Challenges and opportunities to improve the accessibility of YouTube for people with visual impairments as content creators

Universal Access in the Information Society - This position paper proposes technology opportunities for supporting people with visual impairments (PVI) as content creators, rather than just content...     

The Internet for educating individuals with social impairments

Abstract Social impairments materialise in a number of forms, from developmental disabilities such as autistic spectrum disorder, to psychiatric conditions such as social phobia. The individuals diagnosed with these problems find it difficult to deal with social situations through either the inability to perform in these situations or the fear of not being able to do so. The study investigated the social and practical implications of using Mobile Internet technology to deliver information relating to a social situation in real-time to participants with Autistic Spectrum Disorders ( n  =  10 ) and General Social Phobia ( n  =  3 ) diagnosed using DSM-IV. The participants used the agent on their mobile phone to convert phrases they found offensive or confusing into more concise and understandable definitions. Analysing their attitudes revealed that the technology enables socially impaired individuals to learn the meaning of emotions and understand more about how they communicate with their peers. However, the study concludes that governmental organisations, education providers and society as a whole need to adopt a cohesive approach to communication to ensure socially impaired individuals are fully included in society     

Attitudes of individuals with visual impairments towards distance education

The aims of this work were to examine the attitudes of individuals with visual impairments towards distance education (DE) and the relationships between attitudes and participants’ personal characteristics. Forty-one adults with visual impairments, who ranged in age from 20 to 40, participated in this study. A self-constructed questionnaire measuring the attitudes towards DE was employed. The participants’ answers revealed slightly positive emotions towards DE according to the affective component of attitudes, slightly positive attitudes when DE is compared with traditional education, and positive attitudes as far as the cognitive component of attitudes and participants’ intention to participate in a DE programme were concerned. The elder participants seem to have more positive attitudes towards DE compared with younger participants. Furthermore, the greater the level of education, the more positive were the attitudes towards DE, and the greater the frequency of computer usage, the more positive were the attitudes towards DE. The analysis of the data collected revealed that the sample of individuals with visual impairments had slightly positive attitudes towards DE. Age, level of education, and frequency of computer usage were found to be significant predictors of the participants’ attitudes.     

Enabling people with sensory impairments to participate effectively in research

The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss some of the effects that a person’s sensory impairment has on the ways in which they can participate in research. Sensory impairment will result in a person receiving less sensory information. This reduction may be uniform across a particular type of sensory information (like having the volume on the radio turned down or watching things through a haze) or, more likely, it will have different effects on different parts of the available information. The result of this information loss will not be that the person has a partial experience of a situation compared to a person without a sensory impairment or with a different sensory impairment. Instead, they will have a full experience based on a different combination of information, and it is likely that more of the information that they are using will come from their memory or previous experience. This paper describes ways of working that acknowledge the different experiences of people with a hearing or visual impairment with respect to both the object of the research and the research process. It describes how to design questionnaire, use interviews and focus groups and carry out evaluations of objects and situations in a way that acknowledges the effect of the different amounts and types of information available have on the experiences of people with sensory impairments.     

An observation of adults with visual impairments carrying out copy-typing tasks

Increasing numbers of people with a visual impairment are using computers to access information. This study examines the behaviours of 10 visually impaired adults carrying out a copy-typing task. Momentary time sampling methods were used to examine how the participants conducted the task. Four different aspects were observed: functions performed, line of vision, technology used, and posture. Postures were further analysed using RULA (McAtamney and Corlett 1993). Recommendations were presented to each participant and their feedback was obtained. All participants exhibited examples of inefficient working habits and potentially problematic posture. Feedback from them indicated that most participants were not aware of some of the issues raised and the extent to which their work was affected. Although participants had unique individual profiles, general issues were apparent across the group. These included poor touch-typing, rare use of short cut keys, and a lack of adjustment of equipment, furniture, and copy material. While many of these behaviours are common in normally sighted computer users, the presence of a visual impairment means that compensatory strategies often result in greater negative impact upon postures adopted. Key recommendations included more proactive and creative strategies for improving skills and work techniques and adjusting positions of equipment and furniture. Importantly these must be individualised because of the idiosyncratic nature of the visual impairment. Participants positively acknowledged the recommendations provided. Nevertheless there is responsibility at the level of the institution to provide necessary equipment and training to enable the individual to affect change.     

