The first video features Jutta Treviranus (IDRC) on FLOE and Open Educational Resources at WSIS 2012.

The second video features Axel Leblois (Executive Director G3ict) on Lifelong Learning with Assistive Technologies at WSIS 2012.

We hope to publish some more videos in the next few days.

Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham 23rd and 24th October 2012

Visit us at:
http://itag.gamecity.org/
http://www.facebook.com/iTAG.conf
http://twitter.com/#!/ITAG12

Call for papers:

The aim of the conference is to bring together academics and practitioners working with interactive technologies to explore and innovate within the areas of Education, Health and Disability. We have a particular focus on the use of gaming hardware and software to implement accessible solutions, interaction design using new input/output devices and the increasing impact of ubiquitous computing on our everyday well being.
The conference provides an excellent opportunity to showcase practice and to mainstream research ideas and outcomes. It introduces a wider audience to key findings and products from research and illustrates how practice feeds back into and informs research. The conference creates a forum for two-way communication between the academic and practitioner communities and particularly welcomes user led presentations and workshops.
The programme includes presentations of papers, workshops, and an exhibition space for demonstrations and posters. This event is held in partnership with GameCity – the World’s best-loved videogame festival (http://gamecity.org/) and delegates are welcome to attend all GameCity events including the opening drinks reception.

Scope:

As guidance to participants on scope of papers and activities we state that: ‘Education’ includes both compulsory and post-compulsory education; ‘Disability’ includes physical, sensory and cognitive impairment; and the impact of interactive technologies and games on health and well-being is also a focus of this conference. An emphasis is placed on practical applications and guides to where currently available training resources and tools can be found and used. A selection of papers will be published electronically in full, so presentations will be limited to 20 minutes for the key findings, including time for questions from the floor. It is hoped (as in previous years) that the best papers will be published in a special issue of a relevant academic journal.

Previous special issues have included:

• Journal of Assistive Technologies – Volume 3 issue 2 June 2009 (ITAG 2008 selected papers)
• Computers and Education – Volume 56, issue 1 (ITAG 2009 selected papers)
• International Journal of Games Based Learning – in press (ITAG 2010 selected papers)
• Journal of Assistive Technologies – Volume 6 issue 3 in development (ITAG 2011 selected papers)

Themes and topics:

The conference encourages multidisciplinary papers and examples of themes and topics include (but don’t let this restrict you):
Games Based Learning:

• Social and collaborative aspects of games (e.g., educational aspects of Massively Multiplayer Online Games)
• The efficacy of games based learning
• Self authored content and personalisation in games
• Learning theory, pedagogy and instructional design in games
• Motivational aspects of games
• Collaboration between Science and Art for more effective learning
• Games to promote the inclusion (e.g., for offenders and people with disabilities, motivation of female gamers)

Game related Technologies:

• Using contemporary games controllers to create new opportunities in health and rehabilitation applications (e.g., applications for Wii Fit, Kinect. Move).
• Brain control interfaces to games
• Pervasiveness and mobility of games
• Location based services
• Handheld learning in the classroom

Games for Health:

• Serious games for clinical assessment (e.g. after stroke)
• Serious games for rehabilitation and treatment (e.g. of phobias, ADHA, post-traumatic stress disorders, stroke)
• ‘Modding’ for health
• Art and music rehabilitation in 3D multisensory environments
• Games for children in hospital
• Games to increase physical activity in children

Accessibility and Design:

• Open source accessibility
• Participatory design
• Design for all
• Natural user interfaces
• The representation and promotion of gender equality in games
• Alternative input modalities to games for people with disabilities (e.g., brain, haptic and audio interfaces)
• Access to interactive technologies for elderly people

Web based technologies:

• Resources for interactive learning tools and environments, e.g. Flash, podcasts, simulations, mobile games, Web 2.0 tool etc.
• The Internet as a communication medium ( e.g. for people with Asperger Syndrome).
• Browser based games and linking into social media channels Submissions

Those wishing to present papers or hold a workshop should send abstracts, to a maximum of 500 words. For those hoping to exhibit or produce a poster, a 300-word abstract is required. The deadline for submissions is Friday1st June 2012 to be sent to: karen.krelle@ntu.ac.uk

Final copies of accepted papers are required by Friday 14th September 2012.
There is a conference fee of £150 for 2 days, and £80 for 1 day registration. This price includes your invitation to the Game City opening event, lunch, and morning and afternoon refreshments.

Accommodation and Travel Links: https://www.conferencebookings.co.uk/delegate/NCBITAGEHD2010
NottinghamCityTravel Link: http://www.nctx.co.uk/

Prizes Offered:

As in previous years prizes will be awarded!

