Workspace Awareness Acessível: estratégias de sonificação para projetar interfaces colaborativas acessíveis aos cegos

O uso extensivo de diagramas no ensino profissional e superior, sobretudo nos cursos de computação e engenharias, impõem um obstáculo ao aprendizado de cegos e deficientes visuais e, apesar dos avanços e estudos quanto à acessibilidade da informação diagramática, eles não tratam de recursos colaborativos acessíveis aos cegos. Portanto, foi conduzido um estudo onde foram projetadas duas interfaces audíveis baseadas em recursos de sonificação. As interfaces passaram por testes de usabilidade e carga cognitiva. Os resultados demonstraram que usuários cegos podem perceber as interações dos colegas e distinguir a ação realizada, o local onde aconteceu e quem a realizou por meio das interfaces sonificadas.

Designing Metaphor-Based Ambient Tangible Artifacts to Support Workspace Awareness

Current asynchronous (e. g., email) or synchronous (e. g., video-conferencing) communication methods in the workspace can be obtrusive and fail to mimic spontaneous interpersonal communication. This can cause difficulties in forming close relationships among working colleagues. To examine this problem, we conducted a needs assessment study consisting of an online survey, a focus group, and a co-design session to gather a set of system requirements and metaphors as a base for future system designs. Based on the results, we designed two metaphor-based ambient tangible systems to support awareness among working colleagues:AwareCupsandAwareHouse. Furthermore, we evaluated these systems in a short field study with 22 participants and found that both systems are highly intuitive and easy to use. We discuss the solution space for metaphor-based tangible awareness systems and the effects of the outcomes on the potential increase of awareness among colleagues.

Implementation of Sound Workspace Awareness to Visually Impaired Users in Synchronous and Cooperative Web Applications

This paper discusses the implementation of accessibility features for visually impaired people in synchronous and cooperative systems on the Internet. Based on the sociocultural scenario of affirmation of difference and on the contexts of cooperation established by Web 2.0, we discuss the application of Sound Workspace Awareness in Groupware tools through Auditory Icons, Earcons, synthesized speech, Live Region, and Screen Readers in a Web chat system. The article presents a qualitative experimental research with internal data validation and an exploratory goal. The process of data collection and analysis was performed using protocols applied with five real users. The results of the experiments showed a satisfactory adherence of these technologies in the construction of Sound Workspace Awareness to screen reader users.

Updating freeTribe to Support Efficient Synchronous Awareness in the Web Context

The research field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work has been reflected fundamentally in theoretical contributions. This contributions have constitute the base to carry out several intents to facilitate the work of the collaborative systems developers, however, current tool-kits, APIs or class libraries only eliminate partially the gap between the technical aspects that impose the information technology and the stressed social character of the process of collaboration in the World Wide Web. In this paper is presented the framework freeTribe, which involve the domain of the distributed groupwares leaning on the Cooperative Model of the methodology AMENITIES, in the middleware platform ICE and in RIA technologies; freeTribe has been designed as a software framework, to maximize its reusability and adaptability with a minimal programming effort. Support for synchronous group tasks in the Web context is increasingly recognized as a desideratum for collaborative systems and several tools have emerged recently that help groups of people with the same goals to work together, but many issues for these collaborative systems remain under studied. We identified synchronous awareness as one of these issues in collaborative systems, and updated freeTribe with four well-accepted kinds of awareness (group awareness, workspace awareness, contextual awareness, and peripheral awareness) by the community focusing our interest in its synchronous mechanism for efficient interaction in Web contexts.Resumen: El campo de investigación de la Cooperativa de Trabajo Apoyado por Computadora se ha reflejado fundamentalmente en las contribuciones teóricas. Estas aportaciones han constituido la base para llevar a cabo varios intentos para facilitar el trabajo de los desarrolladores de sistemas de colaboración, sin embargo, las herramientas acuales, como APIs o librerías de clases sólo eliminan parcialmente la brecha entre los aspectos técnicos que imponen la tecnología de la información y el subrayado de carácter social del proceso de colaboración en la World Wide web. En este trabajo se presenta el marco freeTribe, que implica el dominio de los groupwares distribuidos que se inclinan en el modelo cooperativo de las comodidades de metodología, en la plataforma ICE del middleware y en las tecnologías RIA; freeTribe ha sido diseñado como un marco de software, para maximizar su reutilización y adaptabilidad con un mínimo esfuerzo de programación. El apoyo a las tareas de grupos sincrónicos en el contexto Web se reconoce cada vez más como un desiderátum para los sistemas de colaboración y varias herramientas han surgido recientemente que los grupos de autoayuda de personas con los mismos objetivos a trabajar juntos, pero muchos problemas para estos sistemas de colaboración permanecen bajo estudio. Identificamos la conciencia sincrónica como uno de estos temas en los sistemas de colaboración, y actualizamos freeTribe con cuatro tipos bien aceptados de la conciencia (conciencia de grupo, de sensibilización espacio de trabajo, sensibilización contextual y sensibilización periférica) de la comunidad se centran nuestro interés en su mecanismo de sincronización para una eficiente interacción en contextos web.Palabras clave: coperación ayudada por computadora, groupware, conciencia sicronizada

SOCIAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR PREPARING E-COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH IMPLEMENTATION

Research in higher education is very minimum in its amount, especially when it comes into collaborative research. However, many researchers try to solve it using e-collaborative research which can handle time and distance barriers. This analytical research tries to dig deep down of social considerations as e-collaborative research being prepared in higher education environment. The results of this research has concluded that social ties, extrinsic motivation, workspace awareness and collaborative exchange can be main factors for researchers to create succesful e-collaborative research despite of technical considerations.