Computer Sciences Commons^™

Accessible Autonomy: Exploring Inclusive Autonomous Vehicle Design And Interaction For People Who Are Blind And Visually Impaired, Paul D. S. Fink

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous vehicles are poised to revolutionize independent travel for millions of people experiencing transportation-limiting visual impairments worldwide. However, the current trajectory of automotive technology is rife with roadblocks to accessible interaction and inclusion for this demographic. Inaccessible (visually dependent) interfaces and lack of information access throughout the trip are surmountable, yet nevertheless critical barriers to this potentially lifechanging technology. To address these challenges, the programmatic dissertation research presented here includes ten studies, three published papers, and three submitted papers in high impact outlets that together address accessibility across the complete trip of transportation. The first paper began with a thorough …

The Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Higher Education: A Study On Faculty Perspectives In Universities In Egypt, Farah S. Sharawy

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that is transforming various aspects of society, including higher education. This paper examines faculty perspectives from five different institutions; The American University in Cairo (AUC), The German University in Cairo (GUC), The Arab Academy for Science and Technology (AAST), Ain Shams University, and Cairo University, on the use of AI in higher education in teaching and learning in Egypt, with all its challenges and resources available to support it, and how it can be used to achieve equity and accessibility. This research was conducted through a qualitative study using semi-structured one- on-one interviews …

The State Of Accessibility In Blackboard: Survey And User Reviews Case Study, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Wajdi Aljedaani, Stephanie Ludi, Mohammed Alkahtani, Marcelo M. Eler, Marouane Kessentini, Ali Ouni

Articles

Context: Nowadays, mobile applications (or apps) have become vital in our daily life, particularly within education. Many institutions increasingly rely on mobile apps to provide access to all their students. However, many education mobile apps remain inaccessible to users with disabilities who need to utilize accessibility features like talkback or screen reader features. Accessibility features have to be considered in mobile apps to foster equity and inclusion in the educational environment allowing to use of such apps without limitations. Gaps in the accessibility to educational systems persist.

Objective: In this paper, we focus on the accessibility of the Blackboard mobile …

Supporting Novices Author Audio Descriptions Via Automatic Feedback, Rosiana Natalie, Joshua Tseng, Hernisa Kacorri, Kotaro Hara

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Audio descriptions (AD) make videos accessible to those who cannot see them. But many videos lack AD and remain inaccessible as traditional approaches involve expensive professional production. We aim to lower production costs by involving novices in this process. We present an AD authoring system that supports novices to write scene descriptions (SD) - textual descriptions of video scenes - and convert them into AD via text-to-speech. The system combines video scene recognition and natural language processing to review novice-written SD and feeds back what to mention automatically. To assess the effectiveness of this automatic feedback in supporting novices, we …

Supporting Novices Author Audio Descriptions Via Automatic Feedback, Rosiana Natalie, Joshua Tseng, Hernisa Kacorri, Kotaro Hara

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Audio descriptions (AD) make videos accessible to those who cannot see them. But many videos lack AD and remain inaccessible as traditional approaches involve expensive professional production. We aim to lower production costs by involving novices in this process. We present an AD authoring system that supports novices to write scene descriptions (SD)—textual descriptions of video scenes—and convert them into AD via text-to-speech. The system combines video scene recognition and natural language processing to review novice-written SD and feeds back what to mention automatically. To assess the effectiveness of this automatic feedback in supporting novices, we recruited 60 participants to …

Flextype: Flexible Text Input With A Small Set Of Input Gestures, Dylan Gaines, Mackenzie M. Baker, Keith Vertanen

Michigan Tech Publications

In many situations, it may be impractical or impossible to enter text by selecting precise locations on a physical or touchscreen keyboard. We present an ambiguous keyboard with four character groups that has potential applications for eyes-free text entry, as well as text entry using a single switch or a brain-computer interface. We develop a procedure for optimizing these character groupings based on a disambiguation algorithm that leverages a long-span language model. We produce both alphabetically-constrained and unconstrained character groups in an offline optimization experiment and compare them in a longitudinal user study. Our results did not show a significant …

Survey On Outdoor Navigation Applications For People With Visual Impairment, Fatmaelzahraa Eltaher, Luis Miralles-Pechuán, Jane Courtney, Susan Mckeever

Datasets

Outdoor navigation is a very challenging activity for People who suffer from Blindness or Visually Impairment (PBVI). Having examined the current literature, we conclude that there are very few publications providing a nuanced understanding of how PBVI undertake a journey in an outdoor environment and what their main challenges and obstacles are. To throw some light on this gap, we conducted a questionnaire in collaboration with the National Council for the Blind Ireland (NCBI) for 49 PBVI. Our questionnaire gathers information about key aspects related to PBVI outdoor navigation such as support tools/devices, hazards, journey preparation, crossing roads, and understanding …

Building Coleus Academy, Janessa Unseld

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Coleus Academy, a nonprofit e-learning platform, has been created to address the deficits left by the de-emphasis and, at times, outright omission of practical skill-centric education in American curriculums. There exists a gap between the degree of knowledge necessary to engage with adult life and the extent of that knowledge that is actually possessed by emerging adults. Prominent legislations are among the numerous efforts to address this issue. However, there is a deeply fractured market where resources are proving too expensive, too sparse, or hyper-specific to the point of limited usability. Compounded with disparities in when, where, and to whom …

An Ambiguous Technique For Nonvisual Text Entry, Dylan C. Gaines

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Text entry is a common daily task for many people, but it can be a challenge for people with visual impairments when using virtual touchscreen keyboards that lack physical key boundaries. In this thesis, we investigate using a small number of gestures to select from groups of characters to remove most or all dependence on touch locations. We leverage a predictive language model to select the most likely characters from the selected groups once a user completes each word.

Using a preliminary interface with six groups of characters based on a Qwerty keyboard, we find that users are able to …

Enhancing Health Data Representation For Older Adults: Unlocking Opportunities, Peterson Jean

Academic Posters Collection

The prevalence of off-the-shelf wearable devices increases the monitoring and measurement of critical physiological parameters like activity, sleep, heart rate, and blood pressure. However, the accessibility of health data representations poses challenges for older adults, who often struggle to understand the criticality of their own health data without assistance. This poster highlights the challenges older adults face in accessing their health data from wearable technologies, specifically focusing on data representations.

To address these challenges, it proposes a methodology that involves a heuristic evaluation of existing data representations with experts and accessibility studies with older adults using a mixed methods approach …

Detecting Deceptive Dark-Pattern Web Advertisements For Blind Screen-Reader Users, Satwick Ram Kodandaram, Mohan Sunkara, Sampath Jayarathna, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Advertisements have become commonplace on modern websites. While ads are typically designed for visual consumption, it is unclear how they affect blind users who interact with the ads using a screen reader. Existing research studies on non-visual web interaction predominantly focus on general web browsing; the specific impact of extraneous ad content on blind users' experience remains largely unexplored. To fill this gap, we conducted an interview study with 18 blind participants; we found that blind users are often deceived by ads that contextually blend in with the surrounding web page content. While ad blockers can address this problem via …