Mobile Accessibility

CfP: INTERACT 2011 - 13th IFIP TC13 Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

2010-04-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

INTERACT 2011
13th IFIP TC13 Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Lisbon, Portugal, September 5-9, 2011
http://www.interact2011.org

INTERACT 2011 solicits submissions in a broad range of categories,
addressing all aspects of Human-Computer Interaction. The theme of the
conference, Building Bridges, recognizes the interdisciplinary and
intercultural spirit of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research.
The conference welcomes research that bridges disciplines, cultures and
societies. Within the broad umbrella of HCI, we seek high quality
contributions opening new and emerging HCI disciplines, bridging cultural
differences, and tackling important social problems.

INTERACT 2011 provides a forum for practitioners and researchers to
discuss all aspects of HCI, including these challenges.

The first submission deadline, for full research papers, is 10 January
2011 (abstracts), 24 January 2011 (papers).

SUBMISSION CATEGORIES

-- Full Research Papers
-- Short Papers
-- Special Interest Groups
-- Panels
-- Organizational Overviews
-- Interactive Posters
-- Demonstrations
-- Doctoral Consortium
-- Industrial Programme
-- Workshops
-- Tutorials
-- Student Design Competition

SUBMISSION DEADLINES

Full Research Papers
Abstracts: 10 January 2011; Papers 24 January 2011

Tutorial Proposals; Workshop Proposals
21 March 2011

Short Papers, Industrial Program, Doctoral Consortium, Interactive
Experiences, SIGs, Panels, Organizational Overviews, Interactive
Posters, Student Design Competition
7 April 2011

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Contributions must be in Springer LNCS format, typeset using the MS Word
document format; a template is available at
http://www.interact2011.org/assets/files/SpringerLNCS-word%20format.zip.
Submissions should be uploaded to https://precisionconference.com/~interact.

VENUE

Lisbon is the capital and largest city in Portugal. It is a historic centre,
with cultural and architectural influence spanning Roman, Moorish and medieval
times, through to its seat as the centre of the Portuguese empire. Lisbon
is a warm and hospitable city, in the heart of a beautiful tourist region.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information, see http://www.interact2011.org.

One Year Later....

2009-09-21T02:29:00.000-07:00

...shame on me!

In the last few months we have been exploring new ideas as well as going in detail in some old ones. However, I have neglected this blog and have not posted any new message in the last year. I am totally focused on fixing this problem and will come back to you with ideas, developments and news every once in a while.

It is great to be back. Hope to have you checking this blog soon...

Mnemonical Body Shortcuts: Improving Mobile Interaction

2008-09-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

I am reaching you from Funchal in Madeira, Portugal, where I am attending ECCE 2008, the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics. Tomorrow I will present the first of two communications - Mnemonical Body Shortcuts: Improving Mobile Interaction.

I have been preparing my presentation and it is already available in my slideshare space.

Mnemonical Body Shortcuts: improving mobile interaction

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ecce shorcuts)

I will try to add a slidecast if I have the time. I will also describe the project in this blog in the near future. For now you can check the publications:

Mobile Text-Entry Models for People with Disabilities
Tiago Guerreiro, Pedro Santana, Joaquim Jorge
ECCE 2008 - Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, ACM DL

Slide Rule: Making Touch Screens accessible to blind users

2008-08-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I have presented, in this blog, NavTouch, the method we have developed to make touch screen mobile devices accessible to blind users. We have mainly focused on the text-entry task as it is the most challenging one but we also feature navigation. To navigate menus, the users slide their fingers (up or down) to get to the next menu option or to the side to accept an option...the other side offers the back/cancel action.

A few days ago I found that there is another well know research group focusing on the same problem and that have very cool approach to menu navigation. The group is the AIM group, leaded by Professor Jacob Wobbrock, the project is called Slide Rule and it is being develod by Shawn Kane. Below you can find a Slide Rule demonstration video:

Slide Rule is being presented at this year's ASSETS edition, the ACM SIGACCESS Conference.

Universal Accessibility: Are we there yet?

2008-08-14T10:03:00.001-07:00

... well. No, son! We still have a long way to go. Indeed, Accessibility and Assistive Technologies are really just newborns. With no disregard for the excellent advances made in the last decades, still face several restrictions.