• Best Paper Award: £250
• Best Student Paper award: £250
• Best Student Poster: £150.

Date: Wednesday, 30 May
Venue: Hotel Sofitel Brussels Europe, Place Jourdan 1 – 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Time: 14.00hrs-16.00hrs
If you would like to join the launch please mail Cindy De Koninck.

DiPAR will deliver a novel diagnostic system for the early diagnosis of the onset of Parkinson’s disease. As part of the consortium, five European SMEs have come together to form a vertically integrated supply chain to work with four RTD performers to deliver an enhanced version of technology developed by Manus Neurodynamica Ltd. as a proof of concept. The intelligent decision support system will include a unique hand held device, and communications framework, supporting secure patient data transfer between remote clinics and healthcare centres. The final system will be taken through pre‐ clinical trials, conducted at the University Medical Centre Groningen (Netherlands) to demonstrate the efficacy of the system.

Parkinson’s disease affects 5 citizens in every 1000 over the age of 60, is chronic, degenerative and currently incurable. Although there are promising therapies on the horizon, the best patient outcome available today can only be delivered on the basis of early and accurate diagnosis, which would lead to superior management and care planning, resulting in enhanced quality of life for the patient. Across the developed world, the population is ageing, leading to increases per capita in neuromotor conditions.

The commercial exploitation of DiPAR will lead to improvement of the European and global healthcare system via early diagnosis of the illness and will generate significant revenues from the sales and associated support of the diagnostics system, thereby improving the competiveness of the SME partners involved.

The research is enabled by a grant awarded to the consortium by the European Union under the Framework Programme 7.

HCI International 2013 incorporates 12 Conferences / thematic areas, expecting to attract over 2,000 participants from all over the world. The program will feature pre-conference tutorials, an opening session with a keynote address, more than 250 parallel sessions, poster presentations, and an exhibition where attendees will be able to examine state-of-the-art HCI technology and interact with representatives of manufacturers, vendors, publishers, and potential employers. HCI International 2013 promises to be an unforgettable cluster of high quality international scientific events, and an ideal occasion to come to contact with the rapidly evolving ICT market worldwide.

The session ‘eInclusion – Policies, Programs, Best Practices … and Lessons Failure Has Taught’ will be one of the parallel sessions of the ‘Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction’ Conference / Thematic Area. Accepted papers will appear in the Conference Proceedings along with the other regular submissions that will be accepted for oral presentation, following a peer-review process.
The HCI International 2013 Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer in a multi-volume set. Papers will appear in volumes of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series. Extended Poster abstracts will be published in the Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series.
All volumes will be available on-line through the SpringerLink Digital Library, readily accessible by all subscribing libraries around the world, and will be indexed by a number of services including EI and ISI CPCI-S.

You can try it right now via the Farfalla website: you only have to click on the bar on the upper-right part of the page to select a profile. Every profile allows accessing different kinds of resources, from text magnification to an onscreen keyboard.

They will add more tools in the future, so if you can’t find anything useful, you could try contacting them and explaining your needs.

Farfalla is based on free technologies such as jQuery, jQuery-UI, PHP and MySQL. Farfalla is Free Software. Its source code is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL). The main developer is Andrea Mangiatordi.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/farfallaproject

When: April 18, 1 PM Eastern (GMT-4)

Where: Online; information about participating will be sent to registrants.

Registration and information page.

Raising the Floor (RtF) is an international coalition of individuals and organizations working to ensure that the Internet, and everything available through it, is accessible to people experiencing accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, or age. Of particular concern are people who are underserved or unserved due to the type or combination of disabilities they have, the part of the world they live in, or the limited resources (financial or program) available to them. A central activity of Raising the Floor – International is coordination of an emerging consortium to build a Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII). For more information see http://raisingthefloor.org.

ATLEC logo

Alongside various European initiatives that address training the trainers and professionals who work with people with disabilities, ATLEC, (Assistive Technology Learning Through A Unified Curriculum) a 2 year project partially funded by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning program, aims to fill the current gap concerning the ICT AT training of people with disabilities.
ATLEC will support their learning in order to develop specific skills, particularly tailored to their individual and employability needs, while also creating the job profile of ICT AT trainer, relevant for VET (Vocational Education and Training) Centres.

“The ATLEC project gives us an opportunity to work with colleagues across Europe in establishing and developing assistive technology for young people and for adults with physical and learning disabilities.
In the world of Disability we only move forward by working together. We are all European citizens and it’s very important we share our expertise across the European Community. The more we share together, the better.3
(David Stewart OBE, Headteacher at Oak Field School & Sports College, Nottingham, UK)

The kick-off meeting of the ATLEC project took place on 16-17/01/2012 in Nottingham, UK. It brought together experts in the field from four different countries. The ATLEC partnership consists of: Oak Field School and Sports College (U.K.) –contractor-, PhoenixKM BVBA (BE) –coordinator-, Disability NOW (GR), AIAS Bologna onlus (IT), Greenhat Interactive Ltd (U.K.), and the University of Athens (GR).

