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An assistive software application has been created that translates math statements encoded as MathML into Nemeth Braille Code (NBC). This translation is conducted in two phases, the translation of the MathML elements into NBC, then the implementation of rules specific to Nemeth Braille that are irrelevant to MathML. All MathML elements holding semantically relevant information are translated by this program, including the nesting of elements to any level. Some of the syntactical rules inherent to NBC such as the use of the numeric indicator; additional space characters; and some contractions have also been implemented; other rules remain to be incorporated. The NBC can be exported in three ways (1) directly to a refreshable Braille device via a serial connection in real time; (2) saved as a text file then downloaded into a Braille device; and (3) save as a text file then embossed by a third party application. This application allows a person with no Braille experience to enter a math equation into any equation editor that can save that statement in the MathML format, and then convert that statement into Nemeth Braille Code for perusal by the visually impaired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will present an approach to design custom user interfaces in order to tailor the human-machine-interaction to individual user skills and preferences. These so called input profiles play a crucial role in the HeadControl+ framework [2]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 Accessibility Add-on Box 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. Keywords:Tourism information systems (TIS), accessibility, elderly/disabled people, barrier-free tourism, eTourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a system developed for monitoring, assisting and educating people with diabetes, named eDiab, is described. A central node (PDA or mobile phone) is used at the patient's side for the transmission of medical information, health advices, alarms, reminders, etc. The software is adapted to blind users by using a screen reader called Mobile Speak Pocket/Phone. The glucose sensor is connected to the central node through wireless links (Zigbee/Bluetooth) and the communication between the central node and the server is established with a GPRS/GSM connection. Finally, a subsystem for health education (which sends medical information and advice like treatment reminder), still under development, is briefly described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Programming skills are strongly emphasized in computer science. Programming languages are constructed based on sighted people as end-users. We have designed Audio Programming Language for blind learners based on audio interfaces to support novice blind learners to develop and exercise problem solving skills. APL was designed with blind learners from the beginning to construct programs and solve problems with increasingly complexity. Audio Programming Language was usability tested during and after implementation. Blind learners used, wrote programs, and helped to make improvements to this programming language. Testing results evidence that APL mapped the mental models of blind learners and helped to motivate them to write programs and thus entering to the programming field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational software has been criticized for not using explicit models to generalize and replicate good practices. Actually almost every educational program has a model, but most of them remain implicit. In this paper we propose a methodology for developing educational software for children with visual disabilities. Multimedia software for these children has some particularities reflected on our model with emphasis on process modelling including learner evaluation and feedback. The model emerges from research on developing educational software for children with visual disabilities and studies concerning the design of educational software for sighted learners. The model was validated by special education teachers and software designers trying the model with five software products based on model heuristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no doubt among the members of the CSCW community that awareness is a key issue in the design of successful collaborative software. In many systems awareness mechanisms have been implemented through displaying graphic information over the system's interface. However, this strategy does not apply when the end users of the system are blind people. In this work we report the problems we encountered when implementing a collaborative game for supporting the learning of music and sound by blind people when trying to develop effective awareness mechanisms. The preliminary results have helped us to be "aware" about some characteristics awareness mechanisms should have for blind people which are not as prominent and problematic for sighted people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Information Society context entails new risks of social exclusion due to the digital exclusion even when it generates new possibilities for inclusion thanks to accessible Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and universal design [15]. In this context, we see that e-learning provides a powerful tool towards social inclusion. Yet, we have seen that compliance with accessibility and e-learning standards together with the usage of adequate devices does not guarantee a satisfactory experience for those with a disability [9]. As a result, our project specifically tackles the design of educational technical applications specifically developed for the visually impaired, following a user-centered design perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current discussion about the inclusion of people with disabilities into an open labour market is characterised by dominant economic aspects. The unemployment situation of people with disabilities - irrespective of their intellectual level - varies in the different partner countries. The transnational EU LdV Programme IDOL (Inclusion of Disabled in Open Labour Market) aims to open sensibilities and understanding concerning the situation of people with disabilities especially with visual impairment. Its focus is to develop and to implement an IT and psychological training programme for this target group in the different partner countries and in future in all EU countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate computer vision techniques designed to aid blind or severely visually impaired wheelchair users. These techniques will be used to sense important features in nearby terrain from images collected by cameras mounted rigidly to the wheelchair. They will assist in the detection of hazards such as obstacles and drop-offs ahead of or alongside the chair, as well as detecting veer, finding curb cuts, finding a clear path, and maintaining a straight course. The resulting information is intended ultimately to be integrated with inputs from other sensors and communicated to the traveler using synthesized speech and/or audible tones and tactile cues, supplementing rather than replacing the user's existing cane, guide dog and wayfinding skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we designed and implemented the Blind Interactive Guide System (BIGS) for the blind person to use in the building. The BIGS uses RFID-based indoor positioning system to acquire the current location information of the user. The system consists of two parts: the smart floor and the portable terminal unit. The smart floor is a floor of a building where each tile of the floor has the passive RFID tag which transmits a unique ID number. The portable terminal unit is an embedded system equipped with an RFID reader as an input device so that the BIGS can get the current location information of the user. Using the preinstalled map of the target floor, the blind person can navigate to the final destination. The prototype is implemented and successfully operated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are developing a haptic-sensable system to help a blind person understand 3D shapes. As a first attempt we have implemented a pathway simulator which simulates a guiding of a pathway through haptic recognition. If we could indicate a pathway by haptic means to the user, i.e., if we simulate a feeling sensed in his palm and caused by a sliding long cane along the pathway, we believe it might give him an on-site feeling of the pathway. The purpose of this haptic pathway simulator is to help a user with his making a mental map of the pathway. So in the simulator we provide guiding information of the surroundings verbally as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For blind people it is very difficult to orientate in an urban area. Especially in an unknown environment they cannot move independently and need the help of a sighted person. With the development of a navigation system tailored to the special needs of blind people their mobility will increase. Blind people make high demands on all components of the navigation system. These requirements and possible solutions are worked out in a project with the collaboration of blind people. The development aims at a prototype of a navigation system which covers the overall spectrum of navigational components. This comprises an appropriate modeling of the navigational environment, fast routing algorithms generating lists of maneuvers, suitable positioning tools, reliable map matching algorithms for route checking, and finally, adequate guidance instructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes which auditory information affects the accuracy of "perception of crossability" for blind people. We have created a "virtual 3D acoustic environment" in which subjects feel a car passing in front of them to help them cross a road safely. The system is theoretically based on acoustic "time-to-contact" information, which is the most important concept in Ecological Psychology. Experimental results suggest that blind people tend to estimate the acoustic "time-to-contact" significantly longer than did sighted people. However, there are no significant differences between their sensitivities toward the speed of a moving sound source and the gain level of indirect sounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These days, we are able to get updated visual map freely from web sites. However, auditory maps for the visually impaired were not able to get easily. So, we studied about the system which enables us to generate and provide the auditory map via Internet. In this paper, we described about the production rules of our auditory map. And, we also described about the questionnaire and two experiments to determine the information which was put into the map. The results of experiment suggested that it is important whether the subjects were able to find the point for changing their directions to reach to the destination. And we applied that suggestion to our prototype system. And, finally, we also described about the problems of our system and our future works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are conducting a research project aimed at building an information secured environment for the visually impaired, especially in our campus, by combining data-carrier technology and networks. We use RFID tags and networks to keep the environmental information and to trace the changes in the environment. Our approach is the following: 1. In the mental map kept by the visually impaired person landmarks play a significant role, 2. We can turn any object (location) in the surroundings into a landmark by attaching an RFID tag to it, 3. The changes in the environment could be recognized, at least roughly, by recognizing changes of landmarks. We outline two methods to trace the changes of locations of RFID tags in the environment. The first one is to detect the moves of active RFID tags directly by analyzing the signals emitted from them. The second one is to trace the moves of passive RFID-tags by autonomous cruising robots. In both cases the changes are kept and updated in the network, and then conveyed to a visually impaired person according to his inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtually all modern scientific documents and textbooks use graphical illustrations and/or data displays. The ViewPlus IVEOTM technology, based on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is being developed to permit scientists to publish such graphics in a form fully usable by all people. The first release of IVEOTM was designed to make simple graphics accessible. Development of the second release, which includes improved text accessibility, linking, and interactivity, is described in this paper. We also discuss new research to expand accessibility of quantitative data in IVEOTM documents by using non-speech audio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed CyARM, a new kind of sensing device especially for visually impaired persons, to assist with mobility and detection of nearby objects. This user interface has unique characteristics of giving visually impaired persons the impression of an "imaginary arm" that extends to existing obstacles. CyARM is also a communication device for constructing "joint haptic attention" between impaired and unimpaired persons watching or feeling the same objects. In other words, this device offers a new methodology for judging the others' attentions or intentions without using their eye gaze direction. We verified the efficiency and ability of CyARM for environment recognition through experiments and discuss its possibility as a communication device for realizing joint haptic attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In [10], the problems faced by a blind or visually impaired student in doing Mathematics were analyzed, and the basic ideas of a MAWEN (Mathematical Working Environment), a software solution to help overcome these pressing difficulties, were described. The present paper builds upon the latter one, refining the ideas sketched there. After a thorough description of the state of the art, we present some general considerations on the problems met by a blind pupil when navigating within mathematical expressions and when doing calculations. Finally, through several case studies taken from mainstream school books, strategies to provide computer aided support to overcome the problems are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a web-based application that can use a speech dialog to write mathematical formulas. It is suitable also for visually impaired people. A voice control is simple and easy-to-use to reach accessibility goals. All functions are separated to relevant categories in menu and accessible via mouse as well as voice. Application is based on X+V [1] technology, java web-server and browser-side scripting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A system for the non-visual presentation of music notation is described. Derived from an earlier test-platform for the establishment of a set of principles for tactile communication, the Weasel notation system has been redesigned to facilitate both music-reading and composition tasks. Using tactile overlays on a touchpad, speech output/input and audio-playback, the system allows the reader to browse and interact with music notation in a way that is appropriate to the majority of common music reading and writing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an innovative method to improve access to mathematics by blind students in an educational setting. It was designed and developed in the European project LAMBDA (Linear Access to Mathematics for Braille Device and Audio-synthesis). This system is made up of two main functional components: the LAMBDA code and the mathematical editor. The research project is funded by the European Union in the framework of the IST Programme. It started in 2002 and will end in 2006. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tiger® Braille Formatter is a Windows® software application used to transform MS Office documents into a form suitable for embossing on ViewPlus® Tiger® technology embossers. Tiger® embossers have 20 dot per inch resolution and can emboss Braille and tactile graphics with variable height dots. The Formatter's primary purpose is to replace text with Braille and reformat the document to accommodate the considerably larger font size needed for Braille than normal text. A new release of the Formatter will include ability to transform math within MS Word documents to virtually any standard Braille code, to DotsPlus® Braille, or to custom Braille codes developed by individual users. The new open source Liblouis open source translator is used for both literary and math Braille translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key issues for integrating blind people into everyday life is education. For many educational subjects, however, there is no suitable assistive technology for blind people. One especially sensitive question facing blind people is learning mathematical language, apart from interacting with sighted teachers and students. This article presents a Spanish mathematical Braille to mathematical notation (MathML) conversion system to fill this gap. The translation system has been designed as a portable programming library, it solves ambiguities in Spanish mathematical Braille and it generates an intermediate code, which means that it can be easily adapted to other Braille languages or to other output formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the Canonical MathML, a tentative to unify MathML structures in a deterministic way in order to simplify transcription into Braille. All Mathematical structures that are necessary to perform a correct transcription into Mathematical Braille are recognised and rewritten in a unique way. Additionally Canonical MathML is valid MathML so it can be used with common tools which handle MathML. The Canonical MathML was successfully used to build several transcribers from MathML to Braille national codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-Order Wavefront Aberration Regularized Deconvolution (HOWARD) is a complete closed loop system developed for simulating human visual function with the primary goal of enhancing graphic computer displays for users that have refractive errors (resulting in difficulty interacting with visual displays). Visual function is a primary requirement for a human being to engage in computer usage efficiently. There are situations in which common forms of vision correction, such as contact lenses or glasses are not sufficient to provide the necessary compensation for some users to interact with graphic displays. This paper presents a model for the visual function of an imaging system, the implementation of an artificial eye with high-order wavefront aberrations, as well as a method for providing compensation of the artificial eye through a graphic display. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During business meetings, blind persons are not able to see the meaningful movements, and facial gestures of the participants. The formal meeting minutes and / or participants' conversation during the meeting normally lack this important feedback in order to determine who is in favor and who is against their proposed suggestions. This is crucial in business negotiations, where one has to convince people and do lobbying for winning the business case in upcoming meetings. Today the devices already exist for instantly and seamlessly capturing the snapshots everywhere. The proposition suggests data capture using a similar device called SenseCamhttp://research.microsoft.com/sendev/project_sensecam.aspx (5th Mar'06)., and then making these snapshots accessible for the benefit of the visually impaired users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fingertip guiding manipulator was developed as a haptic graphic display for blind people: it helps them create mental images of raised graphics and reliefs with stroke order. Through fingertip kinesthetic sense, while foreseeing the direction of the upcoming stroke by perceiving the knob's direction, users experience the uplifted and fallen strokes by perceiving their fingertips being pulled in the horizontal and vertical directions. Especially, the up-lifting function expands a representation capability from "single stroke graphics" to "multiple stroke graphics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research work has been ongoing in the field of dynamic display of tactile graphics for about forty years now. Compared to these numerous efforts, the number of systems actually in use in daily life has remained quite low. Today, there are still very few workplaces for the blind that include a dynamic tactile graphic display for providing information in graphic form, besides speech and Braille output systems. One application which does utilize such devices today, however, are math classes in schools. The following paper introduces a system that permits blind students to both create and explore mathematical graphics without assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research introduces a new automatic book reader for persons with blindness. The objective is to design a fully integrated system that is relatively fast and yet inexpensive and effective with a high reading accuracy. Through the use of two inexpensive light weight cameras, a book holder and using regular lighting of an office or a lab environment, this integrated system addresses through software development (a) the mathematical foundation of perspective distortion introduced by page curvature of an open book, and of barrel correction introduced by the inherent nature of image capture of the camera; (b) image preprocessing for finding lines and characters in a given image; and (c) the implementation of a fast neural network that takes as input the findings of step (b) and provides an audible read out through a speech synthesis engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-modal interfaces have been overflowing HCI research, incorporating the different senses, to provide adequate feedback or input for human-device interaction. The plethora of sensory combinations that this "creeping multimodalism" implies seems to be creating an oxymoron when it is used as a solution to help people with sensory problems and/or limitations dealing with interfaces. A better solution for those people would be to use systems where the traditional senses are obsolete as driving factors of the interaction, and they are only used as peripheral aids. The quest for such an amodal user experience is the object of our current research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various approaches to providing blind users with access to graphical user interfaces have been researched extensively in the past 15 years, and yet accessibility is still facing many obstacles. Graphical environments such as X Windows offer a high degree of freedom to both the developer and the user, complicating the accessibility problem even more. Existing technology is largely based on either a combination of graphical toolkit hooks, queries to the application and scripting, or model-driven user interface development. Both approaches have limitations that the proposed research addresses. This paper builds upon past and current research into accessibility, and promotes the use of abstract user interfaces to providing non-visual access to GUIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apple Human Interface Guidelines state that all applications should be accessible in order to provide the best user experience. Not all software vendors honor this statement and if an application does not support accessibility, people with disability or a special need can hardly use it or cannot use it at all. The purpose of this paper is to present a method that is capable of extending an already existing applications to support accessibility without the necessity to have access to the source code of the application. Paper proposes the use of Mach code injection techniques to load access enabling code into the context of the access enabled application and describes ways that are used to make the application accessible. There is also a case study of proposals offered by this paper on a portion of ProTools, a professional audio editing software that makes its mix table window accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A basic device combining a tactile