A few months ago I have made a presentation on Assistive Technologies for Spinal Cord Injuries. There are several solutions available for different impairments with several advantages and some disadvantages as well. See it below:

Assistive Technologies For Spinal Cord Injured Individuals

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: injury spinal)

Two years ago I would see these approaches, be marvelled and innocently ask: are we there yet? What is missing for a tetraplegic to operate a computer (obviously this question does not consider the other losses tetraplegic users experience)?

Well, after being around several persons with tetraplegia I came to find that we are still in the begining and almost everything is still missing. The approaches, although valuable and suitable for particular situations, are rarely or never complete. They are fragmentary. As an example, we will look at a scenario where a tetraplegic person uses an eye-tracker to operate a computer. Well, we have seen eye-trackers and they are amazing. Actually, the user can be in front of the computer and control the mouse pointer and, with a little training, control any other application. Often, an integrated solution can offer access to the household appliances and enable the user to control his surrounding environment. Well, once again, why do I argue that we are so far away?

The answer relates to the ability to achieve therequired interaction conditions. Looking at the same example, the users need to be in front of the computer. And to be somehow restricted to that position. Well, I am a friend of some tetraplegic persons and they spend more than half their daily hours in bed....and does that have an assitive technology that assists them while in the chair, are not able to operate it in bed.We are talking part-time accessibility . Moreover, we are also talking about conditioned accessibility. The users still require a great deal of help from a third-party....And I am not just talking about the initial setup. Also I am not aiming at total independence (although that would be great). But a little liberty to choose is required.

This is my research focus and what I aim to achieve. Nowadays mobile devices play a weak role regarding assistive technologies for motorly disabled users but I believe that these devices characteristics make them a candidate solution to solve some of the aforementioned issues...I will come to you with this subject in another post.

Call For Papers: CHI 2009

2008-08-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

Last April I have been to Florence to attend CHI 2008. It was my first time at this enormous conference and I enjoyed it. It is a great forum for those researching Human Computer Interaction and I definitely want to attend the next one.

Well, the deadline are coming. Here is the Call for Papers, that includes some novelties like the Video submission, Contemporary Trends Submission or the Subcommittee Evaluation groups.

April 5-9, 2009, Boston, MA, USA, http://www.chi2009.org

Join us in Boston, MA for the 27th Annual CHI conference, the premier
international forum for all aspects of human - computer interaction.

CHI 2009 focuses on digital life in a new world. As our world moves online, we increasingly use electronic means to work, play, and communicate. CHI 2009 will showcase the research and design of innovative systems to help us
navigate this increasingly digital world.

CHI 2009 will be held in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston is home to over 100 colleges and universities and is one of the major technology centers of the
United States. Join us in Boston to celebrate the science and technology that brings our world to life!

Call for Papers
===============

The Human-Computer Interaction Archive

Archival Papers and Notes document work that makes a lasting and significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of human-computer interaction.
The CHI 2009 Organizers have combined the review and submission processes for Papers and Notes, so they are no longer separate submission venues.

Submit by September 19, 2008

* Papers and Notes (archival format, 10 pages maximum for papers, 4 pages maximum for Notes)
* IMPORTANT CHANGE! The CHI 2009 Papers and Notes program committee will consist of subcommittees that each focus on a subset of topics in human- computer interaction. As an author, you decide which subcommittee reviews your paper. Choose the subcommittee that your believe offers the appropriate audience to review your research. You also will specify a contribution type that guides how the paper should be evaluated by reviewers. Authors should carefully assess the subcommittees and other changes described in the Papers and Notes Call for Participation. Ask any clarifying questions well ahead of the deadline.

Contemporary Trends
===================

Contemporary Trends provoke, intrigue, and inspire the CHI audience.
These submissions record the history of HCI practice and innovation outside of the scope of traditional archival papers.

Submit by July 18, 2008

* Courses
* Workshops (Organizers)

Submit by October 3, 2008

* NEW! Video Showcase (Register intent to submit; video upload due October 10, 2008)
* Case Studies
* Doctoral Consortium
* Panels
* Interactivity

Submit by October 10, 2008

* Video Showcase (Video Upload Deadline) - must register intent by
October 3, 2008

Submit by October 23, 2008

* Workshops (Participants)

Submit by January 7, 2009

* Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
* Work-in-Progress
* alt.chi

Competitions
============

Competitions provide students with an opportunity to work on challenging problems, to exchange ideas, and to compete for awards that provide recognition of excellence.