The innovation of this project lies with the individual tailoring of the ATLEC curriculum and training materials to the learners’ needs, combined with the implementation of mobile learning applications to support the learning, as well as applying mentoring as an additional supportive aspect of the ATLEC training services. The learner and his/her needs and potential are central in the project, as well as the relationship between the learner and the trainer who is expected to equally benefit from the learning process.

Supporting the end-users’ learning in effective usage of ICT-based AT means enables them to gain new skills, including self-directed learning and also allows them to gain self confidence, improve their adaptability skills and their attitude towards risk taking which is necessary to address the challenges of the employment environment that in many cases is still full of physical, technological and attitudinal barriers.
A mentoring scheme will be set up and run in workplaces in Belgium and Greece, directly linking the knowledge and skills acquired with the practice, while also facing the reality in the working environment.

The applied pedagogical methodologies will use blended learning (face-to-face, online and mobile), and will provide accessible WCAG2.0 compliant learning/training objects/material, which are thus exchangeable with other learning initiatives. All ATLEC learning opportunities objects, learning materials and mobile applications will also be offered through the platform of the ViPi project (KA3-ICT, 511792-LLP-1-2010-1-GR-KA3-KA3NW, www.vipi-project.eu) that aims to launch in 2012, and which is also coordinated by PhoenixKM BVBA.

Finally, the ATLEC consortium is focusing on promoting free access to the resources developed. The mobile application will be freely available via the Android market, while all created material will follow a creative commons license. This approach will ensure that the research, methodology and outcomes of the project will be freely available to everyone.

The 2nd ATLEC project partnership meeting will take place in Belgium (Ypres) and is scheduled for 25-26/6/2012, in combination with a local workshop.

Follow ATLEC project via Twitter: www.twitter.com/ATLEC_project
or via Facebook: www.facebook.com/ATLECproject

Media Access Australia now released a nice list of guidelines how a person with disabilities can use YouTube (guidelines) , Twitter (guidelines) and Facebook (guidelines).

Call for papers

The aim of the conference is to bring together academics and practitioners working with interactive technologies to explore and innovate within the areas of Education, Health and Disability. We have a particular focus on the use of gaming hardware and software to implement accessible solutions, interaction design using new input/output devices and the increasing impact of ubiquitous computing on our everyday well being.
The conference provides an excellent opportunity to showcase practice and to mainstream research ideas and outcomes. It introduces a wider audience to key findings and products from research and illustrates how practice feeds back into and informs research. The conference creates a forum for two-way communication between the academic and practitioner communities and particularly welcomes user led presentations and workshops.
The programme includes presentations of papers, workshops, and an exhibition space for demonstrations and posters. This event is held in partnership with GameCity – the World’s best-loved videogame festival (http://gamecity.org/) and delegates are welcome to attend all GameCity events including the opening drinks reception.

Scope

As guidance to participants on scope of papers and activities we state that: ‘Education’ includes both compulsory and post-compulsory education; ‘Disability’ includes physical, sensory and cognitive impairment; and the impact of interactive technologies and games on health and well-being is also a focus of this conference. An emphasis is placed on practical applications and guides to where currently available training resources and tools can be found and used. A selection of papers will be published electronically in full, so presentations will be limited to 20 minutes for the key findings, including time for questions from the floor. It is hoped (as in previous years) that the best papers will be published in a special issue of a relevant academic journal. Previous special issues have included:

• Journal of Assistive Technologies – Volume 3 issue 2 June 2009 (ITAG 2008 selected papers)
• Computers and Education – Volume 56, issue 1 (ITAG 2009 selected papers)
• International Journal of Games Based Learning – in press (ITAG 2010 selected papers)
• Journal of Assistive Technologies – Volume 6 issue 3 in development (ITAG 2011 selected papers)

Themes and topics:

The conference encourages multidisciplinary papers and examples of themes and topics include (but don’t let this restrict you):

Games Based Learning:

• Social and collaborative aspects of games (e.g., educational aspects of Massively Multiplayer Online Games)
• The efficacy of games based learning
• Self authored content and personalisation in games
• Learning theory, pedagogy and instructional design in games
• Motivational aspects of games
• Collaboration between Science and Art for more effective learning
• Games to promote the inclusion (e.g., for offenders and people with disabilities, motivation of female gamers)

Game related Technologies:

