Project Overview
Contents of this page
Introduction
to the project
PLEASE REMEMBER:
Half
of your grade comes from the project. Therefore, it requires a
significant amount of good work.
Your project is worth 50% of the
course mark. Thus it
needs to be a
significant
accomplishment for you, considerably beyond the material
in your
proposal.
The project expectations involve
different amounts of accomplishment depending on whether the course is
taken as 480 or 840.
- Undergraduate level projects can, but do not have to,
include
programming.
- Graduate level projects (for CMPT 840 credit) should
include some
form of application of accessibility to a problem area of interest to
the student
- for Computer Science students this often includes some
programming development in addition to a suitable report
- for
students from other disciplines this often includes performing some
type of experimentation in a addition to a suitable report
All projects require students to investigate a
related topic in greater detail than is covered in the class.
Students
are advised to discuss possible projects with the instructor prior to
creating their proposal.
It is expected that your project will involve analyzing (researching /
identifying needs), implementing (some contribution based on your
analysis), and evaluating (the results of your implementation) some
aspect of Accessible Computing at a level more advanced than that
covered by the main portion of this class.
Stages of the
project
The project is broken into the following stages to help you to be
successful and to get your work done on time:
- Project Proposal
- Project
Analysis and Design
- Project Evaluation
- including Project Implementation (required for CMPT 840
students only)
- Project
Presentation
- Revised Project
- If
you choose not to revise your project, this mark will be based on the
marks for your Analysis and Design and for your Evaluation
- If
you choose to submit a revised project, this mark will be based on the
marks for your revised Analysis and Design and for your revised
Evaluation
Each of these stages is described in detail in its own page.
Choosing
a project
Most types of projects should not be too narrow. They should
deal
with some significant accessibility issue. They can do this by
including a number of specific instances that are representative of
this issue.
- Projects that involve investigating some topic in detail,
include analyzing, combining, or mapping
different
concepts and should involve multiple attributes of the different
concepts
in the analysis, combination, or mapping.
- Potential Accessibility Demonstration Experiences need to
include multiple interactive
activities that demonstrate a range of similar problems. These
interactive activities should be as accessible as possible. For 840
students, these activities must include some activities that are
accessible to students who are blind and some activities that are
accessible to students who are deaf.
- Potential tools need to work for a range of instances of
the
accessibility issue that they deal with. Multiple significantly
different instances should be discussed and demonstrated.
- Accessibility evaluations of Web sites need to deal with a
large
number of major pages that are parts of a given Web site. They will
need to include criteria for selecting the set of pages to be evaluated
and a method for analyzing accessibility in a manner suitable for
reporting problems to senior management.
You should choose a project where:
- you have some interest in the topic, so that you will be
motivated to do a good job
- there is sufficient background information, so that you can
do an
informed job
- there is some interesting problem still to be solved, so
that you
can do a productive job
There are some examples of good
project topics
and of the good outcomes of previous
projects below.
PLEASE NOTE:
It is highly
recommended that you book a half hour appointment with the instructor
at least a week before your proposal is due to discuss what might make
a good topic for you.
Examples of
good project topics:
PLEASE NOTE:
These are not the
only possible types of topics. Talk your ideas over with the instructor
as soon as possible to help you to identify a good topic.
480 (only) Projects could include:
- Investigate some area of accessibility issue in depth and
create
a set of guidelines, examples, and related material that can help
developers to design systems in an accessible manner that meets the
needs of that accessibility issue.
- There are various topics related to individual (or a few
related) user accessibility need(s)
that could be investigated
- It is important that this type of project provide
solution
strategies as well as identifying problems (challenges/opportunities)
- Create guidance on evaluating the accessibility of a
system, including
- identifying which user accessibility needs are met by the
system
- identify opportunities for improving the the
accessibility
- to meet unmet user accessibility needs
- to better meet user accessibility needs that are
already (partially) met
- Survey related literature regarding different types of
accessibility evaluations and propose guidance on when and how to use
these types of evaluations, including
- evaluating which user needs (from the User Needs Summary)
are
met by a system
- evaluating which disabilities are supported by a system
- evaluating compliance of a system to accessibility
standards
- testing the accessibility of a system in a test setting
- testing the accessibility of a system in the environment
in
which it is being used
- Developing a set of examples of organizational ICT
accessibility policies:
- ISO/IEC 30071-1 contains "A code of practice for creating
accessible ICT products and services" which considerably evolves the
code of practice found in BS8878. However, while BS8878 contains
annexes that provide examples of elements of its code of practice,
there have been no similar examples created to go with the evolved
expectations of ISO/IEC 30071.
- Identify communication needs of non-verbal persons.
- This could include
- identifying topics that people discuss in daily living
activities
- identifying typical sentences people use to communicate
about daily living topics
- identifying pictograms that could be used to create
these sentences in non-verbal communications
- organizing the pictograms into logical
groups (core vocabularies) for ease of use
- Identify and organize candidates for voice command
vocabularies.
- This could include
- identifying common types of objects and
actions/functions
from a large variety of software applications (to
- identifying existing voice command
vocabularies (e.g. from operating systems such as Windows, from
dictation programs such as Dragon Dictate, from media player control
such as the music system in Ford cars, etc.)
