Archives

  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 6 No. 2 (2016)

    This second issue of 2016 includes three articles related to Engineering, and Society and Economics. Related research faces challenges such as understanding the physiological mechanisms of prosthetic vision, with the purpose of restoring vision to the blind through the development of a visual neuroprosthesis.  In this direction, the first article presents an in vivo electrophysiological investigations on new stimulation paradigms that can potentially lead to improved visual perception. This paper describes a multi-viewpoint architecture of an experimental setup for the study of electrically evoked potentials in a retinal neuroprosthesis. The challenge faced by the second study presented is to ensure that voters with disabilities could vote independently. The focus of this research is to examine the viability and usability of a particular voting system, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), as an accessible voting platform for visually impaired voters. Latest challenge addresses difficulties faced by people with disability when accessing to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This revolutionary computer and mobile-based educational scenario allow students to learn at their own time, place and pace, improving, consequently, their level of employability and social inclusion. The third paper describes the need for designing an information model and related specifications to support a new strategy for delivering accessible MOOC. This approach takes into account preferences and context of use, resulting in as user profile’s design based on standard metadata schemas regarding the achievement of accessibility from content to user preferences.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 6 No. 1 (2016)

    This first issue of 2016 includes three articles regarding architecture and engineering but also have an impact on education. Architects, engineers and teachers design and build the society, environments and products of the future. The research presented in these papers will contribute improving the approach to the exercise of their profession and the way to serve the whole of society.The first article of present volume discusses the design of data collection tools to facilitate the inclusion of blind students in school building evaluations following the principles of Universal Design (UD). The goal of the study is to enable the incorporation of people with disability in field research in Architecture and Design through the application of appropriate investigation tools. The data collection instruments developed were a tactile map to support interviews with blind children and a 3D questionnaire as tactile models.The aim of the second study is to investigate the attitudes of architecture students towards people with a disability, comparing those who received inter-professional universal design education with those who had not.The motivation of the third article is the observation that many activities in both educational and work environments involve teamwork and searching on the web. The study aims to understand what barriers may exist to visually impaired searchers taking part in cross-modal collaborative information seeking. And also, what approaches are employed by participants to overcome these difficulties.  This study gives us the opportunity to detect the challenges and opportunities that exist in supporting visually impaired (VI) users to take an effective part in collaborative web search tasks with sighted peers.After presenting the content of the issue, it only remains to invite you to dive into the reading of the articles to discover in detail all new knowledge produced by the researchers.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 5 No. 2 (2015)

    This number includes several articles focused on inclusive design. Particularly, studying aspects of daily activities such as social relations or going for shopping to the grocery. The research efforts invested in these topics are remarkably meriting because the huge impact that improvements discovered can bring to daily life activities for so many people.This is the case of the second article, "The use of proxies" (pages 100-124) of the current issue, that is dealing with social aspects. A group of designers tried to improve social relations of severely disabled residents in a care home in Denmark. The challenge for the designers was to gather information from users with severe communication difficulties. Their approach was to combine design methods on the borderland between assistive technology and social design. "Rethinking the grocery store" (pages 125-156) is related to wayfinding in this type of built environment. Researchers deal with barriers that many people with disabilities face while shopping in grocery stores. The objective of their research is to design an inclusive and innovative wayfinding system in for visually impaired shoppers to help them find the center zone, orient between different aisles, decide where to go, move easily between different sections, and select products with ease. In the case of "Understanding the barriers" (pages 157-173), the aim is to understand the barriers that shoppers with vision impairment face in the grocery stores. Regarding the research process itself, it is crucial to detect special needs and preferences of people with disability. Thus, participatory approaches are used. These techniques entail challenges regarding the involvement and maintained participation of these users. Particularly in large-scale R&D technology projects. The first article of this number, "Managing the participation of people with disabilities in large-scale R&D technology projects" (pages 77-99), discusses some strategies to overcome these barriers. Authors are based on their experience in two large-scale technology projects, AEGIS and CLOUD4all, funded by the European Commission.  For JACCES, the publication of this type of results is considered essential to enhance future research of this nature.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 5 No. 1 (2015)