• Using contemporary games controllers to create new opportunities in health and rehabilitation applications (e.g., applications for Wii Fit, Kinect. Move).
• Brain control interfaces to games
• Pervasiveness and mobility of games
• Location based services
• Handheld learning in the classroom

Games for Health:

• Serious games for clinical assessment (e.g. after stroke)
• Serious games for rehabilitation and treatment (e.g. of phobias, ADHA, post-traumatic stress disorders, stroke)
• ‘Modding’ for health
• Art and music rehabilitation in 3D multisensory environments
• Games for children in hospital
• Games to increase physical activity in children

Accessibility and Design:

• Open source accessibility
• Participatory design
• Design for all
• Natural user interfaces
• The representation and promotion of gender equality in games
• Alternative input modalities to games for people with disabilities (e.g., brain, haptic and audio interfaces)
• Access to interactive technologies for elderly people

Web based technologies:

• Resources for interactive learning tools and environments, e.g. Flash, podcasts, simulations, mobile games, Web 2.0 tool etc.
• The Internet as a communication medium ( e.g. for people with Asperger Syndrome).
• Browser based games and linking into social media channels

Submissions

Those wishing to present papers or hold a workshop should send abstracts, to a maximum of 500 words. For those hoping to exhibit or produce a poster, a 300-word abstract is required. The deadline for submissions is Friday1st June 2012 to be sent to: karen.krelle@ntu.ac.uk
Final copies of accepted papers are required by Friday 14th September 2012
There is a conference fee of £150 for 2 days, and £80 for 1 day registration. This price includes your invitation to the Game City opening event, lunch, and morning and afternoon refreshments.

Accommodation and Travel Links:  https://www.conferencebookings.co.uk/delegate/NCBITAGEHD2010 and http://www.nctx.co.uk/

Prizes Offered:

As in previous years prizes will be awarded!

• Best Paper Award: £250
• Best Student Paper award: £250
• Best Student Poster: £150

AALIANCE2 Project is a Coordination Action funded in the FP7-ICT-2011.7, which focuses on the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions based on advanced ICT technologies for ageing and wellbeing of elderly people in Europe. One of its main objectives is to build consensus upon research priorities in the AAL roadmap and Strategic Research Agenda for the upcoming decades.

This first workshop will focus on the functional areas associable to the AAL application domains (AAL4Person, AAL in the Community) and the relative activities/application scenarios. The objectives are to refine, classify, organize and improve the contents of the first AALIANCE Roadmap, published in March 2010.

Suitable persons for the AALIANCE2 Workshop are experts in the AAL domain, which have experience in some of the following tasks: designing, developing, producing, experimenting, and assessing AAL technologies or studying and defining the main aspects of AAL field. Experts should be AAL technology developers and researchers, ICT service providers and technology suppliers, policy‐makers, standardization organizations, health and care service organizations, caregivers, etc.

We would like to invite you (or some of your staff) to participate in this Workshop as Experts in the field of the AAL or responsible in Projects related to AAL and Ageing Well. The participation in the Workshop is limited to a small number of experts, therefore we ask you to confirm your participation as soon as possible, since the experts will be accepted based on the “who first confirms, first participates in”.
We gently ask you to extend this invitation also to all partners of the AAL project in which you are involved in.

If you accept to participate in the Workshop, you will receive guidelines to participate in the event and contents of the previous AALIANCE Roadmap.

The video features an interview with the OASIS project coordinator Silvio Bonfiglio (FIMI), as well as scenes from piloting and user forums in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Romania.

OASIS is a Large Scale Integrating Project — partially funded by the European Commission (FP7-ICT 215754) – with the aim to develop an open and innovative reference architecture, based upon ontologies and semantic services, that will allow plug and play and cost-effective interconnection of existing and newly developed services in all domains required for the independent and autonomous living of older people and their enhanced Quality of Life.

For more information: www.oasis-project.eu

A related video can be found at http://youtu.be/gOme8Qa-s9U which presents the OASIS project concept.

Mobile communications have become in less than two decades omnipresent in all countries, reaching out to the most isolated and underserved populations in developed and developing countries alike. In 2011more than 5.4 billion mobile phones are in use, almost one per human being on the planet.

In the midst of this telecommunication revolution, however, populations of senior citizens and persons living with disabilities have been left out due to accessibility factors: complex human interfaces difficult to understand and activate for persons with cognitive impairments or learning disabilities, lack of alternative communications for persons living with low vision, blind, hard of hearing or deaf, or, quite often handset ergonomics too difficult for persons with physical disabilities such as dexterity or mobility limitations.

This report contains references to the new legislative and regulatory framework set by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an important resource for policy makers. It also covers practical elements required for a successful implementation of those programs and policies.

Download report.

Download the final report (September 2011).