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The article examines issues of web accessibility ecosystems for people with special needs. Methods, models, accessibility standards, and technologies related to the structure, design, and functionality of the web accessibility ecosystem are studied. The stages of developing an accessibility ecosystem are explored. The accessibility of the design, functionalities, structure, and content of a particular ecosystem are presented. Several themes for the design of the system with an emphasis on its accessibility for blind users are explored and analyzed. UX/UI design and the ontological model of accessibility, used in the implementation of the model of the ecosystem and its elements, are studied. A web accessibility ecosystem model has been developed, compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and based on semantic technologies. Other qualities of this model are easy access to information resources on the topic of accessibility, convenience for users with different needs, and the possibility of expansion and enrichment in the future.

Digital technologies occupy an important place in today’s developing world. They are also strongly related to new trends in educational technologies. In this context, the digital accessibility of this new environment for people with various special needs is of particular concern. A novel tool for assessment of the technological ecosystem, designed to provide digital accessibility to people with special needs, is described in the paper. The overall structure and the initial test of the system are discussed in the paper. The conceptual framework of the ecosystem and its ontological model are described. Special attention is paid to the accessibility of digital learning and e-learning for people with special needs from a robotic perspective.

Digital accessibility to educational and informational resources for people with disabilities is an important part of contemporary life. Semantic organization of knowledge in the domain of accessibility provides a convenient way of extracting and organizing data. The paper focuses on semantic design techniques and related taxonomy models that could be used in the digitization process of resources intended of people with disabilities usage.

In the paper are discussed security problems related to online digital libraries and portals. Special attention is placed to one the methods to distinguish usage of online digital libraries from non-human users. The approaches known under the abbreviation CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are considered in the context of their accessibility to the users with different types of disabilities.

The paper presents an interdisciplinary research project "Digital Accessibility for People with Special Needs: Methodology, Conceptual Models and Innovative Ecosystems". The research is focused on research and creation of innovative methodology for building accessible environments and systems and improved performance for people with disabilities. One of the main tasks of the project is to create optimal and applicable conceptual models for digital accessibility.

In the article, a comparative analysis is performed regarding the accuracy parameter in determining the degree of self-similarity of fractal processes between the following methods: Variance-Time plot, Rescaled Range (R/S), Wavelet-based, Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA). To evaluate the methods, fractal processes based of Fractional Gaussian Noise were simulated and the dependence between the length of the simulated process and the degree of self-similarity was investigated by calculating the Hurst exponent (H > 0.5). It was found that the Wavelet-based, DFA and MFDFA methods, with a process length greater than 214 points, have a relative error of the Hurst exponent is less than 1%. A methodology for the Wavelet-based method related to determining the size of the scale and the wavelet algorithm was proposed, and it was investigated in terms of the exact determination of the Hurst exponent of two algorithms: Haar and Daubechies with different number of coefficients and different values of the scale. Based on the analysis, it was determined that the Daubechies algorithm with 10 coefficients and scale (i = 2, j = 10) has a relative error of less than 0.5%. The three most accurate methods are applied to the study of real cardiac signals of two groups of people: healthy and unhealthy (arrhythmia) subjects. The results of the statistical analysis, using the t-test, show that the proposed methods can distinguish the two studied groups and can be used for diagnostic purposes.

In the paper we discuss the problem of building a web site that is accessible to the people with different disabilities. We show some basic guidelines that should be followed by the web site developers in order to complete this task. Also, some special web content accessibility testing tools are presented. Finally, we make special attention to accessibility of some of the most popular digital cultural heritage web archives.

Problems of search and enumeration of binary and ternary equidistant codes are considered in the paper. We investigate some combinatorial algorithms and develop specialized computer packages to find non-equivalent optimal binary and ternary equidistant codes for 3 ≤ d ≤ n ≤ 9.

This paper describes the application of cryptography and steganography in the protection of cardiac databases. The original cardiac data studied were transformed using a Daubechies wavelet transform. The next step is to conduct Energy Packing Efficiency-based compression. A watermark is added to the received data to protect against unauthorized access, before hybrid cryptography is performed using a suitably selected encryption algorithm. The presented and analyzed algorithm includes protection using public and symmetric key cryptography. The proposed software algorithm is performed on real electrocardiographic, photoplethysmographic, and Holter cardio data. We have evaluated the effectiveness of the applied approach and concluded that a sufficient level of protection of the studied data has been achieved, with methods of authentication and accuracy applied to the users.

