Providing Universal Accessibility Providing Universal Accessibility using Connecting Ontologies: A using Connecting Ontologies: A

Holistic ApproachHolistic Approach

Shuaib Karim1,2, Khalid Latif1,3, A Min Tjoa1

1Institute of S.W. Technology & Interactive Systems,

Vienna University of Technology, (http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/)2C.S. Department, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad3C.S. & I.T. Department, Islamia University, Bahawalpur

July 27 / 2007July 27 / 2007

Technisches Universität Wien

2

Motivation

● Possibility to provide a generic accessibility solution for our prototype SemanticLIFE using ontological approach

● Explore accessibility provision other than at UI

3

Message Bus Plug-in

Data Feed Processing

Repository Plug-in

PersonalRepository

Ontologies

Pipeline Plug-in

Pipelines Style sheets

User ProfilePlug-in

AnnotationPlug-in

Web ServicePlug-in

AnalysisPlug-in

Visualization plug-in

SemanticLIFE (Personal Information Management System)

Accessibility plug-in

4

Accessibility!

● W3C WAI guidelines, 1.0 Content is accessible when it may be used by

someone with a disability

● ANSI HFES 200 (draft) The set of properties that allows a product, service or

facility to be used by people with a wide range of capabilities, either directly or in conjunction with assistive technologies. Although 'accessibility' typically addresses users who have a disability, the concept is not limited to disability issues.

● ISO TS 16071 The usability of a product, service, environment or

facility by people with the widest range of capabilities

5

Accessibility guidelines

● WCAG make web content (Document Content, Structure, and Presentation) accessible for people with disabilities

→ Focus mainly on vision and motor impairments

→ Main contents are web pages

Other impairments, and information sources are not significantly addressed which are equally important in today‘s interactive environment, but are part of overall “Context“

6

Contextual Elements

User Profile Device Profile User Interface Characteristics Task Characteristics ……

We need ways to bind them together

8

Essential accessibility components

User Impairments

Device &

UI A

ttributes Acc

essi

bilit

y G

uide

lines

Accessible Interface

9

There exists many types of impairments

Providing alternate text for the pictures Careful color combinations for the color blind Avoiding complex table layout for the blind Difficulty in interaction due to motor problems Difficulty in system behavior recall due to

cognitive problems

Renewed accessibility effort for each impairment

Accessibility Implementation Issues

10

Accessibility Implementation Issues

Change of impairment severity over time

Voice feedback would no more work if hearing is affected or its severity changes

Response of tactile feedback will change with severity of motoric problems

Cognitive problems may increase over time

Change of system behavior over time is required

11

Accessibility Implementation Issues

Multiple impairments at the same time

Vision problem (hemianopsia – loss of one half of visual field) + motoric problems

Color blind + cognitive problems Cognitive problems + mobility impaired

Need to model inter-dependance of impairments

12

Problem overview summary

● Lack of Universal Accessbility in software Accessibility is generally provided for only distinctive

types of visual, hearing, motor & cognitive impairments

● Reasons: Mostly the focus is specific type of user group Considering many (or all possible) types of

impairments, devices, tasks is considered to be out of budget, and also an unnecessary effort

The mutual benefits of UA are not recognized

Lack of a generic accessibility approach

16

Semantic Web – Promises

● Ability to integrate heterogeneous data sources● Ability to formally describe the information

Formal data description is understandable; and thus processable and sharable by software agents

Automatic reasoning is possible

● Abundance of OS tools from modeling, storage, annotation, reasoning, & query to user interfaces

17

Semantic Web – Architecture

Imapirments Ontology

19

Some derived concepts (1 / 2)

● LeftSidedImpairment isA Impairment relatedBodyPart some BodyPart relatedBodyPart some (hasPartPosition has Left)

● RightSidedImpairment isA Impairment relatedBodyPart some BodyPart relatedBodyPart some (hasPartPosition has Right)

● BothSidedImpairment isA Impairment relatedBodyPart some BodyPart relatedBodyPart some (hasPartPosition has Left) and relatedBodyPart some (hasPartPosition has Right)

20

Derived concepts (2 / 2)

● AnySidedImpairment isA Impairment relatedBodyPart some BodyPart relatedBodyPart some ((hasPartPosition has Left) or

(hasPartPosition has Right))

