Not AvailablePeople with cognitive disabilities may experience challenges in consistently performing daily activities because they skip steps, struggle to track progress, or lack the motivation to complete them. These challenges are often along a range; people need assistive devices customized to their specific needs. However, existing assistive technologies, like prompting systems, lack the capabilities to customize support for diverse needs. With the advent of smart home devices, there are opportunities to design prompting systems that support diverse accessibility and motivational needs, thereby supporting the regular practice of daily activities. To understand design factors for such devices, we interviewed adults with cognitive disabilities, parents, and caregivers. Our participants described their needs for future prompting systems, including structuring tasks, supporting motivation, and introducing community support. This paper presents insights and design suggestions for context-aware assistive technologies that could help people with cognitive disabilities regularly perform everyday activities.
more »
« less
Generating smartphone phishing applications for deception based defense
Graphical User Interface (GUI)-based APplications (GAPs) are ubiquitous, both in business and personal use and they are deployed on diverse software and hardware platforms. Unfortunately, close to 50Mil people have disabilities in the USA alone and over 600Mil worldwide, and it is difficult for Users With Disabilities (UWDs) to work with GAPs on their smartphones. Since there are hundreds of disabilities that impair people in vision, movement, thinking, remembering, learning, communicating, and hearing, UWDs need specialized enhancements to GUIs. Mobile Assistive APplications (MA2Ps) provide these enhancement services using specialized accessibility technologies that are fundamentally insecure, thus exposing all smartphone users to a variety of attacks. The goal of this framework is therefore to investigate security problems with accessibility technologies and to explore a novel theoretical foundation to allow stakeholders to create, analyze, and predict the security and privacy behavior of complex MA2Ps for UWDs. A connecting thread in the research thrusts is a combination of GAP and MA2P modeling and compositional intercomponent analysis using these models to create a prototype that can predict and mitigate security threats posed by accessiblity technologies for smartphone users. Also, the results of the proposed framework should inform the GUI security and assistive technologies communities about the possibilities and limits of program analyses and machine learning in dealing with security problems posed by accessibility technologies that make users unsafe.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1650000
- PAR ID:
- 10042093
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Master thesis
- ISSN:
- 1652-7674
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-90
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Given the challenges of wayfinding in large indoor built environments, especially for persons with disabilities (PWDs), a new class of accessible technologies called built environment accessible technologies (BEAT) are being developed. Such technologies are envisioned to help achieve product and opportunity parity for PWDs. The impact and adoption of these BEATs depends largely on clear and quantifiable (tangible and intangible) economic benefits accrued to the end-users and stakeholders. This paper describes the results of a survey conducted to measure potential benefits in terms of quality of life and quality of work life (work productivity) by increased accessibility provisions within built environments as it relates to navigation for PWDs and those without disabilities. Results of this work indicate that BEATs have the greatest potential to improve mobility and exploratory activities for people with disabilities, exploratory activities for people without disabilities, and improve job security for everyone.more » « less
-
As technology is advancing, accessibility is also taken care of seriously. Many users with visual disabilities take advantage of, for example, Microsoft's Seeing AI application (app) that is equipped with artificial intelligence. The app helps people with visual disabilities to recognize objects, people, texts, and many more via a smartphone's built-in camera. As users may use the app in recognizing personally identifiable information, user privacy should carefully be treated and considered as a top priority. Yet, little is known about the user privacy issues among users with visual disabilities, such that this study aims to address the knowledge gap by conducting a questionnaire with the Seeing AI users with visual disabilities. This study found that those with visual disabilities had a lack of knowledge about user privacy policies. It is recommended to offer an adequate educational training; thus, those with visual disabilities can be well informed of user privacy policies, ultimately leading to promoting safe online behavior to protect themselves from digital privacy and security problems.more » « less
-
The increasing use of computer technologies to perform everyday activities simplifies living, but brings the underlying cybersecurity concern to the fore. Due to the accessibility of smartphones, many teenagers are “online” for significant hours in a day. Many middle and high school students have been victims of a cybercrime through online activities. Additionally, various incidents of Internet fraud have been reported where teenagers are persuaded to buy games, music, and videos without realizing they are falling for a scam or disclosing their credit card information. Studies have shown that implementing a successful security awareness camp is crucial in boosting cybersecurity and attracting talent to this domain. This paper discusses our efforts on creating smartphone apps in the context of cyber-security to encourage safe use of apps and raise awareness among teenagers. The strategy used is to develop apps with the intention of closing security gaps. By doing this, teenagers gain a wealth of information about cybersecurity. This work aims to develop students' problem-solving skills and create a cybersecurity mindset for dealing with real-world cybersecurity-related problems such as malware or phishing assaults and to promote interest in cybersecurity careers among high school students utilizing smartphone-based interactive learning modules. We also examine gender-specific patterns and evaluate whether students' cybersecurity problem-solving skills have improved due to this novel intervention.more » « less
-
The popularity of accessibility research has grown recently, improving digital inclusion for people with disabilities. However, researchers, including those who have disabilities, have attempted to include people with disabilities in all aspects of design, and they have identified a myriad of practical accessibility barriers posed by tools and methods leveraged by human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers during prototyping. To build a more inclusive technological landscape, we must question the effectiveness of existing prototyping tools and methods, repurpose/retrofit existing resources, and build new tools and methods to support the participation of both researchers and people with disabilities within the prototyping design process of novel technologies. This full-day workshop at CHI 2025 will provide a platform for HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to discuss barriers and opportunities for creating accessible prototyping and promote hands-on ideation and fabrication exercises aimed at futuring accessible prototyping.more » « less
An official website of the United States government