In the paper we present services provided by some of the popular cultural heritage application programming interfaces (API). We show how they could be used from third applications software applications. Finally, we develop tools that use this APIs in order to search and visualize data.

This research presents some of the problems in developing digital cultural resources for educational application of serious games. A model of wide access to context-based knowledge is considered. Some elements of gaming have been explored when creating learning modules and tools for contextual use of digital cultural resources and making them accessible to people with visual disabilities. The modeling of an accessible game module is presented by applying selected accessibility criteria to people with special educational needs.

The report examines the issue of serious educational games in the field of military and historical heritage. The world-wide research experience in the field of serious educational games has been studied. The uses of games in the learning process and the impact effects of information and communication based teaching methods on learners have been examined. The factors and the contribution of the games to improve the interest and the activity of the students and to get better results from the training are analyzed. The report presents a specific model of a serious game in the field of military-historical heritage.

The aim of our research is to trace and passport the Russian bells in Bulgaria on the way of the Russian troops from the Danube to Shipka, given in gratitude for the help provided during the Russian-Turkish War (1877-1878). We base our research on previous similar projects that we have successfully completed. In this paper we formulate stages of our project and present current situation in their completeness.

The present study examines the interactivity, categories and levels of interactivity and its various forms in the digital environment. The issue of the characteristics of interactive learning communication has been investigated. The study outlines the specificities of ensuring the integration and interactive representation of cultural heritage artifacts in the North+ region. The problems of people with visual difficulties in accessing interactive systems and digital cultural heritage are being addressed.

The paper presents an online platform with textual data, images, audio and video recordings related to bell knowledge. It was designed to provide digital data for representation of acquired knowledge. The platform includes data repository of bell knowledge objects and a new search engine.

The article is a summary of a multi-year research into certification of bells of 16 th - early 20 th centuries collected as a result of liturgical instruments study of 287 bell towers, churches and museums. Analysis of archives from Belarus contributed to the research resurrecting knowledge about lost bell heritage. This is also the first attempt to discuss the establishment of digital Belarusian Historic Bells Archive and introduction of campan handling basic trainings into educational programs of religious educational establishments.

This paper presents digital knowledge including context-based annotations of objects in the field of cultural heritage. Some major problems and solutions of digitalization of items, their processing, storing and organizing them in a repository are highlighting. We show how graph databases could be used as data management platform.

We present new approaches used in development of the demo version of a WEB based client/server system that contains an archival fund with folklore materials of the Folklore Institute at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS). Some new methods for image and text securing to embed watermarks in system data are presented. A digital watermark is a visible or perfectly invisible, identification code that is permanently embedded in the data and remains present within the data after any decryption process. We have also developed improved tools and algorithms for analyzing of the database too.

The result of the project is an interactive map of cultural objects of Veliko Tarnovo Municipality with the region supporting the candidacy of the city for European Capital of Culture 2019. This system is integrated into the eCity platform of the project for e-Municipality Veliko Tarnovo.

This paper presents the project „North +“ for documenting, preserving and providing public access to the cultural heritage in libraries, museums, archives and galleries in North and Central Bulgaria.

The problems of protection of semantic organized data and encryption of RDF graph are investigated. Technologies used in the construction of a semantic network are presented. XML-encryption and standardization of semantically structured content for XML signature are described. We perform encryption of XML data associated with the semantic representation of data for a kind of percussion instruments.

The main contribution of this project is the study of collections of valuable documents related to the image of India in Bulgaria. Digital repositories of selected samples are constructed using modern information technologies. The results are presented in a virtual exhibition ‘The Image of India in Bulgaria: from the late 19 th to the late 20 th century’.

Protection and preservation of our cultural and literary historical and documentary heritage are particularly relevant today. The paper presents methods for creating digital resources of historical artifacts related to the Balkan war. Special attention is paid to the process of 3D scanning of objects. The methodology will be used in building an electronic archive and Virtual Museum.