- identifying
issues to be addressed in the design of a command vocabularity (e.g.
semantic and phonetic differences between commands)
- It would also involve organizing the results into logical
groups
- Exploring the potential to use hci dialog patterns (user
interface design patterns) for to support adaptive interfaces for
purposes of increasing accessibility.
- Dialog patterns are useful in identifying common
sequences of
interactions that can be used frequently within an application
- The use of dialog patterns can
- reduce the need to for coding (by allowing the use of a
single algorithm to work with various sets of dialog)
- improve the consistency and predictability of
interactions
- limit the work required to implement the application in
alternate environments, modalities, languages
- Evaluate the accessibility of a major public Web site (e.g.
the
Computer Science Department site, the U of S site, the PAWS site, the
U. of S Library site, the City of Saskatoon Site, the Saskatoon Public
Library site) and providing a formal
report to the owners of the Web site discussing the accessibility
issues you have uncovered and suggesting improvements that could be
made to their site to make it more accessible.
- NOTE:
- as part of the
background to your proposal you should ensure that the site chosen has
enough accessibility issues and enough different pages to make this a
significant project.
- you will be expected to develop a report that provides
a
good explanation of the problems and a good estimation of the extent of
work involved in fixing these problems that is understandable by senior
management without expecting them to have any knowledge of computer
science. This requires considerable effort beyond just running
evaluation software (as you do in the assignment on evaluating web
accessibility). Failure to provide a good report for management has led
previous students to unsatisfactory completions of this type of
project.
- Warning:
In
the past this type of project has not typically gone very well.
480/840 Projects could include:
- Developing an interactive Accessibility Demonstration Experience (ADE) that could be
used
with this
class to demonstrate some aspect of accessibility not covered by the
current set of assignments.
- There are various topics to be found in the User Needs
Summary
that could be developed into good ADE's
- It is important that your project include both a new ADE and a suitable
report describing
what you have done and why you did it to create this ADE
- Developing a prototype tool for scanning visual
information for textual information
- There are many reasons why visual information might
present
accessibility challenges and many ways in which the ability to scan
certain types of visual information into text form could be of
considerable benefit
- ISO/IEC 20071-15 provides comprehensive
guidance on how an app could be used to scan and process the results of
scanning various types of visual information.
- This project
would involve the design, implementation, and testing of an app or at
least a prototype of an app to implement the guidance in ISO/IEC
20071-15
- Developing a tool to help provide accessibility to some
type of
applications
- Some types of tools include:
- a tool to help users with disabilities interact with
some
specialized application (this could involve developing an app that
could
be used on smartphones)
- a tool to provide an accessible database of information
on
different accessibility standards that could be used by developers
looking for standards relating to specific problem domains
- a tool to evaluate web pages for possible
cultural / linguistic inaccessibilities
- a tool that could contribute to Raising
the
Floor challenges or the GPII
- NOTE:
480 students could focus on the analysis and design of such a tool
without the need to build more than a low fidelity prototype to
demonstrate their design. 840 students would be expected to have a
working prototype.
- Develop a game that is accessible for users who cannot
normally
access the majority of computer based games
- this needs to involve more than a simple text-based
command
line interface (as was used with computer games decades ago)
- Investigate the unique use of some form of interaction to
provide
an accessible substitute for the "traditional" way things are done
- Examples could include:
- exploring the design and use of "earcons" (auditory
icons) or
"tactons" (tactile icons) as replacements for graphical icons [we have
various tactile devices that could be used]
- exploring accessibility issues with your smart phone
Example
outcomes of previous
projects
PLEASE NOTE:
The documentation
describing the outcomes of various previous projects below are taken
from a number of different documents produced for a variety of purposes
(and have often received additional development beyond what was handed
in as a project). They are not formatted in the same manner as your
project reports are expected to be formatted. They also may contain
various challenges and opportunities.
- Universal
Access
Reference Model, David Fourney. The first offering of this
class
led to the development of: J. Carter and D. Fourney, 2004, Using a Universal
Access
Reference Model to Identify Further Guidance that belongs in ISO 16071,
Universal Access in
the
Information Society, 3(1):17-29. [available
from U of S Library via Springerlink] http://www.springerlink.com.cyber.usask.ca/content/1615-5297/]
- USERLab ADEs, many of the assignments you use in this class
have
been developed by students taking this course, including
- DBVisAssist,
a tool to help blind
software developers create E-R diagrams, by Tanya Lung
- I-Match,
requirements and design of a
tool to help all people to match colors of clothes, by Hrisham Mustafa
- Guidelines
for meaningful
Alt-text, by Ndon Nyong
- Guidelines for Single Switch Access to Virtual Keyboards, by Katherine Jamieson
Some other topics that have been investigated by student projects include
- An Exploration of Augmentative and Alternative Communication
- Design Guidelines for Accessible Social Computing
- Design Guidelines for Accessible Video Games
- Design of Tools to Assist with Daily Tasks
- Guidelines for Improving Cultural and Linguistic Accessibility
- Incorporating Emotions in Subtitles
Copyright © 2006, 2019 - Jim A Carter Jr.