Submit by January 7, 2009

* Student Research Competition
* Student Design Competition
* Design Community

Submit by January 7, 2009

* Design Practice
* Design Methods

Other new venues that extend the boundaries of the CHI Conference are sometimes hosted by the various CHI Communities, such as the Design Community Events and Design Theatre of CHI 2008. Additional venues for CHI 2009 will be added to this call as the community chairs develop specific plans for them.

CHI Madness
===========

Recent CHI conferences have a short opening session each day with 30- second synopses of all Papers/Notes and Case Studies that will be presented that day.
This session is known as CHI Madness. The CHI Madness Guide for next year's conference will be available here later.

ECCE 2008: European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics

2008-08-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

ECCE 2008 (16-19 September 2008) will be held in Madeira, Portugal. Registration is now open.
I will be present at the conference presenting two papers:

Mnemonical Body Shortcuts: Improving Mobile Interaction
Tiago Guerreiro, Ricardo Gamboa, Joaquim Jorge
ECCE 2008  - European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, ACM DL

Mobile Text-Entry Models for People with Disabilities
Tiago Guerreiro, Pedro Santana, Paulo Lagoá and Joaquim Jorge
ECCE 2008 - European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, ACM DL

ECCE 2008 aims to provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to exchange new ideas and practical experience in all areas of cognitive ergonomics. By presenting, criticizing, and defending papers, ECCE 2008 participants will explore knowledge and research areas in cognitive ergonomics and invent new directions for advancing both theoretical and practical aspects of cognitive ergonomics.

ECCE 2008 Registration

Early registration (€600/package including 4 nights accommodation) open until 24th August 2008
Late registration (€650/package including 4 nights accommodation) until 12th September 2008.

ECCE 2008 Program

Location

ECCE 2008 will take place between the 16 and 19 of September 2008 in Madeira, Portugal.

Keynote Speakers

Confirmed keynote speakers for ECCE 2008: Austin Henderson and Norbert Streitz.

Tuesday 16th September

13:30 - 14:00 Registration

14:00 - 17:00 Doctoral Consortium

Note: Attendance at the DC is by invitation only

Maria Nilsson: Characterising User Interaction to Inform Information-Fusion-Driven Decision Support
Tjerk de Greef: Facilitating Synchronization and Coordination within Dispersed Emergency Management Teams
Olga Kulyk: Situational Awareness Support to Enhance Teamwork in Collaborative Environments
Dhaval Vyas: Designing Awareness Support for Distributed Cooperative Design Teams

Wednesday 17th September

09:00 - 09:30 Registration

09:30 - 10:00 Presentation of the conference

10:00 - 10:30 Coffee Break

10:30 - 12:00 Keynote speech. Norbert Streitz: From Cognitive Compatibility to the Disappearing Computer: Experience Design for Smart Environments

12:00 - 13:00 Session A: Human error and reliability

Xiaocong Fan, Sooyoung Oh, Michael McNeese, et al.: The Influence of Agent Reliability on Trust in Human-Agent Collaboration (LP)
Pierre Van Elslande. Drivers' needs and safety systems (SP)
Pierre Van Elslande, Magali Jaffard, Katel Fouquet, et al.: Variety of attentional failures in traffic accidents (SP)

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

14:30 - 16:00 Session B: Innovative user interface concepts

Jevon Brunk, Maurizio Caporali, Erik Gronvall, et al.: Wi-Wave: Urban Furniture for Browsing Internet Contents in Public Spaces (LP)
Tiago Guerreiro, Ricardo Gamboa, Joaquim Jorge Mnemonical Body Shortcuts: Improving Mobile Interaction (LP)
Dhaval Vyas, Olga Kulyk, Paul van der Vet, et al.: Structures of Life: The Role of Molecular Structures in Scientists’ Work (SP)
Françoise Decortis, Laura Lentini: Social inclusion and creative expressions using nondigital artefacts: A case study on pinholes (SP)

16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 - 18:00 Session C: Posters

Idoia Cearreta, Juan Miguel López, Nestor Garay-Vitoria. Models to facilitate the development of affective resources
Sylvain Pronovost, Robert West A GOMS Model of Virtual Sociotechnical Systems: Using Video Games to Build Cognitive Models
Jonas Andersson, Anna-Lisa Osvalder. In Search for Common Ground: How an Automatic Turbine System Supports Operator Work
Leena Salo, Leena Norros. Design of Joint Intelligent Systems – the Design Field Framework
Dhaval Vyas, Alan Dix, Anton Nijholt : Exploring Mediated Interactions: A Design Exercise
Elisa Rubegni, Amalia Sabiescu, Paolo Paolini: OneThousandAndOneStories: a format for multi-channel multimedia narratives
Laura Militello, Drew Bowers, Jesse Walter: Develop a tool to support collaborative decision making via visualizations

