UbiAccess: an Instrument to Assess System Access in Ubiquitous Scenarios

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing has brought new challenges for the design of scenarios for people–technology interactions. Despite considerable research on formal accessibility standards, related work has hardly investigated them in ubiquitous computing contexts. In this work, we investigate means of analyzing accessibility aspects in ubiquitous environments based on two standard instruments: the Universal Design (UD) Principles and Guidelines and the W3C-WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium). Both instruments were applied to the context of socioenactive ubiquitous environments, providing insights into their applicability and shortcomings. As a result of this analysis we constructed UbiAccess, an instrument to evaluate access in ubiquitous scenarios, which combines and extends characteristics of both UD and W3C-WCAG, filling in some of the gaps we identified. The application of UbiAccess to a case study shows the advantages of its use in informing the evaluation of access in ubiquitous scenarios.