Report of

2012 International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs

8-14 JULY 2012; LINZ, AUSTRIA

Prepared by: Lando CHEUNG & Davy CHAN Project Manager & IT Manager

Information Technology Resource Centre & SAHK 24 May 2013

(a) Introduction

ICCHP has been one of the first conferences bringing together individual researchers starting AT as "handicrafts". These pioneers had a clear vision for the potential of the upcoming ICT revolution for people with disabilities and an according enthusiasm to set up a new scientific discipline with close relations to end users and respecting the need for interdisciplinary discussions. This underlines the major role ICT also plays in this field which has grown and established itself as what is know today under keywords like Assistive Technologies eAccessibility eInclusion or, in a broader sense Design for All and Universal Design.

Detailed programme and schedule are available at Appendix 1.

The 2012 events had more than 400 international and 200 national visitors what underlines the role of ICCHP in this field. Around half of the presentations were Europe-based. The rest were US, Latin America. For Asia-Pacific region, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were active in presenting their researches in ICCHP.

This report encapsulated a few highlights of the programme and several

major insights to Hong Kong.

(b) Evaluation of the Event Programme

Computer helping people with special needs is a broad topic, ranging from the lowest level accessibility issues up to universal design and policy making level. The event was split into five different tracks which covered the following topics. Portable and Mobile Systems in Assistive Technology Human-Computer Interaction Document and Media Accessibility Virtual User Models for Designing and Using Inclusive Products Creative Design for Inclusion Policy and Service Provision Assistive Technology, HCI and Rehabilitation Smart and Assistive Environments: Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Text Entry for Accessible Computing Entertainment Software Accessibility ICT for Sign Language Users Inclusion by Accessible Social Media Computer-Assisted Augmentative and Alternative Communication Website Accessibility Metrics Web Accessibility in Advanced Technologies Universal Design for Learning

(c) Observation / Implications to Hong Kong / Recommendations

The development of assistive technologies in western countries and some advance Asian countries like Japan & Korea are more mature than Hong Kong. Most of the researches are leading by universities or sometimes corporate. It is rare to see NGO leading or involving in these projects. Here are a few interesting projects which Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure

The purpose of the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) is to ensure that everyone who faces accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, digital literacy, or aging, regardless of economic resources, can access and use the Internet and all its information, communities, and services for education, employment, daily living, civic participation, health, and safety. GPII would not create new access technologies, devices and services. It is a framework to personalize any mainstream product or service, using cloud technologies to activate and augment any natural (built-in) accessibility the product or service has, based on a profile of the user’s needs. When user logs into to any computer, mobile device, kiosk or even ATM, the system will automatically download the UI and AT tools which are preset or suitable for the user. The research and development of GPII is now supporting by European Commission and US Department of Education. A number of leading ICT manufactories like IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla and Serotek also put contributions to the project. The first working model will be available by 2015.

Portable and Mobile Systems in Assistive Technology Using Smartphone as an assistive device is becoming a mainstream development trend in ICCHP. Researchers and developers discover endless possibilities in using Smartphone. Most of them are using the built-in features like camera and GPS For instance, a few sign recognition tools are developing to read common icons (like toilet, emergency exit, escalator, etc.) through built-in camera, and then convert into voice signals. There is also pedestrian assistant tool which also uses camera to guide a blind people cross the road straight. However, the above prototypes are at experimental stages. The successful rates are still far from acceptable standard. For example, the mobile app distinguish man, women and disabled toilet only have a successful rate at 80%, which means two out of ten times will get into a wrong toilet! The most successful portable & mobile system is the Ways4all / NAVCOM. Ways4all is an indoor navigation system which uses passive RFID-tags & Smartphone helping blind persons to find the way in

