Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Accessible design for World Wide Web content has been a significant focus for many years. Guidelines, such as the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), give designers a list of checkpoints to be used to help ensure that web content will be accessible to users with deficits. Of these deficits, however, far less attention has been paid to designing for users with cognitive deficits. In order to address this, we present an orthogonal set of cognitive ability dimensions based in modern neuroscience, the SCEMA model, which designers may use to characterize an individual user and help better inform accessible design.

Twelve users with a range of ages between 20 and 70, were assessed for their cognitive capabilities and degree of experience with microwave cooker features and then trialled with two microwaves, one with a dials interface and the other with a buttons interface. The users were provided with a set of tasks to complete with each microwave. It was hypothesised that all users would perform better with the dials model but that the difference in performance between dials and buttons would become more pronounced as age increased. This was found to be the case in comparing the performance from the trials, with the strongest correlation occurring between the users age and the time taken to complete the tasks.

Providing large bandwidth of resistant force to trainees is an important requirement of a knee joint rehabilitation robot. Although large resistant force can be achieved by using big motor, difficulty will arise to achieve small resistant force because of the influence of friction, gravity and inertia of the heavy robot. This paper presents a force bandwidth control method based on admittance-control paradigm, which combines theoretical model under active mode and experimental data under passive mode to compensate the influence of the friction, gravity and inertia force upon the torque sensor signal. This method avoids the necessity to establish complex mathematic model of the friction forces. Furthermore, a digital filter method is proposed to reduce computational error of angular acceleration resulted from differentiating encoder values. An optimal filtering parameter range is chosen by Matlab simulation. Experiment results based on a physical prototype prove the enlarged resistant force bandwidth after force compensation.

The objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between user’s knowledge of operation procedures for some electric appliances and their cognitive styles. First, questionnaires were given to the participants. The participants answered below questions about cognitive styles. Second, to investigate the participants’ knowledge of operating procedures of the electric appliances, participants were asked to write free text description on how to use an appliance without actually operating it. We found certain kinds of knowledge about operation procedures were linked to user’s cognitive style.

In keeping with a user capability and product demand approach to product assessment, this paper examines the cognitive demands placed on users when interacting with consumer products. The eventual aim is to develop a set of cognitive capability scales that could be used in the analytical evaluation of product interfaces. We explore the dimensions of cognitive capability relevant to product interaction and describe how these may be used to evaluate a given design. Planned work addresses quantitative measurement of cognitive capabilities and predictive validation of capability scales.

Our research indicates that acquisition of phonetic skills in voiced and voiceless speech sounds was improved by using Computer Aided Articulatory Tutor (CAAT). The interface of CAAT displays the place of articulation and relevant image objects for articulatory training simultaneously. The place of articulation was presented by using three dimensional articulatory tutor. Suitable computer graphics and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques were used to develop inner articulatory movements of the animated tutor. Ten hearing impaired children between the ages 4 and 7 were selected and trained for 30 hours across four weeks on 50 words under 10 lessons. The words were selected from the categories of voiced and voiceless stops namely Bilabial, Dental, Alveolar, Retroflex and Velar. The articulatory performance of HI children was investigated to find out their speech intelligibility.

Supportive technology is expected to facilitate life at home for people with cognitive impairment. To study the usability of a number of support-installations in ordinary homes a three-year project was launched in Sweden. Three sites, each planned to comprise some twenty participants about sixty years of age and upwards, suffering either from a cognitive impairment such as an acquired brain injury or other forms of cognitive impairments, have been engaged. One goal was to acquire knowledge and experience about technical support, their appropriateness and adaptability to the users and to the organisation supporting them. Another goal was to develop and test supportive technology and a third goal was to explore ways to the market for Design for All products which are necessary for some but useful to most of tenants. The housing companies played an important role for the development of the project and the way to the market, as many technical aids basically are parts of the physical building structure.

This paper proposed that the viewing conditions for printed matters and projected images are quite different for three major reasons. Therefore, the brightness perception phenomenon and brightness perception theory generated from the printed matters should be revised and modified when applied to the projected images. The purposes of the present research were to examine the effects of brightness illusions while viewing the projected images, to understand the brightness perception process in projection environment, and thus to generate design implications for better usage of the projectors.

Standard QWERTY keyboards are considered as a major source of reluctance towards computer usage by Japanese elderly, because of their limited experience with Western typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in typing Japanese characters with them. This paper discusses the difficulty in typing Japanese characters using QWERTY keyboards, and then introduces two alternative approaches. The first approach makes use of touchscreen and software keyboards. Touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate their resistance. As the second approach, a trial to develop a mechanical keyboard that is able to change its key layout dynamically is introduced. The proposed keyboard is also capable to change colors of keys, to flash keys to attract users’ attention, and to hide unnecessary keys to avoid errors.

This paper described an assessment system which embedded expert system based on theidea of neural network. Authors developed a computerized assessment tool for mouse operating proficiency and applied into clinical service. The result indicated that the objective tool had great contribution for selecting suitable pointing device for the client. However, clinical also found that comparing the effectiveness between different device and operation environment by some parameters was labor consuming. Expert system may be an available solution for clinical professional to select suitable pointing and selecting device more efficiently. Therefore, this study aimed to develop an embedding expert system into a computerized assessment tool for mouse operating proficiency.