Cognitive disabilities and web accessibility: a survey into the Brazilian web development community

Cognitive disabilities include a diversity of conditions related to cognitive functions, such as reading, understanding, learning, solving problems, memorization and speaking. They differ largely from each other, making them a heterogeneous complex set of disabilities. Although the awareness about cognitive disabilities has been increasing in the last few years, it is still less than necessary compared to other disabilities. The need for an investigation about this issue is part of the agenda of the Challenge 2 (Accessibility and Digital Inclusion) from GranDIHC-Br. This paper describes the results of an online exploratory survey conducted with 105 web development professionals from different sectors to understand their knowledge and barriers regarding accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities. The results evidenced three biases that potentially prevent those professionals from approaching cogni-tive disabilities: strong organizational barriers; difficulty to understand user needs related to cognitive disabilities; a knowledge gap about web accessibility principles and guidelines. Our results confirmed that web development professionals are unaware about cognitive disabilities mostly by a lack of knowledge about them, even if they understand web accessibility in a technical level. Therefore, we suggest that applied research studies focus on how to fill this knowledge gap before providing tools, artifacts or frameworks.

Bumbometer digital crowd game: collaboration through competition in entertainment events

The use of mobile devices, especially smartphones, is widespread across all social strata and age groups, helping to ensure faster access from anywhere, data collection, and more regular and frequent control to aid urban, environmental, and social management. In this scenario, the entertainment industry has benefited from this powerful individual technological resource in cultural and sporting events. In this way, this work presents a proposal for interaction and engagement in entertainment events in a more prosperous and more technological way, through the development of a collaborative and competitive mobile-­web crowd game, intended for enhancing interaction between the crowd and as a unified group, whether physically co-­located or online. The application, called Bumbometer, uses motion sensors during an interactive dynamic with the crowd applying concepts from Mobile Crowd Sensing and User eXperience. We conducted two experimental studies to evaluate the proposed technology, the first in a real scenario of a folk cultural festival and the second in a controlled environment, simulating an event considering a scenario in which users were geographically distant. The results indicate that people feel immersed and engaged during the interaction through the proposed game, which reinforces the statement that the game meets an increasingly growing need to use technologies to ensure more significant interaction and audience immersion at crowd entertainment events, a creative and far­-reaching form.

Working in the COVID-19 pandemic: an observational study

The restrictions of social isolation adopted to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have led many companies to adopt remote work in a mandatory and unplanned way. This sudden transition has caused profound changes in personal and professional relationships. In this article, we present the results of a qualitative observational study on the adaptations made in the activities of the software development process of two companies. These adaptations were intended to support the transition to teleworking during the pandemic. They were analyzed based on the theoretical framework of Olson and Olson for distributed collaboration. Software developers’ motivations and observed challenges are also presented. Based on these results, the article presents recommendations to facilitate the adaptation to remote work in software development teams.

A cybersickness review: causes, strategies, and classification methods

Virtual reality (VR) and head-­mounted displays are continually gaining popularity in various fields such as education, military, entertainment, and health. Although such technologies provide a high sense of immersion, they can also trigger symptoms of discomfort. This condition is called cybersickness (CS) and is quite popular in recent virtual reality research. In this work we first present a review of the literature on theories of discomfort manifestations usually attributed to virtual reality environments. Following, we reviewed existing strategies aimed at minimizing CS problems and discussed how the CS measurement has been conducted based on subjective, bio­signal (or objective), and users profile data. We also describe and discuss related works that are aiming to mitigate cybersickness problems using deep and symbolic machine learning approaches. Although some works used methods to make deep learning explainable, they are not strongly affirmed by literature. For this reason in this work we argue that symbolic classifiers can be a good way to identify CS causes, once they possibilities human-­readability which is crucial for analyze the machine learning decision paths. In summary, from a total of 157 observed studies, 24 were excluded. Moreover, we believe that this work facilitates researchers to identify the leading causes for most discomfort situations in virtual reality environments, associate the most recommended strategies to minimize such discomfort, and explore different ways to conduct experiments involving machine learning to overcome cybersickness.

Evolution of XR Research in Brazil according to the first 22 SVR editions

Although Virtual Reality technology was first developed almost sixty years ago, there has been little survey work giving an overview on how research in VR, AR and MR evolved in Brazil along with their future trends. We provide such analysis by reviewing the development made since the first WRV event, back in 1997, until SVR 2020. The first 22 event editions may help understand how the area was explored and provide a roadmap for future research. The 609 full papers analyzed were compiled into an open catalog, available on the internet. It features important filter capabilities, enabling the quick selection of papers based on citation number, conference topic, area of application, user experiments, statistical analysis and so on. We hope this tool to be of great value to the field, and also for helping researchers decide which topics should be explored when they are beginning their own studies in the area. In this analysis, we also refer to the most frequent authors in the area and how they contributed to the field based on their expertise and research group.

VR Neuro Game: a Virtual Reality Game to Support Neuroanatomy Teaching and Learning

Using virtual environments (VEs) is a safer and cost-effective alternative to training people in different contexts. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR), combined with game aspects, have the potential to improve the user experience in the VE by increasing realism, engagement, and motivation. In education, there is a consensus about its contribution in the teaching and learning processes. However, in Brazil, only a few research groups have developed projects that involve the development of VR for education, due to technical difficulties and high costs. This manuscript presents the development and evaluation of an VR serious game to support the learning of neuroanatomy, an extended version of our previously published paper at the SVR 2020. In this version, we present the results of four different user studies, involving 57 participants, which suggest that the VR Neuro Game is easy to use, even by inexperienced subjects in VR, and is potentially useful for teaching and learning processes, both by individual students and groups of students and also in remote learning. In addition, the game was considered fun and did not cause discomfort. When comparing the knowledge test performance before and immediately after the experiments, we found significant difference only for the virtual condition. The same could be observed for retention results.

Digital and Scientific Literacy with Games: A Pedagogical Process Based on System Engineering

This study presents a Brazilian teaching-learning experience in basic education where game development is used to promote both digital and scientific literacy throughout the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC). Focused on students’ cognitive aspects, the approach presents a pedagogical architecture based on systems development. Thus, it was possible to catalyze convergence between interest in the Science curricular program and the result of knowledge acquisition - such as skills development - by its means. The experiment was carried out centered on genetics studies where students collaboratively produced a digital game, improving in school assessment performance as an outcome. Therefore, we corroborate the effectiveness of creating games as an educational strategy able to optimize aspects of creativity, communication, collaboration, logical reasoning, problem-solving, abstract thinking and resilience.

Virtual look around: comparing presence, cybersickness and usability for virtual tours across different devices

Virtual Reality has become readily available in the last few years through different devices, from desktop computers to head­-mounted displays (HMD). Also, virtual tours became popular with 360º panoramic photographs and video clips on online social media, so people could visit remote locations without being exposed to crowded transportation or long travels. Also, virtual tours demonstrate considerable potential as a form of escapism and even for remote teaching. Since we lack studies that evaluate the User Experience (UX) in virtual tours on different devices, this article aims to compare aspects of the User Experience (regarding sense of presence, cybersickness, and usability) in a virtual tour website developed in WebXR across different devices. To achieve our objective, we developed a virtual tour based on 360º pictures using WebXR API and React 360 framework and conducted an experiment with 41 undergraduate students using four different devices: a laptop computer, a smartphone, a Google Cardboard headset, and a Samsung Gear VR HMD. We evaluated users’ perceptions by adapting and translating the Suitability Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) and users’ performance by measuring the time to fulfill a set of tasks. The main findings from this study include that (i) the overall self-­reported experience using Google Cardboard is worse than using other devices, (ii) the users’ performance is quite similar between the platforms, (iii) there is evidence of unexpected cybersickness symptoms in tests with the smartphone, and (iv) the development of a plausible hypothesis concerning low usability having an effect upon the sense of presence. Additional contributions of our research are the adaptation, translation into Portuguese, psychometric analysis, and revised scoring procedures of the SEQ.

Fast and Robust 3D Reconstruction Solution from Permissive Open-Source Code

With the growth of access to faster computers and more powerful cameras, the 3D reconstruction of objects has become one of the public's main topics of research and demand. This task is vigorously applied in creating virtual environments, creating object models, and other activities. One of the techniques for obtaining 3D features is photogrammetry, mapping objects and scenarios using only images. However, this process is very costly and can be pretty time-consuming for large datasets. This paper proposes a robust, efficient reconstruction pipeline with a low runtime in batch processing and permissive code. It is even possible to commercialize it without the need to keep the code open. We mix an improved structure from motion algorithm and a recurrent multi-view stereo reconstruction. We also use the Point Cloud Library for normal estimation, surface reconstruction, and texture mapping. We compare our results with state-of-the-art techniques using benchmarks and our datasets. The results showed a decrease of 69.4% in the average execution time, with high quality but a greater need for more images to achieve complete reconstruction.

Planning the Design and Execution of Student Performance Assessment in Serious Games

Serious Games (SGs) are used to support knowledge acquisition and skill development. For this, there is a need to measure the results achieved (both during and after students play) to ensure the game effectiveness. In this context, the aim is to develop and evaluate the AvaliaJS, a conceptual model to structure, guide and support the planning of the design and execution of the student's performance assessment in SGs. AvaliaJS has two artifacts: a canvas model, for high-level planning, and an assessment project document, for more detailed specifications of the canvas. To analyze and exemplify the use of the model, the artifacts were applied to three ready-made games as a proof of concept. In addition, the quality of AvaliaJS was evaluated by experts in SGs development and assessment using a questionnaire. The results of experts' answers confirm a good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha α = 0.87) which indicates that AvaliaJS is correct, authentic, consistent, clear, unambiguous and flexible. However, the model will need to be validated during the process of creating a new game to ensure its usability and efficiency. In general, AvaliaJS can be used to support the team in the planning, documentation and development of artifacts and data collection in SGs, as well as in the execution of the assessment, learning measurement and constant and personalized feedback for students.