Web accessibility evaluation requires tests to be carried out with real users with disabilities performing real tasks or activities. To recruit an appropriate group of users and to observe their performance in the real world is difficult. For this reason we have developed RemoTest, a platform that assists researchers designing experiments, conducting remote and in-situ experimental sessions and analyzing the data gathered while the users are accessing the Web. Although this tool is oriented to experimenters, it is necessary to check whether the evaluation environments created by RemoTest are accessible or not to the users that participate in the tests. To this end, we conducted formal in-situ evaluations with 36 users with diverse characteristics. For this assessment, the participants were asked to install the platform, to fill in some automatically created questionnaires and to carry out several web navigation tasks. From the data gathered we analyzed the ease of the installation process, the accessibility of the automatically generated questionnaires, and user satisfaction. The results revealed the suitability of the platform for conducting inclusive experiments both in remote and in-situ contexts and provided guidelines on how the experiments should be set out.

People with motor impairments (MI) may face accessibility barriers when using computers due to their health conditions and therefore need to use alternative devices to a standard mouse for pointing and clicking in graphical user interfaces (GUI). In this study with users of different pointing devices, we evaluate 2 virtual cursors (the novel cross cursor and the standard area cursor) implemented for assisting link selection on the Web by reducing respectively cursor displacement and the precision required. Both cursor adaptations were developed for this work based on previous research, and have been compared with the original unassisted cursor in a web-based study with fifteen regular computer users applying their usual pointing device. Nine participants with MIs participated, including 4 using keyboards as an alternative pointing device, 4 joystick users and 1 trackball user. Six participants without MIs also participated in the study applying a standard mouse to complete the same experimental tasks. User interactions with the pointing device, as well as subjective assessments about the usability of the cursor variants tested were gathered from study participants. An in-depth analysis of point and click trajectories showed that virtual cursors improved the effectiveness and efficiency of most participants with MIs in link selection. Subjective assessments about cursor variants tested showed that a majority of participants with MIs generally preferred one of either the two virtual cursors to the original one for web navigation.

People with disabilities frequently use the Internet to perform a variety of common activities; however, they may often encounter aggravated accessibility barriers when using mobile devices to access the Web. In order to alleviate the problems faced by this group when using mobile devices, we have extended a previously developed transcoding-based system that adapts non-accessible web pages to the needs of specific users in order to enhance their accessibility. In this version, we included new adaptation techniques gathered from the literature in order to apply transcoding techniques to mobile devices. The enhanced system was evaluated with eight users with reduced mobility using tablets. The exploratory study suggests that alternative interaction methods such as the ones named ‘end tap’ and ‘steady tap’ are beneficial for some participants with reduced mobility, dexterity or strength in the upper limbs. Other results show that six of the eight users preferred the adapted version with enlarged interaction elements which required less physical effort, even if this adaptation increases the size of the page with the disadvantages associated with such a change.

Using standard keyboard for pointing and clicking interactions seems to be an affordable option for people who have difficulties handling a standard mouse due to a lack of dexterity or temporal disability conditions. The keypad mouse uses discrete input based on keystrokes to perform cursor movements. This distinctive feature along with others related to cursor motion behavior, make the keypad mouse a unique pointing interface when compared with alternatives. We have carried out a study with expert users of different pointing devices. Results of the study revealed significant differences in the performance values among participants in the three groups. Direction on aimed cursor movements proved to be a crucial factor to be taken into account for keyboard-only users. The findings presented in this paper have a broad application when it comes to designing effective predictive models as well as to proposing design guidelines, novel interaction techniques and adaptation techniques for this collective.

Remote rehabilitation applications still have limited deployment. The path to achieve greater user acceptance and adherence lies in the provision of solutions in their real-life context. Such acceptance is gained through flexibility provided in terms of location, client device, interaction means, and content. This article presents a universal remote rehabilitation delivery approach supporting the introduced flexibility needs. Furthermore, an implementation of the approach in joint rehabilitation for the elderly is described. The approach has been evaluated in a real scenario within Donostia Hospital. The usability evaluation results show the validity of the approach and the acceptance of the developed human −computer interaction paradigm.

One of the challenges that Ambient Intelligent (AmI) faces is the provision of a usable interaction concept to its users, especially for those with less technical background. In this paper, we describe a new approach to integrate interactive services provided by an AmI environment with the television set, which is one of the most used interaction client in the home environment. An implementation of this approach has been carried out as a multimodal/multi purpose natural human computer interface for elderly people, by creating adapted graphical user interfaces and navigation menus together with multimodal interaction (simplified TV remote control and voice interaction). In addition, this user interface can also be suited to other user groups. We have tested a prototype that adapts the videoconference and the information service with a group of 83 users. The results from the user tests show that the group found the prototype to be both satisfactory and efficient to use.