An observation of adults with visual impairments carrying out copy-typing tasks

Increasing numbers of people with a visual impairment are using computers to access information. This study examines the behaviours of 10 visually impaired adults carrying out a copy-typing task. Momentary time sampling methods were used to examine how the participants conducted the task. Four different aspects were observed: functions performed, line of vision, technology used, and posture. Postures were further analysed using RULA (McAtamney and Corlett 1993). Recommendations were presented to each participant and their feedback was obtained. All participants exhibited examples of inefficient working habits and potentially problematic posture. Feedback from them indicated that most participants were not aware of some of the issues raised and the extent to which their work was affected. Although participants had unique individual profiles, general issues were apparent across the group. These included poor touch-typing, rare use of short cut keys, and a lack of adjustment of equipment, furniture, and copy material. While many of these behaviours are common in normally sighted computer users, the presence of a visual impairment means that compensatory strategies often result in greater negative impact upon postures adopted. Key recommendations included more proactive and creative strategies for improving skills and work techniques and adjusting positions of equipment and furniture. Importantly these must be individualised because of the idiosyncratic nature of the visual impairment. Participants positively acknowledged the recommendations provided. Nevertheless there is responsibility at the level of the institution to provide necessary equipment and training to enable the individual to affect change.     

Designing location-based learning experiences for people with intellectual disabilities and additional sensory impairments

The research reported here is part of a larger project which seeks to combine serious games (or games-based learning) with location-based services to help people with intellectual disabilities and additional sensory impairments to develop work based skills. Specifically this paper reports on where these approaches are combined to scaffold the learning of new routes and ultimately independent travel to new work and educational opportunities. A phased development methodology is applied in a user sensitive manner, to ensure that user feedback drives the ongoing development process. Methods to structure this include group feedback on conceptual storyboards, expert review of prototypes using usability heuristics relating to the main system goals, and finally co-discovery methods with student pairs exploring all three modes of the system in real world contexts. Aspects of developmental and cognitive psychological theories are also reviewed and it is suggested that combining games-based learning approaches with location-based services is an appropriate combination of technologies for an application specifically designed to scaffold route learning for this target audience.     

Accessible haptic user interface design approach for users with visual impairments

With the number of people with visual impairments (e.g., low vision and blind) continuing to increase, vision loss has become one of the most challenging disabilities. Today, haptic technology, using an alternative sense to vision, is deemed an important component for effectively accessing information systems. The most appropriately designed assistive technology is critical for those with visual impairments to adopt assistive technology and to access information, which will facilitate their tasks in personal and professional life. However, most of the existing design approaches are inapplicable and inappropriate to such design contexts as users with visual impairments interacting with non-graphical user interfaces (i.e., haptic technology). To resolve such design challenges, the present study modified a participatory design approach (i.e., PICTIVE, Plastic Interface for Collaborative Technology Initiatives Video Exploration) to be applicable to haptic technologies, by considering the brain plasticity theory. The sense of touch is integrated into the design activity of PICTIVE. Participants with visual impairments were able to effectively engage in designing non-visual interfaces (e.g., haptic interfaces) through non-visual communication methods (e.g., touch modality).     

Postural and visual loads at VDT workplaces II. Lighting conditions and visual impairments

Four groups of office tasks were studied: data entry terminals, conversational terminals, traditional office work and typing. Eye impairments were observed in every group of office employees but the impairments were more frequent in VDT operators. The impairments persisted during leisure time. Vision screening tests showed the same incidence of functional eye impairments in office tasks with and without VDTs. High luminance contrasts between screen, source document and the surrounding space were associated with an increase in eye troubles. Increased oscillating luminance of screen characters was associated with lower visual acuity, and with a higher incidence of subjective and objective symptoms of eye irritation including more frequent use of eye drops. The degree of luminance oscillation of characters must be considered as an important factor in eye strain at VDT workplaces. Employees with eye defects (glasses, lowered visual acuity, uncorrected eye defects) had in general a somewhat higher incidence of eye complaints     

Foundation for improved interaction by individuals with visual impairments through multimodal feedback

Through an investigation of how the performance of people who have normal visual capabilities is affected by unimodal, bimodal, and trimodal feedback, this research establishes a foundation for presenting effective feedback to enhance the performance of individuals who have visual impairments. Interfaces that employ multiple feedback modalities, such as auditory, haptic, and visual, can enhance user performance for individuals with barriers limiting one or more channels of perception, such as a visual impairment. Results obtained demonstrate the effects of different feedback combinations on mental workload, accuracy, and performance time. Future, similar studies focused on participants with visual impairments will be grounded in this work. Published online: 6 November 2002     

Accessible presentation of information for people with visual disabilities

Personal computers, palm top computers, media players and cell phones provide instant access to information from around the world. There are a wide variety of options available to make that information available to people with visual disabilities, so many that choosing one for use in any given context can often feel daunting to someone new to the field of accessibility. This paper reviews tools and techniques for the presentation of textual, graphic, mathematic and web documents through audio and haptic modalities to people with visual disabilities.     

Making the Internet accessible for people with cognitive and communication Impairments

This paper provides an overview of the work of the European Union (EU) World Wide Augmentative and Alternative Communication (WWAAC) project, which aims to make the electronic highway more accessible to people with cognitive and communication impairments, in particular those persons using symbols instead of text to communicate. Many of these users will also be users of alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) devices. The appropriateness of guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are discussed, with the finding that few specific guidelines are available to make Web sites truly accessible and usable for these user groups. We propose that additional guidelines are required in order to facilitate access to Web pages for AAC users. Requirements capture and preliminary evaluation activities within the project have led to the development of draft guidelines that will be refined and validated as the project reaches its final evaluation phase. These draft guidelines are discussed along with other developments needed in this area.     

Adaptive sliding menubars make existing software more accessible to people with severe motion impairments

The graphical user interfaces of popular software are often inaccessible to people with severe motion impairments, who cannot use the traditional keyboard and mouse, and require an alternative input device. Reaching for buttons and selecting menu items, in particular, can be difficult for nonverbal individuals with quadriplegia, who control the mousepointer with head motion via a mouse-replacement system. This paper proposes interaction techniques that can be used with mouse-replacement systems and enable the creation of accessible graphical user interfaces. To illustrate these techniques, the paper presents an image editing application, named Camera Canvas, that uses a sliding toolbar as its universal menu controller. The parameters of the toolbar automatically adapt to the movement abilities of the specific user. Individuals with and without disabilities and of a variety of ages were observed using Camera Canvas. It was found that the developed techniques worked across many different movement abilities and experience levels. Then, it was investigated how such techniques could be used to “retrofit” existing Windows applications with new graphical user interfaces. A tool called Menu Controller was created that can automatically re-render the menus of some existing applications into adaptive sliding toolbars. Menu Controller enables users of mouse-replacement systems to select menu entries that were otherwise inaccessible to them.     

Internet visual media processing: a survey with graphics and vision applications

In recent years, the computer graphics and computer vision communities have devoted significant attention to research based on Internet visual media resources. The huge number of images and videos continually being uploaded by millions of people have stimulated a variety of visual media creation and editing applications, while also posing serious challenges of retrieval, organization, and utilization. This article surveys recent research as regards processing of large collections of images and video, including work on analysis, manipulation, and synthesis. It discusses the problems involved, and suggests possible future directions in this emerging research area.     

HuMan: an accessible,polymorphic and personalized CAPTCHA interface with preemption feature tailored for persons with visual impairments

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is one of the major security components in the provision of fair web access by differentiating human access from malicious, automated access by bots. Though the CAPTCHA strengthens the security aspect of web access, their accessibility to people with visual impairments has inherent unresolved challenges. This paper presents an accessible CAPTCHA model termed HuMan (human or machine?) which aims at providing an audio-based CAPTCHA for people with visual impairments. The HuMan model incorporates personalization into the CAPTCHA access. The polymorphic nature of resolving the HuMan CAPTCHA facilitates kaleidoscopic behavior in CAPTCHA rendering. The presence of ambient noise and requirement of common sense knowledge to answer the questions presented by HuMan CAPTCHA model makes it friendlier toward human users. The HuMan model has a CAPTCHA preemption feature which enables the user to stop the challenge audio as soon as the answer is identified. The results of experiments conducted on the prototype implementation of HuMan model project the mean success rate of 92.46 % and system usability scale score of 82.44 for persons with visual impairments and 82.63 for sighted users.     

