CURRENT SECTION:
Public Results
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Leaflets:
Leaflets describing the Haptic-Audio Graphs and Maps, two works carried
out as part of the ENABLED project.
Web Developer Survey:
Web
Developer Survey conducted by the ENABLED project.
Public Presentations of the Enabled Project:
- Tim Pennick, "ENABLED - Enhancing Network Access for the
Blind and Visually Impaired"
HFT 06 - 20th International Symposium on Human Factors in Telecommunication,
France,
20-23 March 2006.
Website: [new window] "http://www.hft.org/HFT06/HFT_06.htm
ENABLED paper (pdf file 92 KB)
- M. Hafez, "Haptic and Tactile Feedback"
3rd World Congress on Biomimetics, Artificial Muscles and Nano Bio,
Scientists meet the Doctors,
Lausanne Switzerland,
Website: [new window] http://www.world-congress.net/
- S. Roselier and M. Hafez ,"Viflex: A Compact Haptic 2D Interface
with Force Feedback for Mobile Devices"
Proceedings of EuroHaptics 2006,
Paris, France
July 3-6, 2006.
Website: [new window] http://lsc.univ-evry.fr/~eurohaptics/
- M. Hafez "Tactile displays: A state of the art and Challenges"
- M. Benali Khoudja, S. Rodriguez et M. Hafez, "Low-Cost PCB
Based Electromagnetic Actuators for Tactile Feedback"
Proceedings of ACTUATOR 2006,
Bremen, Germany
14-16 June 2006.
Website: [new window] http://www.actuator.de/
- Yu W., RTD and resulting specifications in ENABLED project
DATSCG meeting,
Brussels, Belgium
16th November 2004-2007 .
- Yu W., ENABLED Putting all of Europe’s people online,
IST4Balt Conference “Evolving Mobile Europe”,
Vilnius, Lithuania
24-25 October 2004-2007 .
- Annual meeting of the university professors of the German Computer
Association,
Dagstuhl Castle, Germany
April 9-12, 2006.
Participants: 40
Website: [new window] http://ira.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
The program ofThe annual meeting of the university professors of
the German Computer Association was dedicated to "Human-Centered
Engineering/ Ambient Intelligence". Susanne Boll presented ENABLED
research work on "Non-intrusive Auditory and Haptic User Interfaces
for Navigation and Orientation"
- Exhibition Ideas Park by ThyssenKrupp Hannover,
Germany, May 20-28, 2006.
Presentation: AuditoryPong
Visitors: 200.000
Website: [new window] http://www.zukunft-technik-entdecken.de
Abstract:
From May 20 to 28, 2006 thinkers and doers have presented the "Ideas
Park 2006" at the Expo site in Hannover. Under the motto "Discover
technology. Shape the future.", ThyssenKrupp together with the state
of Lower Saxony and over 50 partners showed how innovations come
about. Numerous examples illustrating the themes "Mobility", "Life
and Environment", and "Creativity" provided an entertaining insight
into the world of innovation. OFFIS presented the game "AuditoryPong",
which allows blind and visually impaired people to play the famous
game "Pong" against sighted people. AuditoryPong uses non-speech
three dimensional sound to present the necessary game objects to
the blind persons. The game is developed within the ENABLED project,
which is supported by the European commission.
- ACM Multimedia 2006 TPC Meeting and Multimedia Workshop,
Mircosoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA, June 22nd 2006.
Talk: "Multimedia - hear it and feel it to find your way around"
Presented by Susanne Boll, University of Oldenburg
Participants: 20
Website: [new window] http://research.microsoft.com/
Abstract:
Navigation and orientation are tasks that much depend on the visual
sense.
Maps are used to ge an overview of an area before the trip. While
travelling, we look around to find our way and avoid obstacles.
For blind and visually impaired persons leaving the house and finding
their way around is a difficult task. A long cane and maybe a guide
dog are the helping companions for avoiding obstacles on the way.
To allow for a non-visual exploration of city maps and a mobile
support for finding the way we developed multimodal user interfaces
relying on the acoustic and somatosensory sense. Different media
such as sound sources, vibration, speech output are used to provide
and easy access and understanding to locations, directions and objects
on a map and underway.
Even though targeted at the blind or visually impaired the concepts
are also relevant for sighted persons in situation in which one
can not carry and look at a map or in which the visual sense is
needed for something else, e.g., when cycling bike courier or rescuing
people from a dark or smokey building.
- “Ada Lovelace Memorial Celebration” 2006
Ada Lovelace Memorial Lecture on “Informatics for all senses
- navigation and orientation that can be heard and felt".
Friday, June 30 2006, University of Hannover, Germany.
- Eurohaptics 2006
Paper and Presentation Title: “Non-Intrusive Somatosensory
Navigation Support for Blind Pedestrians”
Paris, France, July 3-6, 2006.
Website: [new window] http://lsc.univ-evry.fr/~eurohaptics/
Abstract:
Navigation and wayfinding are difficult tasks for blind or visually
impaired pedestrians. A long cane and maybe a guide dog are the
helping companions for avoiding obstacles on the way. Gross navigation,
i.e., the task to find the way from one point to another can only
partly be achieved by this support. With the advent of positioning
and navigation systems, electronic navigation aids for the blind
have been proposed. However, the existing speech-based systems use
the most relevant modality of blind persons, the ears, and do not
allow a non-intrusive navigation support. Haptic approaches which
provide continuously and non-intrusively navigation information
and which are suitable for blind people do not exist. A major challenge
for such a system is to present not only directional cues for specific
points of interests, but rather to keep a blind or visually impaired
person on track of the route during the whole navigation process.
