Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The goal of the MOST project is to develop a novel, inexpensive, easy-to-use digital talking device for blind and visually impaired users based on off-the-shelf handheld computers (Personal Digital Assistant). The device provides a novel user interface based on a simple menu system and Braille text input, and a range of application programs to support everyday tasks, including clock, notepad, phone and short messaging, email. This paper reports on the usability evaluation of the device, its strategy and implementation, and shows that our approach results in an easy to learn and use system with input speed comparable to sighted users.

We describe the goals, issues and constraints found creating audio-haptic applications oriented to people with visual disabilities. Using audio-haptic games as a measuring tool, we have found unexpected features in the user’s audio perception. Our goal is to define a model of perception and usability guidelines for developers creating immersive accessible applications. This paper presents initial findings, related to user precision over 3D audio and haptic effects. The game and environment use a multichannel speaker array taking advantage of Microsoft DirectX multichannel audio support (5.1) as the audio processing abstraction layer. The environment allows simple haptic assistance through force feedback joystick devices, also supported by Microsoft DirectX as the force feedback and user input abstraction layer.

Visually impaired people have limited access to printed media: books, magazines, newspapers etc. Only one to five percentage of printed books and magazines are published in the form accessible for this group of readers. Nowadays printed materials are prepared on computers in digital form. These documents can be accessible for all readers. Paper describes a computer system enabling interactive online presentation of multimedia Daisy books over the Internet. The system cooperates with the Internet multimedia library computer management system. The main goal of both projects and their execution, is easy and effective access to information for visually impaired people. We focus on new feature of our DaisyReader which allows interactive voice reading of math formulas.

As society becomes increasingly dependent on literacy, the problems of textual information inaccessible to print-impaired people are likely to grow. This paper discusses the problems of decentralised, user-driven Braille translation and proposes an alternative: The centralised, email-based RoboBraille service capable of translating to and from contracted Braille, including any pre- or post processing steps required to convert between document types, formats and character sets. As such, the RoboBraille service attempts to solve a universal problem as it makes textual information accessible to people who would otherwise find it inaccessible due to disability or reading difficulties. Originally a Danish service, a pan-European consortium is currently validating RoboBraille in six European countries with financial support from the European Commission.

Much numerical information is visualized in graphs. However, this is a medium that is problematic for people with visual impairments. We have developed a system called iGraph which provides short verbal descriptions of the information usually depicted in graphs. This system was used as a preliminary solution that was validated through a process of User Needs Analysis (UNA). This process provided some basic data on the needs of people with visual impairments in terms of the components and the language to be used for graph comprehension and also validated our initial approach. The UNA provided important directions for the further development of iGraph particularly in terms of interactive querying of graphs.

Additional adequate graphical contents are very effective in various communications. The same is clearly true of information given by a visually impaired person. The main purpose of our system is to create graphical contents without any visual information. The targets are fundamental mathematical graphic objects. Making use of a tactile pin display and ultrasonic pen, users input graphical object hearing several audio assists.

Inaccuracies in the reporting of finger positions from electronic tactile displays can result in errors in the audio presentation of multi-modal applications. In this paper, we conduct an experiment to examine the accuracy of one such device. Given the results of this experiment, we present a collection of recommendations for the spacing of objects within a tactile scene.

Today studying mathematics and science for blind students is still an open problem both in Secondary school and at the University in so far as it concerns the effectiveness of teaching approaches, methods and devices (1) Many national and international projects have given a contribution to bring different technical solutions. But, at least in Italy, these solutions are not effective yet in the schools, probably because human, social and organizational aspects have not really been taken into adequate consideration. Here a new method will be proposed, a method which will put forward new technical solutions for editing scientific books and documents but essentially will give adequate answers to operational and practical problems.

We recently developed a math document editor with a function of speech output. Using this software named “ChattyInfty,” visually disabled students not only can read scientific documents including math expressions with speech output but also can author or edit them. One of remarkable features of ChattyInfty is its availability of recognition results by our math OCR system. By combining them, we construct a system to enable students with visual disabilities to access scientific documents in print for themselves. Furthermore, using tactile graphic tools, we realize an environment in which they can grasp and correct recognition errors without any aid of sighted people.

Access to mathematical content for blind and vision impaired people continues to be a problem. The inherently visual nature of this form of presentation is neither easily or readily accessible using the linear representations in common usage by this community.

This paper proposes methodology for depicting mathematics in a non-visual manner. It will be shown how, through the prosodic component found in spoken language, the structure of mathematical formulae may be disambiguated. We will also discuss lexical cues which can be added to the utterance to further reduce the ambiguity which can be very evident in this form of material.