shopping mall, station or university campus. This technology embeds RFID chipset in several hotspots within an indoor environment. When a Smartphone is approaching to probe for a RFID signal, it returns features of the landmark and converts to corresponding format on the Smartphone. With the aid of mobile app, user may preset the destination and the system will guide you to the destination step by step. The system has been using in a few railway stations in Austria. NAVCOM is a variant of Ways4all, but it is using in public transport vehicles. Rather than RFID, the project installs WLAN on every tram in Linz. The Wi-Fi broadcast information about the tram, the station and stops to persons with corresponding mobile app pre-installed. Hence, the user will be notified when it is time to get on/off the tram. Another area of Smartphone development is to re-design UI suitable for persons with visual impairment, physical impairment or elderly. The native iOS and Android UI have put accessibility into consideration with features like voice over and magnification. These features help a certain portion of blind and elderly users, but there are too many different special needs in different disability groups. In ICCHP 2012, several projects aim to develop system launchers and input methods for persons with various special needs. However, even Android is so called an open platform, developers face common restrictions at the level of operating system. For examples, a Third Party app cannot - Set the system date/time - Place emergency calls - Record phone calls - Mute the microphone or speaker during a call - Feed DTMF tones into the phone line - Set a bunch of user preference - Dismiss the battery saver and shutdown options dialogue - The behaviour of the keyguard, home button and power states vary

by head set model Research believes these obstacles slackened the development of accessible mobile device and the movement of social inclusion.

Media Accessibility In Europe, numerous studies show media accessibility is becoming an important indicator to digital inclusion. We are moving towards a world with a multiplicity of devices, as hardware and broadband costs are becoming affordable. New devices are social media driven. Messages and contents usually contain multi-type of media (e.g. images, voice, video, etc.), which bring another level of accessibility issue to the disabilities. The keynote presentation on Day 1 is a study on teaching computer to understand complex and subtle art of music performance. Hence, computer will be able to convert the feeling and emotion into digital signals. In coming years, it is expected to be further manipulated to

perceive by deaf person with sensory AT devices.

Asterics open source project Asterics (Assistive Technology Rapid Integration & Construction Set) is an open source project developed in Europe with funding support from 7th Framework Programme of the EU. It’s an innovative and advance assistive technology project. The key functions of this project are providing flexible and affordable software construction set for developing user driven assistive technology by non-technical end users. There are many build in emerging sensors like Brain-Computer Interfaces and computer vision with basic actuators available in this open source package. People with reduced motor capabilities will get a flexible and adaptable technology at hand which enables them to access the Human-Machine-Interfaces (HMI) at the standard desktop. The project is basically design for non-technical end users as it encapsulates most of the technical issues into simple drag and drop integrated development environments. It’s also highly scalable and customizable since it provides rich APIs for developers to further develop different input sensors and actuators. It revolutionizes the concept of assistive technology since most of the assistive technology focuses only on certain situation. Instead, Asterics focuses on enabling users to interact with a diverse and fast changing set of devices. Davy Chan has made use of this useful open source software to develop a head mouse input for one of the clients in his Association. The project will be continued for adopting the head mouse input to perform some environmental controls like TV and light controls in one of his service units. The user feedback is satisfactory and positive. Saved configuration can be flexibly loaded to adopt different needs of different clients. E.g. 2 clients may need two different head mouse sensitivity settings. As a summary, as Asterics is highly adoptable and usable and it’s free of charge. It’s highly recommended for NGOs and end users in Hong Kong. For details, please refer http://www.asterics.eu/index.php?id=2