This article briefly reviews the software developments for digital presentation and preservation of Bulgarian folklore treasure created within the project “Knowledge Technologies for Creation of Digital Presentation and Significant Repositories of Folklore Heritage” by teams of the Institute of Math ematics and Informatics.

We describe an ontological representation of data in an archive containing detailed description of church bells. As an object of cultural heritage the bell has general properties such as geometric dimensions, weight, sound of each of the bells, the pitch of the tone as well as acoustical diagrams obtained using contemporary equipment. We use Protégé platform in order to define basic o ntological objects and relations between them.

This paper presents a research of linguistic structure of Bulgarian bells knowledge. The idea of building semantic structure of Bulgarian bells appeared during the “Multimedia fund – BellKnow” project. In this project was collected a lots of data about bells, their structure, history, technical data, etc. This is the first attempt for computation linguistic explain of bell knowledge and deliver a semantic representation of that knowledge. Based on this research some linguistic components, aiming to realize different types of analysis of text objects are implemented in term dictionaries. Thus, we lay the foundation of the linguistic analysis services in these digital dictionaries aiding the research of kinds, number and frequency of the lexical units that constitute various bell objects.

The key to prosperity in today's world is access to digital content and skills to create new content. Investigations of folklore artifacts is the topic of this article, presenting research related to the national program „K nowledge Technologies for Creation of Digital Presentation and Significant Repositories of Folklore Heritage” (FolkKnow). FolkKnow aims to build a digital multimedia archive "Bulgarian Folklore Heritage” (BFH) and virtual information portal with folk medi a library of digitized multimedia objects from a selected collection of the fund of Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum (IEFSEM) of the Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS). The realization of the project FolkKnow gives opportunity for wide social applications of the multimedia collections, for the purposes of Interactive distance learning/self-learning, research activities in the field of Bulgarian traditional culture and for the cultural and ethno-tourism. We study, analyze and implement techniques and methods for digitization of multimedia objects and their annotation. In the paper are discussed specifics approaches used to building and protect a digital archive with multimedia content. Tasks can be systematized in the following guidelines:  Digitization of the selected samples  Analysis of the objects in order to determine the metadata of selected artifacts from selected collections and problem areas  Digital multimedia archive  Socially-oriented applications and virtual exhibitions artery  Frequency dictionary tool for texts with folklore themes  A method of modern technologies of protecting intellectual property and copyrights on digital content developed for use in digital exposures

We investigate digitalization and security of the Bulgarian and Indian cultural artifacts in multimedia archive. In the paper we describe project implementation and methods for intellectual property protection that are result of bilateral cultural and scientific cooperation between research-workers in India and Bulgaria.

Modern technologies have changed the way of presenting information in archives. This makes it possible to introduce new services, which was unimaginable a few years ago. Digitalization, security and virtual presentation of objects in the sphere of motoring by application of technologies, based on knowledge about how to create digital resources is the theme of this project. The aim of AutoKnow project is to carry out a research and create a multimedia digital archive AutoKnow and Experimental Virtual Motor Laboratory (EVML) with Motor Library (ML) from digital multi-media patterns from a selected group of objects in the sphere of automobile technology, presented by NMU. This makes it possible to widely apply multi-media collections in automobile engineering, teaching, research work in that sphere and serve the interests of a large number of auto-amateurs as well in Bulgaria. The research and development of АutoKnow is in the following mutually related fields: - Creation and annotation of collections of objects in the sphere of automobiles; - Creation, analysis and security of a digital archive AutoKnow; - Design and creation of Digital Motor Library; - Socially-oriented applications in education, scientific studies and Experimental Virtual Motor Laboratory; - Informational System for teaching and testing of knowledge in the sphere of automobiles MindCheck.

The aim was to develop an archive containing detailed description of church bells. As an object of cultural heritage the bell has general properties such as geometric dimensions, weight, sound of each of the bells, the pitch of the tone as well as acoustical diagrams obtained using contemporary equipment. The audio, photo and video archive is developed by using advanced technologies for analysis, reservation and data protection.