Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In this paper, we propose a communication support system in a classroom environment for the hearing impaired. This system detects the questioner, monitors his/her sign language with a video camera, and displays the video on a monitor at the front of the lecture room. Although other students cannot see the questioner’s sign language directly, they can see the questioner on the monitor. The system locates the questioner by detecting a raised hand. Once the system locates the questioner, it zooms in by controlling the direction and the zoom parameters of the camera and captures his/her image. We implemented the system and conducted an experiment during a real lecture. As a result, we achieved a raised hand extraction rate of 70%.

() is an online, browser-based tool that detects and corrects grammatical errors in written English composition. CC is aimed at deaf high school and college students who are fluent in a language such as American Sign Language but are not necessarily fluent in written English. The student types an English sentence into the browser window and receives an immediate analysis of grammatical errors and the corrections in standard English. The writing skills of deaf students are reported to be significantly poorer than those of their hearing peers, with attendant educational, professional, and income disparities with the hearing population. is conceived as a tool to present students to best advantage in an academic or professional setting. It acknowledges a social as well as educational need in that strong English composition skills are companions to independence, quality of life, and professional development.

Evaluation tests of sign communication with delayed video are reported and the effect of delay on the communication is discussed. The authors constructed the delayed sign dialogue experimental system. Five kinds of tasks were assigned to deaf subjects and videos of performing the task with various delay times were recorded. By analyzing the data, sign communications was found to be more tolerant of the delay time than voice communication.

Deaf and hard of hearing people can find it difficult to follow speech through hearing alone or to take notes when lip-reading or watching a sign-language interpreter. Notetakers summarise what is being said while qualified sign language interpreters with a good understanding of the relevant higher education subject content are in very scarce supply. Real time captioning/transcription is not normally available in UK higher education because of the shortage of real time stenographers. Lectures can be digitally recorded and replayed to provide multimedia revision material for students who attended the class and a substitute learning experience for students unable to attend. Automatic Speech Recognition can provide real time captioning directly from lecturers’ speech in classrooms but it is difficult to obtain accuracy comparable to stenography. This paper describes the development of a system that enables editors to correct errors in the captions as they are created by Automatic Speech Recognition.

Research on assistive technology for impaired and elderly is of great importance and it is intended to grow as society undergoes an age shift in its population. Research on assistive technology leads to the development of aids for individual users. These aids can be made more or less autonomous in order to fit an individuals specific needs. Aids can be designed not only to please a user from a technical perspective, but also from a psychological perspective. Based on knowledge about a user, from for example interviews, the design of an aid can be improved.

We present a semi-autonomous wheelchair which can be controlled using head-mounted sensors. Control is also possible by sensors placed on the hand of a user. The wheelchair hand control was tested by a user and the feedback from the user is included.

Through an interface suitable for specific users, the wheelchair can perform certain tasks autonomously. One such task is moving to a certain location pointed out by a user looking at a map of the surrounding which is presented on a computer screen.

With a user centered perspective based on interviews, direct contact, and knowledge about users, we show results for improving the design of assistive technology.

An e-healthcare service with ubiquitous sensor network (USN) for the disabled and elderly people was studied, considering the current technology as well as forthcoming technology and service in the ubiquitous computing and networking environment. We introduce the USN for e-healthcare service for the disabled and elderly in smart environments. Beyond e-healthcare service, as a primitive application for ubiquitous healthcare service using mobile Internet, we studied the real-time health-monitoring service for the disabled and elderly people with an inexpensive and effective Web server. We considered the health-monitoring sensors in the wrist phone, as a future product for ubiquitous healthcare service. For quality of service (QoS), we studied an evaluation scheme for U-healthcare service for the disabled in smart environments, considering diversity of technologies and services.

At the clinical department of Dermatology at the Medical University Hospital in Graz, approximately 30 outpatients consult the pigmented lesion clinic each day. During the visit, the patients are asked to complete a questionnaire, which is necessary, both for the clinical information system and for a scientific database for research in skin cancer. However, motorically and visually handicapped people usually have problems in completing paper based questionnaires. Consequently, a system was built, using a mobile touch computer with a specially designed interface, in order to assist these people and to allow full mobility within the clinical department, as well as the possibility of completing questionnaires, for example: during a cancer survey even in the open-air swimming resort. The system was developed by applying a User Centered Design including four levels: paper mock-up studies, low-fi prototypes, hi-fi prototypes and the system in real life. Scientifically this work provided insights into the technical possibilities, Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering, user acceptance in the clinical field and the possible optimization potential of clinical workflows.

This paper presents a location aware alarm system developed to give each person greater and safer mobility by automatically detecting risk situations. Location awareness has been possible thanks to an indoors positioning system (IPS) based on Bluetooth and ultrasounds, developed by the authors. The IPS is able to give accuracies of several centimetres, using a reduced infrastructure (6 fixed beacons every 100 m). The alarm system has been implemented in several stances of a special education school. Preliminary evaluation results show its reliability and usability.

Research on non-pharmacological therapies (cognitive rehabilitation) in old age has been very limited, and most has not considered the effect of intervention of this type over extended periods of time. The aim of Donostia Longitudinal Study was to investigate a new cognitive therapy in a randomized, placebo-controlled group of elderly people over 65 years of age without cognitive deterioration or expressed AAMI (Age Associated Memory Impairment) and patients with a Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The efficacy of this therapy was evaluated by means of post-hoc analysis of 390 people using biomedical, neuropsy-chological, affective, and personality assessments. In the GDS 1-2 grouping,scores for learning potential and different types of memory for the treatment group improved significantly relative to the untreated controls. While, subjects with a GDS 3-4 showed significantly better performance on Neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) scores in all domains (anxiety, depression, apathy, sleep disturbances). Finally subjects with a GDS 5-6, showed a maintenance of cognitive capacities. In the GDS 1-2 grouping, the most significant result found is that learning potential of trained people enhances within two years of intervention, this involves a successful ageing sign and plays a preventive role in dementia development. On the other hand, in the GDS 3-4 and GDS 5-6 grouping, the behavioral disturbances diminished within this intervention, so this type of training program could be beneficial on them.

The purposes of this study are to assess the aided effects of computer in cognitive and vocational rehabilitation of clients with psychiatric disabilities and to follow up their employment status. All participants from a community mental rehabilitation unit take a three-month computer skill training program. Participants complete computer key-in test and attention test at the beginning and at the end of the computer skill training program. The researcher assesses all participants’ behaviors in class by using observation in every session. After six months, ten participants are still employed and their works are related to computer skills. The significant cognitive improvements of these participants are attention focus ability, problem solving skills, and memory retention ability. In addition, participants completing computer training program can use learned computer skills to obtain more work opportunities. Therefore, applying computer skill training programs to psychiatric disabled clients can improve not only their cognitive abilities but also vocational skills.