Thursday 18th September

09:30 - 11:00 Session D: Collaboration

Amine Chellali, Isabelle Milleville-Pennel, Cedric Dumas: Elaboration of a common frame of reference in Collaborative Virtual Environments (LP)
Béatrice Cahour: Discomfort, affects and coping strategies in driving activity (LP)
Tjerk de Greef, Henryk Arciszewski: Combining Adaptive Automation and Adaptive Teams in a Naval Command Centre (SP)
Xusen Cheng, Linda Macaulay: Investigating Individual Trust for Collaboration Using Spider Diagram (SP)
Jean-Marie Burkhardt, Francoise Détienne, Linda Moutsinga-Mpaga, Laurence Perron, Stéphane Safin, Pierre Leclercq: Multimodal collaborative activity among architectural designers using an augmented desktop at distance or in collocation (SP)

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 - 13:00 Session E: Design methods

Paula Savioja, Leena Norros, Leena Salo: Evaluation of Systems Usability (LP)
Evert-Jan R.G. Oppelaar, Elbert-Jan Hennipman, Gerrit C. van der Veer: Experience Design for Dummies (LP)
Elbert-Jan Hennipman, Evert-Jan R.G. Oppelaar, Gerrit C. van der Veer, et al.: Rapid and rich prototyping: proof of concepts for experience (LP)

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

14:30 - 16:00 Session F: User experience

Dag Sverre Syrdal, Nuno R. Otero, Kerstin Dautenhahn Video Prototyping in Human Robot Interaction:Results from a Qualitative Study (LP)
Martin Colbert, Makayla Lewis, Jarinee Chattratichart, et al.: Persuading Users to Perform Follow-on Tasks: an Initial Case Study (LP)
Lamis Hammoud, Steve Love, Willem-Paul Brinkman: The affect of lecturers’ attitude on students’ use of an online learning environment (LP)
David Murphy, Gavin Doherty and Saturnino Luz: Differentiating between Novice and Expert Surgeons Based on Errors Derived from Task Analysis (SP)

16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 - 18:00 EACE annual meeting

Friday 19th September

09:30 - 11:00 Session G: Work, psychology and Usability

Assaf Botzer, Joachim Meyer: The Effect of Effort on Responses to Binary Cues (LP)
Armin Janss, Wolfgang Lauer, Klaus Radermacher Using Cognitive Task Analysis for UI Design in Surgical Work Systems (LP)
Dhaval Vyas, Anton Eliens, Marek van de Watering, et al. Organizational Probes: Exploring Playful Interactions in Work Environment (SP)
Anna Kämäräinen, Pertti Saariluoma: User psychological problems in implementing production control system (SP)

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 - 13:00 Session H: Users’ Individual Differences

Inmaculada Fajardo, Julio Abascal, José Juan Cañas: Bridging the Digital Divide for deaf signer users (LP)
Iftikhar Khan, Willem Brinkman, Nicholas Fine, et al.: Measuring Personality From Keyboard and Mouse Use (LP)
Tiago Guerreiro, Paulo Lagoá, Hugo Nicolau, et al.Mobile Text-Entry Models for People with Disabilities (SP)

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

14:30 - 16:00 Keynote Speech: Austin Henderson: The 100% Solution: What is a user to do, and how are we helping?

16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 - 17:00 Conference Closure

Mobile Text-Entry Systems: Mobility, Accessibility, Universality

2008-08-11T04:15:00.000-07:00

Last year, I have been to Beijing, China to present NavTap at HCII 2007. During one of my incursions in the exhibition hall I came to see one book that called my attention. The book was called Text Entry Systems: Mobility, Accessibility, Universality (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) and had everything to do with my presence at the conference and my current research. I bought it, of course.

The authors of the book are Ian Scott Mackenzie and Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii, two well know names in the natural language understanding and performance analysis and modelling research communities. The book also includes chapters co-authored by other experts in the area. I would like to mention two: Jacob Wobbrock, the author of EdgeWrite (that I will surely get the time to write about), and Shari Trewin, that I know from her Keyboard Optimization research.

