Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper presents the results of a European Specific Support Action whose objective was to explore the possibility to certify the accessibility of Internet services and the possible implications for a eAccessibility Quality Mark. The project initiated and conducted a CEN workshop which produced a CEN Workshop Agreemeent (CWA) identifying three possible schemes for Web accessibility certification, namely inspection according to the ISO/IEC 17020, certification according to the EN 45011 and Supplier’s Declaration of Conformity according to the ISO/IEC 17050. The CEN workshop also recommended the creation of an Institute whose objective would be to harmonise the interpretation and implementation of the W3C/WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in Europe. The Institute would create, promote and maintain a Quality Mark.

Over the last years a well elaborated body of knowledge in “Web Accessibility” has become available. Awareness and in accordance legal directives today ask for application of this knowledge. The BFWD post graduate course, a comprehensive university course on accessible web design, is a pro active reaction to this an increasing demand.

Various European Union initiatives have focused on the dissemination and harmonization of approaches for assessing the conformity of web accessibility. This paper suggests a scenario-based decision support for the implementation of a web accessibility quality mark in Austria on the basis of a framework proposed in a CEN Workshop Agreement. The paper analyzes different implementation alternatives in order to facilitate and accelerate the realisation of such approaches at the national level and to encourage other European countries to adopt selected elements for their own initiation.

Highly interactive interfaces, where complex information is presented and managed, need further research. Existing guidelines, techniques and recommendations focus on the user accessing, reading and understanding content and services, but there is the need to go beyond, and convert users into authors, editors or managers of products and services provided by ICT. DAIA project () has contributed to the understanding of human behavior in this context and to a better approach of guidelines to improve this kind of interfaces. Users with disabilities have broadly contributed to the success of this project through a web questionnaire and a software prototype testing.

Barrier-free tourism as an enormous market potential affects the whole tourism chain covering all tourism objects from arrival, accommodations, restaurants, activities on holiday resorts up to the departure process. In order to offer barrier-free tourism, two kinds of accessibility have to be considered. Tourism accessibility extends common tourism object especially with information concerning the requirements of disabled people. Web accessibility is responsible for the presentation of tourism accessibility in a transparent and accessible way. This paper introduces an as extension for existing tourism information systems which supports both providers of tourism objects in adding extra accessibility information to tourism objects as well as tourists with disabilities in retrieving required accessibility information.

More than 30% of the population are experiencing daily problems to access public infrastructures. Despite this, there is still no effective and widely adopted method to measure accessibility, inform users and incite managers to improve their infrastructure.

The Passe-Partout Index was designed which such goals in mind. Starting from a thorough accessibility requirements analysis accounting for obstacles related to various impairments, a complete set of measurable criteria and evaluation rules were developed. Those enable an precise, relevant, informative and objective assessment of the accessibility of public infrastructures.

Currently about 10-20% of the population are affected by a disability from temporary or permanent nature. For these people accessibility is a requirement and a necessity. The implementation of accessibility concerns all areas of he society, including tourism objects and tourism services. Besides being a social demand, accessibility has an economic dimension and is an indicator for quality, a trademark and a competitive advantage. So far, the tourism industry has hardly recognized the economic dimension of accessibility. Often the lack of not supporting and promoting accessibility is a combination of missing knowledge about requirements and needs of people with disabilities and the missing of standardized methods to evaluate accessibility, categorize and map it to standardized accessibility labels.

The growing interest on teaching accessibility and design for all requires good teaching material. While the research body is growing, emphasis for teaching materials is less developed. We identify a few criteria for teaching materials and identify their role in curriculum and course development.

The degree program for M.Sc. Multimedia Management includes teaching on basic aspects of usability and accessibility. Our approach is to introduce accessibility issues as an application of a more general learning objective. Learners experience accessibility issues indirectly when working on a project involving multiple students. Two case studies are presented: a) developing an accessible Flash-based web interface and b) the heuristic evaluation of the usability of a novel software package. 17 students participated in a questionnaire allowing to assess the effectiveness of our approach.

Research results concerning Assistive Technologies show a growing demand of experts on AT deriving from an increase in use of Assistive Technologies which can be seen as an indirect result of worldwide population development trends. According to these recent changes efforts on inclusion of people with disabilities and older adults is of prime importance. Due to these facts the Institute Integriert Studieren started developing a new university course on Assistive Technologies. The characteristics are the composition of the course and its interdisciplinary content. Graduates will be awarded with an academic title. The following article describes the idea of the training, its contents, its realisation and its expected impacts.