display function and a touch position sensing function is proposed. The trial device consists of two major components, a tactile graphic display and a six-axis force/torque sensor. The force sensor measures six dynamic values generated by touch action on the display surface and a PC estimates the touch position based on the data. Since the defects of the first trial production are the weakness of the touch surface, an assembly error, and the measurement error of six-axis force/torque sensor, they are solved in the second trial production. The effect of a contact force on the estimated position are examined respectively by a vertical component and a horizontal component. It is shown from the above experimental results that the second trial production is practically sufficient estimated position accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are specific usability requirements that have to be met when developing dual interfaces, that is, graphical user interfaces that are adapted for blind users. These include task adequacy, dimensional trade-off, behavior equivalence, semantic loss avoidance and device independence. Consequently, the development of human-computer interfaces that are based on the task, domain, dialog, presentation, platform and user models has to be modified to take into account these requirements. This paper presents a framework that includes these requirements, allowing for the development of dual interfaces. The framework includes a set of guidelines for interface design, a toolkit for the low effort implementation of the user interface, and a programming library for the inclusion of speech and Braille in applications. A case study of the development of one such dual interface application is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the framework of the EU funded MOVEMENT Project a novel modular robotic system is being developed which aims at supporting the mobility of elderly citizens and persons with disabilities. This paper outlines some of the use cases which were developed for the envisaged system with focus on assisting severely disabled children and their carers in an institutional environment. Six scenarios were developed and commented by nine professional carers. The paper presents and discusses the qualitative and quantitative data gained from user panel discussion. It was found that the concept and the use cases of MOVEMENT system were very well rated regarding utility which confirms the work of the consortium up to now. The future development activities towards the roll out and evaluation of the first MOVEMENT prototype platform are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TriAccess is a web-based integrated reading supporting system. It provides physical, sensory, and cognitive supports for individual students based on their specific limitation or preference. The main idea is to provide multiple means of representation for learners to use various ways of acquiring information and knowledge. In addition, TriAccess also provides curriculum material developers and instructors convenient interface. Curriculum developers could upload text and cognitive supports to a simple web page. Then the webpage will generate automatically the material with needed supports. Instructors could set up the appropriate reading supports and manage the subjects for their responsible students on the web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a robot wheelchair based on a UPS (Ultrasound Positioning System) for the elderly or the disabled. The proposed robot wheelchair system, called Smart Wheelchair, is a standard powered wheelchair equipped with a laptop computer which supports a variety of GUIs (graphical user inter-faces) for the disabled and a micro-processor system equipped with UPS and external connectivity modules. The Smart Wheelchair incorporates state-of-the-art technology providing information about the location of the wheelchair based on its movement, which is beyond comparison to ordinary wheelchairs that have just one function: to move patients. The Smart Wheelchair can provide users with driving assistance and take over low-level navigation to allow the user to travel efficiently, safely and easily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being autonomous is one of the biggest challenges for many people with disabilities. While wheelchairs enable individuals to move freely, computers allow them to communicate, work, etc. by their own. In many cases both devices are controlled by two different interfaces of the same kind -two joysticks- and people need the assistance of a second person to switch between them. In this article we describe how any person that drives a wheelchair using a joystick, can control the pointer of any computer using the same driving joystick and without being helped by anyone. This device, NIBLUM, uses Bluetooth to get a wireless and transparent connection with the computer. As it is not necessary to modify the wheelchair, its manufacturer's guaranty is not voided, something essential to enable NIBLUM's real usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many motorically disabled people it is extremely difficult to operate keyboards. This is worst with tiny keyboards for example on mobile phones. This paper reports on research in multimodal user interfaces in order to assist disabled people to operate mobile phones or other equipment of daily life. Research in this area is gaining insight into problems and solutions which are generally applicable to assist the e-Society including elderly people or patients within a hospital. In the project described a so called MediaWheelie was developed, which is itself a common electric wheelchair which is extended by various multimedia devices. The focus was on usability and accessibility by following an end-user centered development. Keywords: Multimodal User Interfaces (MUI), Accessibility, Audicons, Usability, Tacticons, Auditive User Interfaces (AUI), 2D audio interfaces Introducing Statement: The old interface is about what developers like; the new interface is about what end-users really need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]