Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Children with autism exhibit a deficit in the comprehension and creation of narrative which impacts their social world. Our ongoing research agenda is to find ways of developing interactive learning environments which enhance the ability of individual children with autism to deal with narrative and thus the social world. The study reported here involved 12 children in a longitudinal study which focussed on identifying the particular which individual children found difficult. Our aim was to investigate each individual child’s understanding of ‘primitive’ components of narrative by means of an interactive software game called TouchStory which we developed for this purpose. Our results show, for most of the children, an ongoing and clear distinction in their understanding of the various narrative components, which relates their narrative comprehension as shown by a picture-story based narrative comprehension task.

A new audio testing system was developed for the newly blind and the learning disabled (dyslexia) who have difficulties with reading braille or print-format tests. The system enables them to take the National Center Test for University Admissions. The system was developed primarily on a tablet PC and presents not only speech sound but also document structures and figures from the test.

This paper reports results of a workshop on the design of electronic content for users with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), particularly Arabic dyslexics. First we shed some light on the nature of the Arabic language and discuss features that account for the unique needs of Arabic users with reading disorders. Then we present recommendations for accessible web design for Arabic content in light of existing guidelines on web design for dyslexic users.

In the present work an electronic panel designed for helping people with deficiencies in their understanding of the sense of time is showed. The device will be installed in special education classrooms. It tries to meet the following objectives: 1) To provide disabled people with temporal orientation and to help in learning the use of conventional clocks. 2) To make the concept of temporal grouping easier. The grouping mechanism reflects the ability to use the information about task or work at some point correlated with temporal indicators. 3) To make anticipation of the sequence of events possible for autistic children. The results of the device’s evaluation will allow authors to improve the design. Thus, it could be possible to extrapolate the use of the device on homes for disabled children or for elderly people with cognitive disabilities or even in the early stages of senile dementia.

In order to help people with communication problems, we present a platform for creating an augmentative and alternative communicator which runs on a Pocket PC. This communicator is based on an adaptive hypermedia, and may be configured and adapted for each individual person. It has been used with autistic children.

This paper reports on a proposition of a communication system for the blind and deaf-blind person. The system is composed of a terminal which is named “Doubled Braille display terminal for the Deaf-Blind person (DB4DB).” This terminal equipped with two-lined refreshable Braille displays and its software is based on an Internet chat program. The one line of the display is for confirmation of inputted sentence by the user and the other one is for reading all messages from members who take part in the chat space. The proposal system enables the blind and deaf-blind person to recognize message from another member at anytime, even he/she is inputting his/her message.

This paper describes an approach to the development of a voice-input voice-output communication aid (VIVOCA) for people with disordered or unintelligible speech, initially concentrating on people with moderate to severe dysarthria. The VIVOCA is intended to recognize and interpret an individual’s disordered speech and speak out an equivalent message in clear synthesized speech. User consultation suggests that such a device would be acceptable and would be useful in communication situations where speed and intelligibility are crucial. Speech recognition techniques will build on previously successful development of speech-based home control interfaces, and various methods for speech ‘translation’ are being evaluated.

Word prediction is a process that tries to guess the word a user is writing, at the same time he/she is doing it. It is mainly used to decrease the effort needed to write a text in applications devoted to people with disabilities. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the architecture of a multilingual word prediction system. The proposed architecture is modular and flexible, with common interfaces between the modules to allow the use of different prediction algorithms or even the prediction in different languages. The current system consists of a general lexicon for each language, the possibility to create and store personal lexicons, prediction methods based on words and POS (parts of speech) probabilistic grammars (when available). The system has been trained and evaluated for English, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The Spanish version is currently included in a technical aid widely used for people with communication disabilities.

An improved hands-free cursor control system suitable for use by individuals with spinal dysfunction or spinal cord injury is introduced. The system uses electromyogram (EMG) signals from facial muscles to produce five distinct cursor actions, namely: left, right, up, down and left-click. The new system is derived from a system previously created by our group. Object selection tests are performed on both systems. We use statistical analysis and Fitts’ law analysis of these tests to support our assertion that the new system provides enhanced performance over its predecessor.

This study designed an alternative Chinese keyboard layout for single-digit typists and evaluated the efficacy of this innovative layout design. The new eight row by five column keyboard layout was designed based on the principles of alternative keyboard design. Eight college students with proficient keyboarding were involved in this study. The repeated measurement experimental design was used to compare the speed and accuracy of keystroke among the four different keyboard patterns: QWERTY, Alternative, Revised-QWERTY, and Random-Alternative. The experimental results indicated that the subjects’ typing speed is fastest when utilizing the QWERTY layout (63.86 symbols/minute), followed by the Alternative (56.02 symbols/minute), Revised QWERTY (53.39 symbols/minute) and the Random-Alternative keyboard (49.94 symbols/minute). There is no significant difference among QWERTY, Alternative, Revised-QWERTY, and Random-Alternative layouts on the subjects’ typing accuracy. The possible causes of the unpredicted results and suggestions for further studies were discussed.