I read the book and state it as an essential tool for anyone who is trying to get into mobile text-entry and augmentative or alternative communication systems for disabled users. Indeed, this book presents a wide variety of text-entry approaches, suitable to several different scenarios (desktop, mobile keypad-based, touch screens). Moreover, the book also features an extensive survey of text-entry performance metrics, offering the reader the comprehension of the complexity on developing and evaluating new text-entry methods.
While I had already studied the majority (if not all) the contributions of this book, I did it at the cost of several reading and searching hours. The book brings all together and will save you some time, if you are interested in the subject.

NavTouch: Making Touch Screens Accessible to Blind Users

2008-08-09T07:23:00.001-07:00

Touch screens have showed to be a successful and enthusiastic way of human computer interaction. Due to their fast learning curve, novice users benefit most from the directness of touch screen displays. The ability to directly touch and manipulate data on the screen without using any intermediary devices is a very strong appeal. However, these devices face several interaction issues, once again augmented in text input scenarios. While they also restrict the interaction performed by full capable users, blind individuals are disabled to interact as no feedback is offered. The problem in this scenario is even more drastic than when a physical keypad is available as the keys give the user the required cues to select targets (although obligating to memorize the associations).

Although pointing or selecting may be impossible, performing a gesture is not. We present an approach similar to NavTap (NavTouch) that uses the user’s capacity to perform a directional gesture and through it navigate in the alphabet (similarly to the keypad based approach). Once again, the user is not forced to memorize or guess any location in the screen as the interaction is limited to directional strokes.

Special actions are linked to the screen corners as those are easily identified. After performing a gesture, if the user keeps pressing the screen, the navigation will continue automatically in last direction. The bottom right corner of the screen erases the last character entered and the bottom left corner of the screen enters a space or other special characters. In contrast to keypad, where the user has to find the right key to press, with these gestures that extra cognitive load does not exist.

NavTouch outperforms NavTap because of the additional effort in finding the appropriate directional key with NavTap. Indeed, we found that users are able to quickly navigate in all four directions with NavTouch as gestures can start at almost any point on the screen with no extra associated load. Furthermore, users are able to write sentences faster with navigational approaches, improving their performance across sessions. Overall, experimental results show that navigational approaches are far easier to learn and users are able to improve performance without further training. Moreover, NavTouch was more effective than NavTap because of the more fluid mapping of gestures to actions.

See the video of a blind user testing the system...

Credits:
Hugo Nicolau
Paulo Lagoá
Tiago Guerreiro
Joaquim Jorge

NavTap and BrailleTap (Mobile text-Entry Interfaces for the Blind) presented at RESNA 2008

2008-07-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I have been in Arlington, Virginia, attending RESNA 2008, the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America Annual Conference. I came to the conference as a presenter, to show the community the work we have been performing on mobile text-entry interfaces for blind users. The related materials can be accessed below:

The presentation went really well. The scientific papers were presented in Interactive Poster Sessions. Moreover, I got the chance to present our prototypes in the Developer's Forum. We had some interested attendees from practitioners, suppliers to end-users, that showed interest in using our system.

Call For Papers: Include 2009:

2008-07-02T04:40:00.000-07:00

INCLUDE 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

The RCA Helen Hamlyn Centre is pleased to announce a first Call for Papers (http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/1350/all/1/call_for_papers.aspx) for Include 2009 Inclusive Design into Innovation:

Transforming Practice in Design, Research and Business, to be held at the Royal College of Art, London 5-8 April 2009.

Include 2009 will be chaired by Professor John Clarkson (Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge), Steve Wilcox (Design Science) and Melanie Howard (Futurologist and author of 'The Future Unwrapped').

Professor Alastair Macdonald (Glasgow School of Art) will chair the Review Committee and act as rapporteur of the event, drawing together the key areas of design, research and business and their role within innovation through inclusive design.

Include 2009 will be the fifth International Conference on Inclusive Design and aims to engage those involved in all aspects of user-centred design practice, research and advocacy.

Papers on completed research are sought from academic researchers, design managers, designers, design educators and design commissioners that describe inclusive approaches in their chosen field and the innovative outcomes.

Submissions that deal with inclusive design in its broadest sense and in any context of user-centred practice will be considered.