● AnySidedImpairment_1 isA Impairment relatedBodyPart some BodyPart LeftSidedImpairment or RightSidedImpairment

22

User Interface Ontology

23

Connecting Ontology (CO for O1 and O2)

O1, O2 not related with the same domain of discourse

Independence of two vocabularies Independent design patterns during development

Create new knowledge, whereas other notions of ontology mapping help reorganizing the existing knowledge

24

Benefits of CO

● Facilitate top-down approach of application development

● Facilitate incompatibility resolution between Oi at the ontological level without delving into the application code

● Helpful for code automation● The approach will be beneficial for many domains

including future interfaces for e-Learning. Travel on the interface and way finding consisting of tasks such as exploration, search and maneuvering can be greatly improved by interconnecting ontologies of user’s tasks, impairments, interaction devices & visualizations in use

25

Generic Accessibility Pattern

26

Memory Recall Pattern

27

Perception Effect Pattern

28

Mobility Enhancement Pattern

29

Persistence of Patterns

● Formal description of semantics for each component

● Formal description of consequences and effects of potentially interacting component on each other

30

Accessibility Framework

● A scalable framework using SemWeb Technology

40

Rules to Make Connections b/w Imp and Ui

Low perception implies suggesting high usability components (VisualAcuityLow uiLegibilityGood)

(?x rdf:type imp:VisualAcuity) (?x imp:perceptionMeasure imp:Low) (?y rdf:type ui:UiComponent) (?y ui:hasLegibility ui:Good) (?x eg:suggests ?y).

41

Rules to Make Connections b/w Imp and Ui

High perception implies suggesting fair usability components (VisualAcuityHigh uiLegibilityFair)

(?x rdf:type imp:VisualAcuity) (?x imp:perceptionMeasure imp:High) (?y rdf:type ui:UiComponent) (?y ui:hasLegibility ui:Fair)

(?x eg:suggests ?y).

42

Rules to Make Connections b/w Imp and Ui

High rheumatism implies suggesting easily operatable components (RheumatismHigh uiUserControlGood)

(?x rdf:type imp:Rheumatism) (?x imp:impairmentMeasure imp:High) (?y rdf:type ui:UiComponent) (?y ui:userControl ui:Good) (?x eg:suggests ?y).

43

Generated triples by rules

<rdf:RDF xmlns:co="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/co#" ...> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/imp#VisualAcuity_High"> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_09"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_26"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextStyle_Italic"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextStyle_BoldItalic"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_08"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_24"/> </rdf:Description> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/imp#Rheumatism_High"> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#LabelledButton"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#ComboBox"/> </rdf:Description> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/imp#VisualAcuity_Low"> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_18"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_10"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextFont_TimesNewRoman"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextStyle_Bold"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_22"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_11"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#TextSize_20"/> </rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/imp#ColorBlindness_RG"> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Grey"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Orange"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Cyan"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Blue"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Yellow"/> </rdf:Description> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/imp#ColorBlindness_YB"> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Grey"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Orange"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Cyan"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Green"/> <co:suggests rdf:resource="http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ontologies/ui#Color_Red"/> </rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>

47

Consequences of impairments-user interface ontology

• Helpful in automatically adapting UI for a specific user• Helpful in deducing the best match of UI characteristics

for a user with multiple impairments• Possibility to use the ontology for diversity• Historical data for studying the cause-effect relationship

b/w the impairments and the computer interfaces• Useful for rehabilitation purposes• Possibility to extract impairment related semantics from

user‘s information stored in SemanticLIFE repository, and modify the impairments ontology accordingly

48

Concluding Remarks

● Presenting information to different users with varying impairments is a difficult task

● The ontological approach paves the way for a generic solution by incorporating contextual components

● Another abstraction level introduced on top of UI● The effort could be equally useful for diversity● Is user interface acessibility enough??

49

Semantic Web – Modified Architecture

Accessib

ilityUI & Applications

50

Future directions

● User testing● Integration of profile tracking tools for populating

impairments ontology, and UI toolkits like SWT for populating UI ontology

● Integration of capability measuring tools by automating task execution tests such as MMSE (Mini Mental State Examination)

● Integration for ontology of visualization techniques

51

Thanks a lot!

http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~skarim

SemanticLIFE Project http://storm.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/

Technisches Universität Wien