The 15th Web for All Conference Lyon, France 2018

IBM People with Disabilities Award

This is the 3^rd year that W4A is able to grant qualifying students the IBM People with Disabilities Award. This year, we received some strong applications, but only two winners will receive the award, which will reimburse all their attendance costs. The awardees will be introduced to the community of W4A researchers and practitioners who are working to make Web, Mobile, and Wearable devices accessible for all. We thank IBM for their generous sponsorship and hope to see more submissions in 2018.

The W4A Organizing Committee is happy to introduce the 2018 winners:

Shantanu D. Ladkat, Savitribai Phule University, Pune, India

Davide Mulfari, University of Pisa, Italy

Chieko Asakawa and Yevgen Borodin

April 2018

Intuit Best Paper Awards

The W4A Organizing Committee are proud to announce the awards for Best Technical Paper and Best Communication Paper are sponsored in 2018 by Intuit. We are grateful for their continued support.

Best Technical Paper Nominees:

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  Home Automation for an Independent Living: Investigating Needs of the Visually Impaired People: Barbara Leporini, Marina Buzzi, ISTI-CNR.
  
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  Detecting Autism Based on Eye-Tracking Data from Web Searching Tasks: Victoria Yaneva, Le An Ha, Ruslan Mitkov, University of Wolverhampton; Sukru Eraslan, Yeliz Yesilada, Middle East Technical University.
  
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  Exploring Aural Navigation by Screenless Access: Mikaylah Gross, Joe Dara, Christopher Meyer, Davide Bolchini, IU School of Informatics and Computing – Indianapolis.
  

Best Communication Paper Nominees:

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  Improving Usability of Math Editors: Neil Soiffer, Talking Cat Software.
  
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  Artificial Intelligence for Web Accessibility – Conformance Evaluation as a Way Forward?: Shadi Abou-Zahra, Judy Brewer, Michael Cooper, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
  
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  Semantic Content Analysis Supporting Web Accessibility Evaluation: Carlos Duarte, Ines Matos, Luis Carrico, LASIGE, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa.
  

Program

Keynote

Making “Making” Accessible

Amy Hurst, Associate Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County




Assistive Technologies empower individuals to accomplish tasks they might not be able to do otherwise. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Assistive Technologies end up unused or abandoned, leaving people with solutions that are inappropriate for their needs. My students and I are working to help more people gain access to the Assistive Technology they need by empowering non-engineers to “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) and create, modify, or build their own solutions. In this talk I will discuss our work understanding the potential and reality of using 3D printing to create DIY Assistive Technologies from both the clinician and end-user perspective. I will also discuss several of the challenges non-engineers face learning these technologies and our work to overcome them.

Session 1: Internet of Things

How Context and User Behavior Affect Indoor Navigation Assistance for Blind People

Joao Guerreiro, Eshed Ohn-Bar, Dragan Ahmetovic, Chris Kitanai, Chieko Asakawa, Carnegie Mellon University

Recent techniques for indoor localization are now able to support practical, accurate turn-by-turn navigation for people with visual impairments (PVI). Understanding user behavior as it relates to situational contexts can be used to improve the ability of the interface to adapt to problematic scenarios, and consequently reduce navigation errors. This work performs a fine-grained analysis of user behaviour during indoor assisted navigation, outlining different scenarios where user behaviour (either with a white-cane or a guide-dog) is likely to cause navigation errors. The scenarios include certain instructions (e.g., slight turns, approaching turns), cases of error recovery, and the surrounding environment (e.g., open spaces and landmarks). We discuss findings regarding user behavior and lessons learned from a real-world user study to guide future directions for the development of assistive navigation interfaces that consider the users' behaviour and coping mechanisms.

Notes:

Internet of Things (IoT) as Assistive Technology: Potential Applications in Tertiary Education

Scott Hollier, Edith Cowan University; Shadi Abou-Zahra, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The recent popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the consumer space and Web of Things (WoT) work by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has led to a Curtin University research project that has investigated the use of IoT by people with disabilities in the education space. Potential education-related IoT solutions raised in the research include the delivery of smartboard materials directly to the student to ensure compatibility with assistive technologies, the use of consumer-based IoT to provide captions and the monitoring of lecturer and student engagement in real-time to improve education delivery. While the use of IoT in these contexts may be considered an assistive technology in its own right, issues of privacy, security, and interoperability need to be addressed. As such, it is imperative that the W3C WoT work in this area continues to provide guidance and further academic research is needed.

Notes: