Adaptable and Adaptive Information Access for All Users, Including the Disabled and the Elderly
The tremendously increasing popularity of the World Wide Web indicates that hypermedia is going to be the leading online information medium for the years to come and will most likely be the standard gateway to the “information highway”. Visitors of web si
- PDF / 510,827 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 482 x 692 pts Page_size
- 60 Downloads / 141 Views
Abstract. The tremendously increasing popularity of the World Wide Web indicates that hypermedia is going to be the leading online information medium for the years to come and will most likely be the standard gateway to the "information highway". Visitors of web sites are generally heterogeneaus and have different needs, and this trend is likely even to increase in the future. The aim of the AVANTI project is to cater hypermedia information to these different needs by adapting the content and the presentation of web pages to each individual user. The special needs of elderly and handicapped users are also considered to some extent. Our experience from this research is that adaptation and user modeling techniques that have so far almost exclusively focused on adapting interactive software systems to "normal" users also prove useful for adaptation to users with special needs.
1 User Needs in a Metropolitan Information System The aim of the AVANTI project (see the AVANTI Horne Page) is to develop and evaluate a distributed system which provides hypermedia information about a metropolitan area (e.g. about places of interest, transportation, and public services) for a variety of users, including tourists, residents, travel agency clerks, elderly people, blind persons, wheelchair-bound people, and users with slight forms of dystrophy. The system is to be used at people's homes, public information kiosks and in travel agencies, each with different hardware platforms, software environments, network speeds, and environmental surroundings. From interviewsthat we conducted and from Iiterature (e.g., Zeiner et al., 1995) we deterrnined that our users partially differ in their aims, interests, experience and abilities. Here are a few examples concerning elderly and handicapped users: - In general, elderly users prefer cultural and historic information, while young travelers are more interested in shopping and entertainment possibilities, as well as sports events. - For vision-impaired users, the screen display should be enlarged. For blind users, the modality of the presented information must be changed to tactile and/or audio output. Moreover, additional orientation and navigation aids (e.g., tables of contents, indices)' are helpful for this user group (Kennel et al., 1995). - For wheelchair-bound users, information concerning the accessibility of premises (e.g., the existence, location, and the dimensions of ramps and elevators, the type and width of doors) is important and should therefore be automatically provided.
A. Jameson et al. (eds.), User Modeling © Springer-Verlag Wien 1997
172
J. Fink et al.
- For users with slight forms of dystrophy, including many elderly persons, the graphical interface (i.e., the interaction objects and associated manipulation techniques) should be made less sensitive to erratic hand movements.
2 Adaptable and Adaptive System Behavior In order to cater to different user needs, information systems can be tailored manually by the user or system administrator, or automatically by the syste
Data Loading...
