Exploring Interfaces for People with Disabilities

This project had its seed launched in May/19 with the participation in TOM: Leiria, of the SUPERA journeys, by a team of 6 students from ESTSetúbal and 3 researchers from Sustain.RD. The participation consisted in responding to a societal challenge in the form of a computational platform of services specifically aimed at people with disabilities or incapacity, the real users. A conceptual prototype was created from which a set of research questions have been identified that must be answered in order to obtain a truly inclusive solution. With this project, the investigation focuses on one of the central questions; “How to design and integrate truly accessible multimodal user-interfaces so that people with different disabilities can efficiently interact with the features provided by the platform to obtain the necessary services?”. The project will start with an exhaustive survey of the various use cases specific to the interaction, taking into account the different types of disabilities (e.g., motor, visual). It will be part of a systematic study on the international standards that frame digital accessibility. To answer the central question, a multimodal interaction model will be designed that will integrate machine learning modules to create adaptive user-interfaces. This model will be implemented in the construction of the prototype, which will be validated and optimized according to the case studies with the various partner entities.