    This volume 5, number 1 is composed of three articles where the researchers explain their findings of accessibility in the fields of engineering and education. First investigation contributes to a better understanding of how users with motor and dexterity impairments confront accessibility barriers when are accessing to websites. Thanks to user tests researchers have analysed user’s mood about different accessibility barriers comparing accessible and non-accessible webpages. The second study evaluates which are the benefits of captioned online courses among American, international, and deaf or hard of hearing students from two California universities. Research conclusion was that captioned online courses provide benefits for all users and indicate the possibility of expanding them as Universal Design model for postsecondary educational institutions.  The last article describes an intensive design exercise conducted in a graduate course on Universal Design with professional architects as students. They developed a design project for a public-service center. The goal of the Charrette was to understand the effectiveness of this type of teaching method to increase the designers’ sensitivity toward Universal Design issues and gain knowledge on participatory processes. The Charrette involved potential users with various disabilities who evaluated the design. What all these papers have in common is the importance of taking into account diverse user experience to achieve a more accessible world.We hope this number has an interesting and stimulating reading for all our readers. 
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 4 No. 3 (2014)

    This volume 4, number 3 is composed by seven articles where 34 researchers explain their findings. They are from universities, foundations, government centers and companies in 3 different countries. All researches presented here have in common the aim of creating a more accessible world. Thanks to all of them this number of JACCES sees the light of day.Firstly, this issue includes an article of Society and Economics section. This study is related to accessibility legislation in Spain, and it investigates whether the existence of accessibility legislation per se, is enough to ensure its practical application.Secondly, there is a set of studies based on a selection of works from the 4th Edition of the International Congress of Design, Research Networks and Technology for All (DRT4ALL). This congress took place at Madrid in 2013 promoted by the ONCE Foundation. Its goal is to show latest advances in Domotics, Robotics and Remote-assistance, and how these areas can work together to make everybody's life easier and improve social integration for people with disabilities. Thus, these papers are included in the Engineering section, and they are related to concepts such as interfaces for programming robots, audio description in Spanish DTT, human-computer interaction for cognitive rehabilitation and accessible payment systems.Finally, in Health and Medical Care section are gathered articles regarding gaming for cognitive stimulation and virtual reality for rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injuries.After introducing this publication, just remains to invite you to discover all innovative and exciting findings compiled on it. 
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All- Special Issue: ICDVRAT
    Vol. 4 No. 2 (2014)

    This volume 4, number 2 is a special issue including a selection of research articles based on papers from 2012 International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies.This special issue comprises 7 articles, most dealing with rehabilitation or evaluation of patients with brain injury. From those, there is research focused on motor rehabilitation, through games or other methodologies and research on virtual reality for cognitive assessment. In line with the previous research, it is present in this issue literature review on the telerehabilitation of stroke patients.Complementing this issue, it is included research on a game for speech training for people with hearing impairment.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 4 No. 1 (2014)

    This volume 4, number 1 includes a set of peer reviewed articles from different areas.The first article presents the development of a game designed for the evaluation of intellectual capabilities of teenagers with Down syndrome.The second article presents a case study that evaluates the costs and benefits of web accessibility in Ireland.The third study presents sidewalk design solutions for preventing falls in public spaces due to winter conditions. 
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 3 No. 2 (2013)

    This volume 3, number 2 gathers a set of articles based on the most outstanding research on accessibility and disability issues that was presented in the International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation 2012 (ICNR).The articles’ research present in this number is centred on the analysis and/or rehabilitation of body impairment most due to brain injury and neurological disorders.JACCES thanks the collaboration of the ICNR members and the research authors and reviewers that have collaborated for making possible that issue.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 3 No. 1 (2013)

    This volume 3, number 1 gathers a set of peer reviewed articles from 3 different areas. The first article is from the area of domotics and presents the development of an augmentative and alternative digital home interface, also tested by users with cerebral palsy.The second article is also from the area of engineering and presents a participatory research related to the promotion of active aging.The final article is centered in educational innovation in higher studies, which presents the importance and added value of including social skills and moral values in the Honors project.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 2 No. 2 (2012)

    This volume 2, number 2 gathers a collection of articles related to the access to information and communication systems: a research on a device specific for wheelchair users to control ICT tools; and articles related to the accessibility of educational resources and information and communication technologies by students with auditory disability and motor disability. From the area of architecture, it is presented a study about the different types of Pedestrian crossings and their functionality.
  • Journal of Accessibility and Design for All
    Vol. 2 No. 1 (2012)

    This volume 2, number 1 of the Journal of Accessibility and Design for All comprises a selection of papers presented at the IV International Congress on Design, Research Networks, and Technology for all held in Madrid, June, 27 - 29, 2011. This congress is promoted by the ONCE Foundation for cooperation and social inclusion of persons with disabilities and intends to monitor the progress of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Therefore, papers here presented cover different areas related to learning, health, communication and social life, which are also in line with the philosophy of the journal and complement some of the five research areas of this journal.
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