WAI-ARIA landmark webapp sharing A cloud based document management solution provider called Foliocloud has shared some useful ideas and best practises on developing web application with WAI-ARIA landmark. WAI-ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite which defines a way to make web content and web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. Without WAI-ARIA, web applications may become inaccessible when assistive technology cannot determine the semantics behind portions of the document. WAI-ARIA divides the semantics into roles and states and properties supported by the roles. Basically, WAI-ARIA has a role to provide

informative description, hierarchical information and supported state information of the roles. This helps better understand and navigation for screen reader programs. A typical example is list as below: Without WAI-ARIA: <ul > <li ><span id="fileLabel">File</span> <ul > <li >New</li> <li >Open…</li> </ul> </li> </ul> The example above with WAI-ARIA is confusing for screen reader users since users may not be able to understand the html codes are logically representing a system menu in a web application. Screen reader can tell the users the page content only as html elements like <ul>, <li>, etc. It’s a big barrier for screen reader users to navigate the application effectively. So, after applying WAI-ARIA to the code, it makes big difference: <ul role="menubar"> <li role="menuitem" aria-haspopup="true" aria-labelledby="fileLabel"><span id="fileLabel">File</span> <ul role="menu"> <li role="menuitem">New</li> <li role="menuitem">Open…</li> </ul> </li> </ul> With WAI-ARIA landmark, users can logically understand the web application is providing a system menu in the user interface. Also, it provides state information for the users to understand current status of the control and what other possible actions are available for them to navigate. It’s very important to improve web application accessibility. As web 2.0 has been broadly used for web applications development in Hong Kong also, this sharing section could provide useful and inspiring information for web application developers in Hong Hong on web application accessibility.

(d) Evaluation of the Event Organization

This is the 13th ICCHP. The event normally holds every two years either in Linz or Paris. It is a successful conference that congregates researchers

and developers around the world. Of course, the event is well organised with a lot of considerations on the facilities enabling the disabilities, from accessible accommodations and transportation, to special need assistance at venue, including printed materials in Braille, induction loop and sign language interpretation in major lectures.

The pre-conference organised on 9-10 July were closed for internal discussions. We registered for two sessions. On the first day, it was a full-room cloud4all development team having a technical meeting to discuss the design and schema of the architecture, which was difficult to follow by ad-hoc new comers. Another session was a demonstration of a ready-made WAI-ARIA tool for social networking. We were the only two participants attending to this workshop. After the first two days, we had an impression that this conference targeted primary for researchers and developers. For NGO delegates like us, who were looking for hands-on solutions, were out of the scope.

The workshops on 11-13 July classified in five tracks and 8 sessions. Each session consists of 5-6 presentations of research projects. The organiser tried to group similar projects into same track and same session. Most of the projects were just started at a preliminary stage. Some of them even yet to have a demonstration or prototype for the audience to learn how did the project work in real circumstance. A few projects had osculated in development stage, as there were similar mainstream products already available in the market. For instant, there was a project started in 2010, which aimed to derive the direction and geo-location for a blind person. The project did not have much research value nowadays as all the smartphones were built-in with GPS and Gyro sensor.

(e) Conclusion

We are impressed by the enthusiasm of the researchers in Europe. “Web for all” is the core value for these researchers as they believe accessibility must be taken into consideration once the development starts. Disabled persons have the rights to enjoy the same user experience with the majority group. A special/simplified version is hardly acceptable. That’s why the keynote presentation aims to enable deaf persons to enjoy the art of music with technology.

The ICCHP is more appropriate for delegates with research and development background, especially who are able to contribute his/her area of knowledge. Most of the NGOs in Hong Kong do not have specialist in this area. Practical solutions are more suitable for frontline services.

(f) Appendices

Appendix 1 – ICCHP 2012 Programme and Schedule

Appendix 2 – Publications brought from the event

Computers Helping People with Special Needs: 13th International Conference, ICCHP 2012, Linz, Austria, July 11-13, 2012, Proceedings, Part I & Part II

Publication Date: July 21, 2012 | ISBN-10: 364231533X | ISBN-13: 978-3642315336 | Edition: 2012

Appendix 3 – Photographs

Keynote Presentation on Day 1

Exhibition Booth: AsTeRICS

Moderator: Klaus Miesenberger

Gala Dinner

(g) Contacts (People / Organizations) brought from the Conference / Study

Visit Mario Batusic

Team Usability & Accessibility

Fabasoft R&D GmbH