In this paper, we present an approach of a somatosensory navigation
support that uses three vibrators to provide a pedestrian continuously
and non-obtrusively with information about the way, deviations from
the path, and directions. Controlled by a PDA and based on the input
of a GPS receiver and a digital compass, the lightweight prototype
delivers vibration signals of different intensity to the upper arms
and the back. Additional, infrequent speech commands support the
wayfinding task. Our first tests are promising and we plan a revised
version of the prototype that further reduces the necessary hardware
and also include additional interaction and information patterns.
- ICCHP 2006 - 10th International Conference on Computers Helping
People with Special Needs
Paper and Presentation Title: “Automatic Annotation of Geographic
Maps”
Linz, Austria, July 11-13, 2006.
Website: [new window] http://www.icchp.org/
Abstract:
In this paper, we describe an approach to generate semantic descriptions
of entities in city maps so that they can be presented through accessible
interfaces. The solution we present processes bitmap images containing
city map excerpts. Regions of interest in these images are extracted
automatically based on colour information and subsequently their
geometric properties are determined. The result of this process
is a structured description of these regions based on the Geography
Markup Language (GML), an XML based format for the description of
GIS data. This description can later serve as an input to innovative
presentations of spatial structures using haptic and auditory interfaces.
- Exhibition "Lange Nacht der Informatik"
Presentation: AuditoryPong and AuditoryMaps
Oldenburg, Germany, July 14, 2006.
Visitors: 600
Website: [new window] http://www.informatiknacht-ol.de/
Abstract:
The department of Computer Science and OFFIS participated in the
German-wide event "Night of Computer Science", which was
held on July, 14 2006. Universities and research institutes of 10
German cities presented the fascination of computer science to the
public. OFFIS presented two developments of the ENABLED project:
AuditoryPong and AuditoryMaps. The game "AuditoryPong"
allows blind and visually impaired people to play the famous game
"Pong" against sighted people. AuditoryMaps can be used
by blind people to explore an unknown area with the help of a digital
auditory map. Hereby they gain an overview of the region's structure.
- NordiCHI 2006
Paper and Presentation Title: “Interactive 3D Sonification
for the Exploration of City Maps”
Oslo, Norway, October 14-18, 2006.
Website: [new window] http://nordichi.net.dynamicweb.dk/
Abstract:
Blind or visually impaired pedestrians often do not even leave their
homes alone or visit new places as there is almost no means to get
an non-visual understanding of the pathway and landmarks before
leaving the house. Existing haptic and acoustic approaches today
do not provide an economic means for the understanding of a map
and relations between objects like distance, direction, and object
size. With our interactive 3D sonification for the exploration of
city maps, we provide an auditory support to get a cognitive understanding
of the route and its acoustic and physical landmarks. Virtually
exploring the map, a user can build a mental model of the city using
sound areas. For each navigation point the user will get an acoustic
impression of the objects close by and further away and their direction
location on the map by providing a 3D sound experience of the current
virtual map environment. First user tests show, that (not necessarily
blind) users are able to reproduce a sonified city map which comes
close to the original visual city map. With our approach exploring
a map with 3D non-speech sound areas provide a new user interface
metaphor that offers its potential not only for blind and visually
impaired persons but also to applications for sighted persons.
- REHA Care International 2004-2007
International trade fair for rehabilitation, care, prevention and
integration.
Contact to disabled users at the Siemens booth. Invitation to the
special interest and/or Usergroup
Contact to developers of assistive devices.
Website: [new window] http://www.rehacare.de
- UK Presidency: eAccessibility Conference
Presentation on the Siemens approach on Accessibility, with ENABLED
as the example for R&D activities.
Website: [new window] http://www.rnib.org.uk
- DTR First International Congress on Domotics, Robotics and Remote
Assistance for All "drt4all"
Presentation on the Siemens approach on Accessibility, with ENABLED
as the example for R&D activities.
Website: [new window] http://www.drt4all.org/drt/es/
- CSUN Conference 2006
Discussion with several potential users, with members of the WAI
and with the director of the Mozilla foundation.
Website: [new window] http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/index.htm
- ISO JTC1 special working group on Accessibility
Discussion with several members of ISO JTC1 especially with members
of the WAI.
Website: [new window] http://www.jtc1access.org/
- SightCity 2006
Contact with end-users and manufacturers of assistive devices.
Website: [new window] [link opens in new window] http://www.sightcity.net/index-e.html
- ICT for an Inclusive Society Conference RIGA
Presentation on the Siemens approach on Accessibility, with ENABLED
as the example for R&D activities.
Meeting with the WAI-Director Judy Brewer with demonstration at
the Booth from Labein
Website: [new window] http://europa.eu.int/
- EIF Inclusion Event European Parliament
resentation on the Siemens approach on Accessibility, with ENABLED
as the example for R&D activities.
Discussion on the potential of accessibility related EU-Funded Projects.
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