First results

Interface implementation

AJAX

Voice/Speech

X+V/VoiceML

USI (Universal Speech Interface)

LPTV (Speech Processing and Transmission Laboratory of the University of

Chile)

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate people

literature overview

Deaf and hard of hearing and literacy

Assistive Technologies

Interface implementation - AJAX

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

refers to the usage of a bundle of different

technologies, e.g. (X)HTML, CSS, DOM,

JavaScript, ...

basic idea “don't reload whole HTML page, but only

necessary regions” --> save bandwidth, separate

data, format, style and function

example: GoogleMaps

Interface implementation - AJAX

AJAX Accessibility issues

Google search of “+ajax +accessibility” yields many hits

most problems concerned with screen readers, but also

apply to people with cognitive problems: dynamic

updated of regions not always visible/clear to user; how

should the screen reader react if some region of the

“page” is updated?

W3C-WAI group to tackle issues: ARIA (Accessible

Rich internet applications)

http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria

Interface implementation - AJAX

AJAX Accessibility

not impossible to design accessible sites using

AJAX: one of the award winners of Germany's 2006

BIENE Awards (Barrierefreies Internet eröffnet

neue Einsichten; barrier free Internet opens new

insights) uses AJAX

recommendation throughout many accessibility

related web resources: only very experienced web

designers should use AJAX to create accessibility

critical sites

AJAX resources

AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work?:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work

[...] Let's face it, a great many AJAX applications (dare I say, "most"?) use this approach for its own

sake, and don't really benefit from it all -- they could just as well use traditional POST and response.

[...] I'm forced to conclude that, unless a way can be found to notify screen readers of updated

content, AJAX techniques cannot be considered accessible, and should not be used on a production

site without a truly equivalent non-script alternative being offered to users up-front.

Making Ajax Work with Screen Readers:

http://juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-screen-readers.php#further

Improving accessibility for today’s AJAX - To hack or not?:

http://www.access-matters.com/2007/01/22/improving-accessibility-for-todays-ajax-to-hack-or-not/

W3C initiative: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Suite Overview:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria

Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA Roadmap):

http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-roadmap/

W3C's Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/

Interface implementation - Voice/Speech

X+V/VoiceML

XHTML-Profile; uses VoiceXML as “vocabulary”

X+V brings spoken interaction to standard WWW content

X+V brings together voice modules that support speech

synthesis, speech dialogs, command and control, speech

grammars, and the ability to attach Voice handlers for

responding to specific DOM events

Voice interaction features are integrated directly with

XHTML and CSS, and can consequently be used directly

within XHTML content.

Interface implementation - Voice/Speech

X+V/VoiceML

VoiceXML:

W3C recommendation

brings the Web to telephones

All examples of X+V/VoiceML encountered so far

require telephone as input and special browser

Interface implementation - Voice/Speech

X+V/VoiceML Resources

Introduction at W3C: http://www.w3.org/Voice/Guide/

Definition at

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-v11spec/index.html

Implementations:

http://www.w3.org/Voice/#implementations

Opera: http://dev.opera.com/articles/voice/

Alternatives:

Microsoft's SALT (Speech Application Language Tags):

www.saltforum.org

Interface implementation - Voice/Speech

USI (Universal Speech Interface) Solution of Carnegie Mellon University

Based on XML, but not VoiceML

Goal: enable non-specialists to easily create speech interfaces to their

applications

Status: research not finished, open if/how can be extended to

portuguese

References:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~usi/

Arthur R. Toth, Thomas K. Harris, James Sanders, Stefanie Shriver and

Roni Rosenfeld. Towards Every-Citizen's Speech Interface: An Application

Generator for Speech Interfaces to Databases. In Proc. ICSLP 2002.

Interface implementation - Voice/Speech

LPTV (Laboratorio de Procesamiento y

Transmisión de Voz - Speech Processing and

Transmission Laboratory at the University of

Chile)

Speech and Speaker recognition software;

Usability evaluation of dialogue systems

R&D efforts currently focused on Spanish

language; papers encountered mostly technical

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Akan et al. (2006)

eScreening: Developing an Electronic Screening

Tool for Rural Primary Care

case study of interface development

strategy: "simple" interface, touchscreen, flash,

audio+text

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Chand and Dey

Jadoo: a paper user interface for users unfamiliar

with computers

Computer literate users create a “paper user

interface” for computer illiterate users

“paper user interface” contains description (e.g.

write e-mail) and barcode, barcode scanning

invokes respective process (login, start e-mail

client, open window “compose e-mail”)

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Huenerfauth 2002

Developing design recommendations for computer

interfaces accessible to illiterate users.

design recommendations for two specific scenarios

(health information, job search) of the usage of the

simputer (Indian low-cost hand-held device)

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Martins et al. 2003 Aspectos da Interação Humano-Computador em Sistemas para

Jovens e Adultos não Alfabetizados

short-paper about a system for the evaluation of literacy levels of

young adults

semiotic approach

audio messages with “simple” messages: “if ... press button ...”

usage of photographic images instead of abstract designs

only upper-case letters

usage of “leichte Sprache” (“easy to read texts”: short phrases, only

one information in each sentence, ...)

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Medhi and Sagar 2006 Text-Free User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users

ethnographic design process; novice illiterate users

Bollywood method: tasks are embedded in dramatized stories

involving the subject

semi-abstracted, instead of purely iconic graphics

maps with landmarks

avoid text, numbers ok

voice feedback

graphics with action cues and according to religious/cultural/...

context (left-to-right, hut vs. apartment block, ...)

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Plauché and Prabaker (2006) Tamil market: a spoken dialog system for rural India

“Traditional user study techniques, however, favor literate users and

are ill-suited to research in developing regions”

design process of a speech-based UI of an agricultural query system

system doesn't have a display

users navigate by uttering one of a set of 30 “command words”

user study using Wizard-of-Oz technique

users with little or no education were reluctant to participate

comparison of performance of illiterate vs. literate users not statistically

relevant

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Pretorius and Bosch 2003:

Enabling Computer Interaction in the Indigenous

Languages of South Africa: The Central Role of

Computational Morphology

description of problems of computational

processing of indigenous languages in South Africa

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - synopsis

Waichman et al. 2007: Do farmers understand the information displayed on pesticide product labels? A key

question to reduce pesticides exposure and risk of poisoning in the Brazilian Amazon

user study

population: 15.8% illiterate, 64.5 % semi-illiterate (4 years of education)

difficulties: "foreign language", too technical, small fonts

only 22.4% read labels, only 13.2% understood

level of education adequate for trading

regarding resource constraints, reading and writing ability is high

willingness to read not associated with education level or farming experience but with time

of pesticide use

color coding scheme as indicator of toxicity meaningless to sample population

no clear understanding of pictogram meaning

Text-free interfaces/solutions for illiterate

people - references

Akan, K. D.; Farrell, S. P.; Zerull, L. M.; Mahone, I. H. & Stephanie Guerlain, S. (2006). eScreening:

Developing an Electronic Screening Tool for Rural Primary Care. In: Systems and Information

Engineering Design Symposium, 2006 IEEE

Chand, A. & Dey, A. K. (2006) Jadoo: a paper user interface for users unfamiliar with computers. In: CHI

'06: CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. ACM Press, 2006, p. 1625-

1630

Huenerfauth, M. P. (2002). Developing design recommendations for computer interfaces accessible to

illiterate users. University College Dublin, 2002

Martins, I. H.; de Carvalho, L. A. V.; Ferreira, L.; do Socorro Martins Calháu, M. & Benà cio, M. L. T.

(2003). Aspectos da Interação Humano-Computador em Sistemas para Jovens e Adultos não

Alfabetizados. In: CLIHC '03: Proceedings of the Latin American conference on Human-computer

interaction. ACM Press, 2003, p. 235-238

Medhi, I. & Sagar, K. (2006). Text-Free User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users. In: ICTD '06.

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, 2006,

p. 72-82

Plauché, M. & Prabaker, M. (2006). Tamil market: a spoken dialog system for rural India. In: CHI '06: CHI

'06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. ACM Press, 2006, p. 1619-1624

Pretorius, L. & Bosch, S. E. (2003). Enabling computer interaction in the indigenous languages of South

Africa: the central role of computational morphology. interactions, ACM Press, 2003, 10, 56-63

Waichman, A. V.; Eve, E. & da Silva Nina, N. C. (2007). Do farmers understand the information displayed

on pesticide product labels? A key question to reduce pesticides exposure and risk of poisoning in the

Brazilian Amazon. Crop Protection, 2007, 26, 576-583

Deaf and hard of hearing and literacy

Open: degree of alphabetization of deaf and

hard of hearing in Brazil

In the U.S., deaf people have much lower

literacy levels than hearing people, especially

deaf people with hearing parents

Assistive Technologies

Types (http://www.microsoft.com/enable/at/types.aspx)

Alternative input devices (physical imp.):

Alternative keyboards (also visual/cogn. imp.?)

Electronic pointing devices

Sip-and-puff systems

Wands and sticks

Joysticks

Trackballs

Touch screens (also visual/cogn. imp.?)

Assistive Technologies

Types (contd.) Braille embossers (visual)

Keyboard filters (visual, illiterate)

Light signaler alerts (auditory)

On-screen keyboards (visual)

Reading tools and learning disabilities programs (cognitive, illiterate)

Refreshable Braille displays (visual)

Screen enlargers, or screen magnifiers (visual)

Screen readers (visual, illiterate)

Speech recognition or voice recognition programs (visual, illiterate)

Text-to-Speech (TTS) or speech synthesizers (visual)

Talking and large-print word processors (visual)

TTY/TDD conversion modems (auditory)

Assistive Technologies

Key questions: Which devices should be used? What is the cost? Are there

free/open source solutions?

Is the assistive device compatible with the respective

hardware?

Is the assistive device compatible with the respective

software (browser integration, other applications, linux)?

A good overview of product examples can be

found at http://www.anditec.pt/produtos/index.php and

http://www.barrierefrei-kommunizieren.de/datenbank/index_produkte.php?lang=_en&PHPSESSID=6c2740b33fefd8f367dae0383509f251