Wearable computers as a virtual environment interface for people with visual impairment

People who are totally blind or who have vevere visual impairments (e.g. less than 20/200 acuity, central macular scotomas, or advanced diabetic retinopathy) see the environment in a fashion that may be completely foreign to those who operate in a very visual fashion. For this population, the visual complexity of the environment is not a concern. What is of concern are salient features found within the environment that relate to their ability to navigate successfully in, and/or interact with, the environment as needed. Toward the purpose of representing these salient features in comprehensive form, investigators at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Research and Development Center are employing wearable computer technology to develop a virtual environment interface. The long-range goal is to create a simplistic virtual representation of the environment that includes only features related to the current navigational task and/or interactive needs of the person. In a completed study, the use of digital infrared transmitters as beacons representing salient features of the environment was explored. The purpose of a current study now in progress is to evaluate and compare various user interface structures that were suggested by subjects during the preliminary study. The problem of interest in the current study is street-crossing; however, the results of this research should be applicable to many other problems, including identifying and locating building entrances, and identifying, locating and interacting with electronic devices such as information kiosks, automated teller machines, and self-serve point-of-sale terminals. The long-range result desired is a wearable computer with which one can easily identify and interact with a wide variety of devices in the environment via one familiar, easy-to-use interface.     

Moving people tracking with detection by latent semantic analysis for visual surveillance applications

The latent semantic analysis (LSA) has been widely used in the fields of computer vision and pattern recognition. Most of the existing works based on LSA focus on behavior recognition and motion classification. In the applications of visual surveillance, accurate tracking of the moving people in surveillance scenes, is regarded as one of the preliminary requirement for other tasks such as object recognition or segmentation. However, accurate tracking is extremely hard under challenging surveillance scenes where similarity among multiple objects or occlusion among multiple objects occurs. Usual temporal Markov chain based tracking algorithms suffer from the ‘tracking error accumulation problem’. The accumulated errors can finally make the tracking to drift from the target. To handle the problem of tracking drift, some authors have proposed the idea of using detection along with tracking as an effective solution. However, many of the critical issues still remain unsettled in these detection based tracking algorithms. In this paper, we propose a novel moving people tracking with detection based on (probabilistic) LSA. By employing a novel ‘twin-pipeline’ training framework to find the latent semantic topics of ‘moving people’, the proposed detection can effectively detect the interest points on moving people in different indoor and outdoor environments with camera motion. Since the detected interest points on different body parts can be used to locate the position of moving people more accurately, by combining the detection with incremental subspace learning based tracking, the proposed algorithms resolves the problem of tracking drift during each target appearance update process. In addition, due to the time independent processing mechanism of detection, the proposed method is also able to handle the error accumulation problem. The detection can calibrate the tracking errors during updating of each state of the tracking algorithm. Extensive, experiments on various surveillance environments using different benchmark datasets have proved the accuracy and robustness of the proposed tracking algorithm. Further, the experimental comparison results clearly show that the proposed tracking algorithm outperforms the well known tracking algorithms such as ISL, AMS and WSL algorithms. Furthermore, the speed performance of the proposed method is also satisfactory for realistic surveillance applications.     

The impact of computer use at home on students’ Internet skills

This article reports on a study into the impact of students’ use of the Internet and the computer at home on digital skills they need for school. The study was conducted in the lower grades of Dutch secondary education (students aged 13–15). More than 2500 students, distributed over 116 classes in 68 schools, participated in the study. Internet and computer skills were measured by means of an objective test. Multilevel analysis was used to examine the impact of home access and use on Internet and computer skills taking into account the effect of students’ backgrounds. Students in pre-university education, third-graders and non-minority students appeared to have better Internet skills and a more advantageous home computer use than students in pre-vocational education, first-graders and minority students, respectively. The Internet skills of girls were hardly less developed than those of boys. Home access to e-mail and the extent to which students use the home computer for surfing, e-mailing, chatting and text processing were found to be substantially related to Internet and computer skills (taking into account the effect of several background characteristics of the students).     

ViSP for visual servoing: a generic software platform with a wide class of robot control skills

ViSP (Visual Servoing Platform), a fully functional modular architecture that allows fast development of visual servoing applications, is described. The platform takes the form of a library which can be divided in three main modules: control processes, canonical vision-based tasks that contain the most classical linkages, and real-time tracking. ViSP software environment features independence with respect to the hardware, simplicity, extendibility, and portability. ViSP also features a large library of elementary tasks with various visual features that can be combined together, an image processing library that allows the tracking of visual cues at video rate, a simulator, an interface with various classical framegrabbers, a virtual 6-DOF robot that allows the simulation of visual servoing experiments, etc. The platform is implemented in C++ under Linux.