Suggested themes may include
* New and emerging practices
* New users (exploring beyond age and disability)
* New designers
* Realising new ideas
* People Centred Innovations

Issues and experiences that may be discussed include;
* Changes in design education to encompass an inclusive approach
* Legislation and policy for inclusive design
* Collaborative research with users in inclusive design
* Boardroom barriers to inclusive design
* Excluding Design - who are we missing?

Submission Guidelines
Authors are invited to submit 6 page papers of previously unpublished work (including references and images). Please download the Include template at http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/1424/all/1/template.aspx
* The conference language is English
* Please avoid any reference to your name or institution / company within the title or body of the paper for anonymous peer review.

* All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings
* Accepted authors will be invited to present papers in either a podium or poster format.
* We are not accepting proposals for workshops.
* Keynote authors will be identified through review and will be invited to expand their original submissions.
* Papers are to be received electronically through the Include website by 1 October 2008

Timetable
1 October 2008 Deadline for all submissions
8 December 2008 Announcement of reviewed papers
19 January 2009 Conference registration opens
26 January 2009 Authors deadline for amended submissions
5 April 2009 Opening Reception
6-8 April 2009 Include 2009

Join the Include Network to register your interest in Include 2009 and receive registration discount at http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/210/all/1/include_network.aspx

Contact us If you have any questions or need further information, please email include@rca.ac.uk

RESNA 2008: First Impressions

2008-06-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Washington two days ago to attend RESNA 2008, the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America Annual Conference. This year the conference takes place in Arlington, Virginia, five minutes from Washington, DC, in the Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel.

I am impressed with the conference in several aspects. First, it is huge...several different tracks, instructional courses, workshops, exhibits...and second, a get together of several different interest groups: suppliers, practitioners, researchers and the end-users. Another important aspect is the hospitality and the way the regular attendees welcome first timers...We are clearly identified and if someone notices we are 1st Timers they quickly try to start a conversation and include you in the group. It's very nice!

Today there is the opening ceremony and the keynote address by Judie H Heumann and the conference main program starts tomorrow morning. I will have my presentation. Although it was accepted as a paper, the presentation will be performed in an Interactive Poster Session to enable discussion and a more personalized demosntration with the possible interested users/researchers.

I leave you with a first photo of the RESNA Universe and my space in it....

BrailleTap: a mobile device text-entry method focused on the users

2008-06-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Regular mobile device text-entry methods are suitable for visually capable individuals and seek to improve user’s performance. Hence, it is possible for someone, with no experience, who doesn’t remember the location of a letter, to easily look and recognize the key where that letter is. Those methods imply that the fingers dance through the keyboard, choosing letters and special characters, among ten or more keys. Once again, we easily overcome this issue appealing to vision. A blind user is not able to do so. The mark present at key ‘5’ gives blind users the notion of the keypad layout but not feedback on the selected letter and, although users can make an effort to memorize a letter’s placement, feedback is essential. Even SMS experts need to occasionally look at the words being written to ensure message correction. Moreover, expertise is acquired by using the method and receiving the feedback. Only after an extensive and successful use of the writing mechanisms the users can get used to them and, in some cases, no longer need constant visual feedback. Screen readers overcome some of the issues as they offer the user feedback on the screen progress. However, keypad feedback is still inexistent which often leads to mistakes and sometimes giving up. Although users make sense on the message progress, they still have to know where to press to get the desired letter/action.

We can only offer visually impaired individuals mobile device accessibility if those devices can be easily available and usable. Therefore, based on user needs, capabilities and available devices we decided that, like in the NavTap method, our solutions should be compatible with regular mobile phones and, therefore, with the regular 12 key keyboard layout requiring no-extra hardware (i.e. expensive and heavy Braille keyboards). Having this in mind, we looked at the regular mobile phone keypad to find out a way of permitting Braille input without the needs of additional hardware.

BrailleTap focuses on a common knowledge to many blind users: the Braille Alphabet. Again, transforming the keypad functionalities is the basis of this new text-entry method. In the Braille alphabet, letters are formed by groups of 6 dots in a 3x2 cell.

Considering the keypad of a mobile phone we can map that cell on keys ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘5’, ‘6’, ‘8’ and ‘9’. Each press on these keys fills or blanks the respective dot. Key ‘4’ allows the user to enter the letter or, if all dots are blank, enter a space. For example, to enter the letter ‘b’, the user has to press keys ‘2’ and ‘5’ followed by key ‘4’. Finally, key ‘7’ erases the last character entered.

Although capitalized letters are not considered in these studies it would be possible to augment the functionality as some keys still remain available.
This method focuses on the user and replaces the non-memorisable keypad layout with a particular common knowledge within this user group.

Take a look at this video for a demonstration:

If you are interested in more detail, particularly about the user studies, you can take a look at our publications on BrailleTap:

Tiago Guerreiro, Paulo Lagoá, Pedro Santana, Daniel Gonçalves, Joaquim Jorge, Navtap and Brailletap: Non-visual input interfaces, RESNA 2008 - Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America Conference, Arlington, USA, June 2008

Pedro Santana, Tiago Guerreiro, Joaquim Jorge, Braille Matrix, Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion, Vila Real, Portugal, November 2007

Check the presentation I have made in Vila Real, at DSAI 2007, on this new text-entry method:

| View | Upload your own

Credits:
Paulo Lagoá (Developer)
Pedro Santana (Developer)
Tiago Guerreiro (Developer Team Leader)
Joaquim Jorge (Adviser)

Call For Papers: Universally-Accessible Systems (UAS) - Track at ACM SAC2009 (DEADLINE EXTENDED 23 Aug)

2008-06-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

The 24th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 2009

Call for Papers: Special Track on Universally-Accessible Systems
March 8-12 2009, Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2009/
http://sac2009-uas.di.fc.ul.pt
sac2009-uas@di.fc.ul.pt

For the past twenty years, the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. SAC 2009 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing, and is hosted this year by the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Chaminade University of Honolulu.

Universally-Accessible Systems (UAS)

The Universally-Accessible Systems track aims at exploring synergies and multidisciplinary perspectives on the modeling, design, development and assessment of theories, techniques, systems and applications usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, in demanding settings and arrangements. As such, on the targeted users strand,universally-accessible systems addresses people with special needs, including elderly, children, disabled persons or fully active individuals in constrained usage situations or with specific ethnic/cultural requirements. On the settings side, the pervasiveness of systems and applications is pursued in order to cope with the nature of the applications required by envisaged targeted users. Finally, the arrangements aimed by these systems and tools include individual ones as well as small groups and communities, where the individual differences pose a particularly challenging goal. Within this context, the UAS track aspires to establish a forum where HCI specialists, software and usability engineers, computer scientists, Human Factors experts, cognitive psychologists, sociologists, as well as assistive technology and rehabilitation experts exchange views and disseminate relevant technical and scientific information.

The track welcomes submissions in the following or other related topics, and specially on their confluence, under the umbrella of the abovementioned universally-accessible goals (users, settings, and arrangements):

* user physiologic and cognitive modeling
* group and communities behavior modeling
* universal design
* universal development methodologies, methods and techniques
* usability and accessibility
* universal guidelines
* requirements engineering for universal access
* evaluation of universally-accessible systems
* intelligent and adaptive user interfaces
* virtual and augmented environments
* multi-sensor and uncommon interaction techniques
* multilingual and multicultural user interfaces
* ubiquitous user interfaces
* collaboration support systems
* communities support systems
* user interfaces for all

Important dates and submissions

A paper cannot be submitted to more than one track. Submissions must be original, unpublished, and not currently under review by workshops, conferences, or journals. All papers should be submitted online at the SAC 2009 website. Papers must be formatted according to the template provided in the SAC2009 website, and take into account the following:

* In order to facilitate blind review, the name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) must NOT appear in the body of the paper, and self-reference should be in the third person. This is to facilitate blind review. Only the title should be shown at the first page without the author's information;
* Papers should not exceed 4000 words;
* Authors should submit a separate cover sheet attached for each paper that includes the title of the paper, the name(s), affiliation(s), address(es), email(s), phone(s), and fax number(s) of the author(s).

All accepted papers will be published in the annual conference proceedings and will be available at the conference. Note that accepted papers must fit within five (5) two-column pages, with the option to add three (3) more pages at an additional expense of 80 (eighty) USD per extra page.

For further information, please contact the chairs through sac2009-uas@di.fc.ul.pt.

Dates breakdown:

* August 23, 2008: Submission of papers by authors (EXTENDED DEADLINE);
* October 11, 2008: Notification of paper acceptance/rejection;
* October 25, 2008: Camera-ready copies of accepted papers.

NavTap: a navigational text-entry model for blind users

2008-06-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

Mobile devices play an important role on modern society. Their functionalities go beyond the basic communication, gathering a large set of productivity and leisure applications. The interaction with these devices is highly visually demanding disabling blind users to achieve control. Particularly, text-entry, a task that is transversal to several mobile applications, is difficult to accomplish as it relies on visual feedback both from the keypad and screen. Although there are specialized solutions to overcome this problem, those are ineffective. Hardware solutions are unsuitable to a mobile context and software approaches are adaptations that remain ineffective, hard to learn and error prone.

The main obstacle for a blind user to operate a regular mobile device is the need to memorize the position of each letter. To circumvent the lack of visual feedback, both output and input information must be offered through available channels. It is important to notice that possible communication channels, like tact or audition, are over-developed and the users are likely to perform better than a full capable user if the interaction is based on those senses. By adapting the interaction processes we minimize stress scenarios and encourage learning.

The NavTap text-entry method allows the user to navigate through the alphabet using the mobile phone keypad. The alphabet was divided in five lines, each starting with a different vowel as these are easy to remember. Using the mark on key ‘5’ we can map a cursor on the keypad using the keys ‘2’, ‘4’, ‘6’ and ‘8’. Keys ‘4’ and ‘6’ allow the user to navigate horizontally through the letters while keys ‘2’ and ‘8’ allow the user to jump between the vowels, turning them into key points in the alphabet. Both navigations (vertical and horizontal) are cyclical, which means that the user can go, for instance, from the letter 'z' to the letter 'a', and from the vowel 'u' to 'a'.

Navigation scenarios for the letter 't'

Key ‘5’ enters a space or other special characters and key ‘7’ erases the last character entered. This method drastically reduces memorizing requirements, therefore reducing the cognitive load. In a worst case scenario, where the user does not have a good alphabet mental mapping, he can simply navigate straight forward until he hears the desired letter. There are no wrong buttons, just shorter paths. Blind users can rely on audio feedback before accepting any letter, increasing the text-entry task success and the motivation to improve writing skills.

(See a blind user operating the system [in portuguese])

Text-entry interfaces that consider the users’ needs and capabilities are likely to ease the first contact and allow performance improvement. Considering text input for blind users, results showed that, if the cognitive load is removed and the users are presented with easier and user-centered interfaces, success is achieved as the first contact has a small error rate and the learning curve is accentuated. It is therefore possible to offer blind users with effective interfaces that require no extra hardware and permit usage by a wide set of users even those with no previous acquaintance with mobile devices.

Blind user testing the system

If you are insterested in more detail, particularly about the user studies, you can take a look at our publications on NavTap:

Tiago Guerreiro, Paulo Lagoá, Pedro Santana, Daniel Gonçalves, Joaquim Jorge, Navtap and Brailletap: Non-visual input interfaces, RESNA 2008 - Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America Conference

Paulo Lagoá, Pedro Santana, Tiago Guerreiro, Daniel Gonçalves, Joaquim Jorge, Blono: a New Mobile Text-entry Interface for the Visually Impaired, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Universal Access in HCI Part II, HCII 2007, LNCS 4555, pp. 908–917, Beijing, China, July 2007

Check the presentation I have made in China, at HCII 2007, on this new text-entry method:

| View | Upload your own

(This presentation has been featured in the slideshare main page which makes me proud. Thank you Garr Reynolds for your insights)

Credits:
Paulo Lagoá (Developer)
Pedro Santana (Developer)
Tiago Guerreiro (Developer Team Leader)
Joaquim Jorge (Adviser)

Check back soon for new updates on text-entry on touch screen based mobile devices for blind users.

Any questions or comments are welcomed...

Extending Accessibility to Mobile Devices

2008-06-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

Hello There!

My name is Tiago Guerreiro and I am a PhD student at the Technical Superior Institute, TU Lisbon in Portugal as well as a researcher at INESC-ID, at the Visualization and Intelligent Multimodal Interfaces Group (VIMMI), under the supervision of Prof. Joaquim Jorge.

My research interests are on Accessibility, Usability and Multimodal Interfaces but particularly on the aspects of Usability and Accessibility to Mobile Devices. At my research group (VIMMI) I am able to lead projects on mobile accessibility. We have already accomplished some good results with blind and tetraplegic persons making it possible and easier for those users to operate a mobile device and through it, control other devices.

In this blog I will regularly present our results as well as relevant innovations on accessibility and assistive technologies and, once again, particularly on mobile accessibility.

Feel free to regularly check for news and comment my posts.