between smoking and air concentrations. Exposure estimates of individual workers are generally feasible in the examined plant, although some departments are not documented sufficiently enough. Additional information (expert knowledge) is needed to fill these gaps

PDF Accessibility of Research Papers: What Tools are Needed for Assessment and Remediation?

Trillions of documents online are in PDF format, but only a small amount of these PDF documents include the necessary markup to make them accessible for people with disabilities. This paper presents the results of three related data collection efforts: a survey (with 61 participants), interviews (with 6 participants), and usability testing (with 6 participants), to learn more about what tools are needed for content contributors, to assist them in the assessment and remediation of accessibility in PDF documents. The paper provides suggested features and usability needed for software tools to support PDF document accessibility, as well as implications for content creators, scientific publishers, as well as the creator of the PDF format, Adobe

ZHAW-CAI : ensemble method for Swiss German speech to Standard German text

This paper presents the contribution of ZHAW-CAI to the Shared Task ”Swiss German Speech to Standard German Text” at the SwissText 2021 conference. Our approach combines three models based on the Fairseq, Jasper and Wav2vec architectures trained on multilingual, German and Swiss German data. We applied an ensembling algorithm on the predictions of the three models in order to retrieve the most reliable candidate out of the provided translations for each spoken utterance. With the ensembling output, we achieved a BLEU score of 39.39 on the private test set, which gave us the third place out of four contributors in the competition

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin