Improving Screencast Accessibility for People With Disabilities: Guidelines and Techniques

Screencast video tutorials are increasingly popular in libraries but may present access problems for people with disabilities unless specific accessibility features are added during screencast creation. This article reviews existing standards for accessible Web-based multimedia and gives guidelines and tips on how to create accessible screencasts based on these standards.     

Reference Services for Distant Students With Disabilities

Abstract

This introduction discusses the nature and history of the Eastern New York Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ENY/ACRL). It also defines the content and scope of the Internet-related papers presented at the Spring 1995 ENY/ACRL Conference.     

利用Java和XML实现"在线教学"实验平台

介绍Java技术和利用Java和xml组合编程所能带来的优点，并阐述它在“在线教学”实验平台中的具体应用。     

Building a Usable and Accessible Semantic Web Interaction Platform

Semantic Web applications take off is being slower than expected, at least with respect to “real-world” applications and users. One of the main reasons for this lack of adoption is that most Semantic Web user interfaces are still immature from the usability and accessibility points of view. This is due to the novelty of these technologies, but this also motivates the exploration of alternative interaction paradigms, different from the “traditional” Web or Desktop applications ones. Our proposal is realized in the Rhizomer platform, which explores the possibilities of the object–action interaction paradigm at the Web scale. This paradigm is well suited for heterogeneous resource spaces such as those common in the Semantic Web. Resources, described by metadata, correspond to the objects in the paradigm. Semantic web services, which are dynamically associated to these objects, correspond to the actions. The platform is being put into practice in the context of a research project in order to build an open application for media distribution based on Semantic Web technologies. Moreover, its usability and accessibility have been evaluated in this real setting and compared to similar systems.     

Accessible Ubiquitous Services for Supporting Daily Activities: A Case Study with Young Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

ABSTRACT

Ubiquitous environments have considerable potential to provide services supporting daily activities (using public transportation to and from workplace, using ATM machines, selecting and purchasing goods in ticketing or vending machines, etc.) in order to assist people with disabilities. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous service providers generally supply generic user interfaces which are not usually accessible for all potential end users. In this article, a case study to verify the adequacy of the user interfaces automatically generated by the Egoki system for two supporting ubiquitous services adapted to young adults with moderate intellectual disabilities was presented. The task completion times and the level of assistance required by participants when using the interfaces were analyzed. Participants were able to access services through a tablet and successfully complete the tasks, regardless of their level of expertise and familiarity with the service. Moreover, results indicate that their performance and confidence improved with practice, as they required fewer direct verbal and pointer cues to accomplish tasks. By applying observational methods during the experimental sessions, several potential improvements for the automated interface generation process were also detected.     

Engineering Accessible Web Applications. An Aspect-Oriented Approach

The development of accessible Web software is complicated for several reasons. Though some of them are technological, the majority are related with the need to compose different and, many times, unrelated design concerns which may be functional as in the case of most of the specific application’s requirements, or non-functional such as Accessibility itself. In this paper, we present a novel approach to conceive, design and develop Accessible Web applications in an aspect-oriented manner. In order to reach our goal, we provide some modeling techniques that we specifically developed for handling the non-functional, generic and crosscutting characteristics of the Accessibility concerns. Specifically, we have enriched User Interaction Diagrams with integration points, which are used to reason and document Accessibility for activity modeling during user interface design. Then by instantiating a Softgoal Interdependency Graph template with association tables, we work on an abstract interface model (composed by ontology widgets) to obtain a concrete and accessible interface model for the Web application being developed. We use a real application example to illustrate our ideas and point out the advantages of a clear separation of concerns throughout the development life-cycle.     

Increasing Workplace Independence for People with Cognitive Disabilities by Leveraging Distributed Cognition among Caregivers and Clients

This paper describes a group configuration that is currently employed to support the everyday living and working activities of people with cognitive disabilities. A client receiving face-to-face, often one-to-one, assistance from a dedicated human job coach is characteristic of this traditional configuration. We compare it with other group configurations that are used in cooperative and distributed work practices and propose an alternative configuration titled active distributed support system. In so doing, we highlight requirements that are unique to task support for people with cognitive disabilities. In particular, we assert that the knowledge of how to perform such activities is shared not only among people, but also between people and artifacts. There is a great potential for innovative uses of ubiquitous and mobile technologies to support these activities. A survey of technologies that have been developed to provide these individuals with greater levels of independence is then presented. These endeavors often attempt to replace human job coaches with computational cognitive aids. We discuss some limitations of such approaches and present a model and prototype that extends the computational job coach by incorporating human caregivers in a distributed one-to-many support system.     

一种分布式路由器抽象平台

提出了一种对分布式路由器结构的抽象平台,定义了虚拟网络接口、虚拟转发引擎、虚拟内部连接等虚拟设备,为上层软件提供一个统一的虚拟设备环境。使用这种抽象平台时,路由器原有的各种应用（包括路由协议、管理软件、转发引擎等）均可无更改平滑移植,最大程度上满足分布式结构下的开放性和扩展性。同时,该抽象平台还在很大程度上支持集群工作能力。     

分布式环境软件开发平台

对一般的软件开发人员编写分布式并行计算程序是比较艰难的。它要求设计者对任务的分解、分配及子任务间的交互等问题有更高的技术。本文给出了分布式环境并行计算程序开发平台的一种新构架,研制了一个网络环境的可视化并行程序设计平台。用户只须将并行问题可视化地以图形方式描述出来,任务的调度、任务间通信都由系统自动完成
成,因而大大地方便了用户进行并行程序设计。     

A Nonformal Interactive Therapeutic Multisensory Environment for People With Cerebral Palsy

A new multisensory system that aims at fostering the interaction of people with cerebral palsy is presented. This article describes the strategies and technologies used to provide people who have moderate to severe cerebral palsy with playful and fun activities designed according to their abilities. These activities are based on interactive systems that use computer vision and generate graphics and sounds in real time. The well-being that is achieved through the use of these activities is the result of gaining a significant degree of autonomy by the users. The presented system was first developed in the Cerebral Palsy Centre of Tarragona, Spain. Its motivation came from the low rate of users able to interact with computers. Although several assistive technology gadgets and special software applications (e.g., cause–effect and educational activities, simple navigation environments, etc.) were used, most users simply did not understand the interaction mechanisms. It was thought that a highly interactive activity (reinforced with sounds and images closely related with gestures) would be more accessible to most users in spite of their sensory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Tests with impaired users show that the proposal promotes participation, engagement, and play. In this article, the experimental methodology, the used and developed tools, and the results that were obtained are explained.     

基于J2EE的LBS服务器平台设计

本文在详细分析J2EE多层分布式结构之优点的基础上，结合分析移动位置服务系统的特殊要求，提出基于J2EE EJB技术构建移动位置服务服务器的设计思路，并针对应用服务器设计和数据服务器设计的关键技术做了详细分析，给出解决办法。文章最后给出了一种服务器具体实现方案。     

Guidelines for Creating Accessible Library Web Pages

ABSTRACT

Library Web developers can improve their Web pages and work towards accessibility by all user groups. This article describes some general accessibility guidelines to follow when creating Web pages. It discusses the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), called the Web Accessibility Initiatives (WAI). This article focuses attention on the accessibility of Web pages to users with visual impairments, auditory impairments, and mobility impairments. Accessibility guidelines for these user groups are suggested. Another important aspect of creating accessible Web pages is to test the pages during and after development. Online products that test accessibility are discussed as well as additional test methods, such as user input.     

Random Accessible Hierarchical Mesh Compression for Interactive Visualization

This paper presents a novel algorithm for hierarchical random accessible mesh decompression. Our approach progressively decompresses the requested parts of a mesh without decoding less interesting parts. Previous approaches divided a mesh into independently compressed charts and a base coarse mesh. We propose a novel hierarchical representation of the mesh. We build this representation by using a boundary-based approach to recursively split the mesh in two parts, under the constraint that any of the two resulting submeshes should be reconstructible independently.
In addition to this decomposition technique, we introduce the concepts of opposite vertex and context dependant numbering . This enables us to achieve seemingly better compression ratios than previous work on quad and higher degree polygonal meshes. Our coder uses about 3 bits per polygon for connectivity and 14 bits per vertex for geometry using 12 bits quantification.     

关于国内可公开访问网页数量的一种估计

可公开访问网页是由Web上的静态网页和无需额外输入即可访问的动态网页两部分组成。基于CNNIC关于网络信息数量资源的调查报告与北大天网实际搜集所获得的数据,根据Web发展变化的数学模型,该文对过去和未来国内可公开访问网页的数量进行了一种估计。     

Extra-Ordinary Human–Machine Interaction: What can be Learned from People with Disabilities?

When specifying, designing and implementing technology for work, it is very important to consider the whole of the potential user group, and not to forget that this might include people with disabilities. Obvious reasons for this are demography, disabled people forming a significant and growing proportion of the workforce, and legal obligations caused by equal opportunities legislation. There are more subtle reasons, however, which link so-called ‘disabled people’ with the rest of the population. The paper notes that most people have some disabilities, sometimes temporarily due to accident, or permanently due to ageing and other processes. In addition it notes that even otherwise fully functioning people can be seriously handicapped by hostile environments, and a parallel is drawn between the human interface needs of disabled people operating in ordinary situations and able-bodied people operating in high workload and stress situations. The paper concludes by suggesting a research agenda for the field on the basis of these considerations.     

Design of a Mobile Social Community Platform for Older Chinese People in Urban Areas

The increasing proportion of the older population and changes in the Chinese family structure make older Chinese people more vulnerable to social isolation than they previously were. This article illustrates the development of a mobile social application for older people in urban areas in China. The application facilitates the organization of leisure‐time activities between older people with similar interests living in adjacent areas. Preliminary social requirements of older people were collected through user interviews, and the major functions and features for the application were determined from the results of the interviews. Usability considerations for user interface design for older people were collected from literature and were integrated in the prototype of the mobile application. Older people's acceptance of the application was assessed by demonstrating the prototype to and interviewing 100 older people living in Beijing. The results highlight the critical impact of perceived benefits or relevancy on older people's adoption of new technology. Implications for the mobile social application for older Chinese people are discussed.     

An Advanced Trusted Platform for mobile phone devices

The intent of trusted computing is to ensure that an information-processing device functions according to expectations. If the device has been designed to offer security protections, then it is reasonable for these expectations to include some assurance that the device will protect the security interests of the device's stakeholders. In the case of mobile phones, there are many different stakeholders that have diverse security interests. This paper discusses stakeholder interests in a mobile phone, describes how those interests are addressed using the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) specified by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), and explains how improved protections are provided using the Freescale Advanced Trusted Platform (ATP).     

分布式文件系统在线性能测试平台研究与实现

目前由于缺乏针对分布式文件系统的性能测试工具,在很多研究中依然照搬传统的文件系统性能测试工具和方法,很难满足分布式文件系统性能测试的需求(如避免缓存的影响、多客户端并发测试等)。因此,我们研发了一个分布式文件系统在线性能测试平台,此平台通过提供多种大数据量测试负载,有效地避免了系统缓存和系统老化对测试结果的影响,同时支持在线对分布式文件系统执行性能测试,支持多客户端并发测试,并能够对测试结果进行可视化展示和分析。此外,平台也提供了很好的扩展性,满足多种测试需求。