Universal access in the information society, May 10, 2024
Healthcare is one of the most important sectors of our society, and during the COVID-19 pandemic ... more Healthcare is one of the most important sectors of our society, and during the COVID-19 pandemic a new challenge emerged-how to support people safely and effectively at home regarding their health-related problems. In this regard chatbots or conversational agents (CAs) play an increasingly important role, and are spreading rapidly. They can enhance not only user interaction by delivering quick feedback or responses, but also hospital management, thanks to several of their features. Considerable research is focused on making CAs more reliable, accurate, and robust. However, a critical aspect of chatbots is how to make them inclusive, in order to effectively support the interaction of users unfamiliar with technology, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. In this study, we investigate the current use of chatbots in healthcare, exploring their evolution over time and their inclusivity. The study was carried out on four digital libraries (ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar) on research articles published in the last 5 years, with a total of 21 articles describing chatbots implemented and actually used in the eHealth clinical area. The results showed a notable improvement in the use of chatbots in the last few years but also highlight some design issues, including poor attention to inclusion. Based on the findings, we recommend a different kind of approach for implementing chatbots with an inclusive accessibility-by-design approach.
Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 2009
This study aims to improve Wikipedia usability for the blind and promote the application of stand... more This study aims to improve Wikipedia usability for the blind and promote the application of standards relating to Web accessibility and usability. First, accessibility and usability of Wikipedia home, search result and edit pages are analysed using the JAWS screen reader; next, suggestions for improving interaction are proposed and a new Wikipedia editing interface built. Most of the improvements were obtained using the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) suite, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) within the framework of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Last, a scenario of use compares interaction of blind people with the original and the modified interfaces. Our study highlights that although all contents are accessible via screen reader, usability issues exist due to the user's difficulties when interacting with the interface. The scenario of use shows how building an editing interface with the W3C WAI-ARIA suite eliminates many obstacles that can prevent blind users from actively contributing to Wikipedia. The modified Wikipedia editing page is simpler to use via a screen reader than the original one because ARIA ensures a page overview, rapid navigation, and total control of what is happening in the interface.
Today wikis are becoming increasingly widespread, and offer great benefits in a variety of collab... more Today wikis are becoming increasingly widespread, and offer great benefits in a variety of collaborative environments. Therefore, to be universally valuable, wiki systems should be easy to use for anyone, regardless of ability. This paper describes obstacles that a blind user may encounter when interacting via screen reader with Wikipedia, and offers some suggestions for improving usability.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that results in narrow interest ... more Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that results in narrow interest and impairments in communication and social relationships. Usually, unknown contexts generate anxiety and frustration in persons with ASD, and great impediment in accessing services, including health ones. This seriously compromises prevention and treatment interventions in different medical areas. Technology offers many opportunities for persons with ASD and can be used to act as a mediator, helping to manage communication and interpersonal relationships and to familiarize with the environment, especially in new contexts. Specifically, we used digital tools to reduce stress and anxiety while teaching adequate dental care to children with ASD (MyDentist project). To generalize the R&D approach, we followed in the context of the MyDentist project for its adoption for research and development of inclusive software in e-health. We analyze our design and development process using the three-c...
Proceedings of the 13th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter: Designing the next interaction, 2019
Guidelines for teaching music to children with autism mainly focus on the environment and activit... more Guidelines for teaching music to children with autism mainly focus on the environment and activities, often neglecting how to deliver music instructions in an accessible and effective way. Technology-enhanced intervention offers a structured, repeatable, and coherent training environment, which can be modulated according to the student's needs. The Suoniamo app is specifically designed to help students with autism learn to play music in a visually structured way. The app is co-designed with professionals experienced in training people with autism. It provides modules for learning how to read, identify and interpret musical notation (note position and values, pauses, etc.) on a virtual piano keyboard. After this structured training, the child may generalize mastered concepts on a real piano, being able to interpret notes, rhythms, pauses and simple scores in the pentagram. Preliminary results of a pilot study with three students with autism appear to confirm the validity of the proposed approach.
The dental health of children with autism presents many challenges, since they usually perceive s... more The dental health of children with autism presents many challenges, since they usually perceive sensory experiences differently and have problems accepting unknown social contexts. In a dental care setting, there are many strong sound-visual stimulations that are not experienced in any other setting. This usually upsets a patient with autism, often forcing dentists to administer chemical sedation in order to carry out dental work. Recently, many technology-enhanced systems and apps have been proposed to help people with autism adapt and cope with distressing situations. However, few studies have attempted to exploit ICT to simplify dental care in people with autism. This study explores the potential of personalized digital tools to help children with autism become familiar with dental care procedures and environments and to learn how to perform proper oral hygiene at home. To this aim, we carried out a 3-month exploratory study involving a multidisciplinary team of researchers, deve...
The world population is rapidly aging and becoming a burden to health systems around the world. I... more The world population is rapidly aging and becoming a burden to health systems around the world. In this work we present a conceptual framework to encourage the research community to develop more comprehensive and adaptive ICT solutions for prevention and rehabilitation of chronic conditions in the daily life of the aging population and beyond health facilities. We first present an overview of current international standards in human functioning and disability, and how chronic conditions are interconnected in older age. We then describe innovative mobile and sensor technologies, predictive data analysis in healthcare, and game-based prevention and rehabilitation techniques. We then set forth a multidisciplinary approach for the personalized prevention and rehabilitation of chronic conditions using unobtrusive and pervasive sensors, interactive activities, and predictive analytics, which also eases the tasks of health-related researchers, caregivers and providers. Our proposal represe...
Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 2020
This work aims to promote musical learning in order to ease the inclusion of students with autism... more This work aims to promote musical learning in order to ease the inclusion of students with autism in the classroom and during musical performances. To this end, a web application was developed using a user-centered design approach involving professionals experienced in training people with autism, to help end users learn the basic concepts of music. The app allows teachers or caregivers to set up a customized learning environment according to each student's needs, so that these students can play songs in collaboration with classmates. Preliminary results suggest a key role for technology in facilitating music teaching and in supporting the learning process for students with autism.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show worse oral health than their peers. Their acces... more Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show worse oral health than their peers. Their access to health services is, at present, inadequate: few high-quality interventions have been designed and implemented to improve their care procedures so far. The purpose of this study is to describe an experience of dental care supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), for children with ASD in a public health service. In our study, 59 children (mean age 9.9 years; SD = 5.43) participated in the MyDentist project. It integrates classic dental care techniques with new practices for desensitization and fear control, delivered through an enhanced customized ICT-based intervention aiming at familiarizing the child with ASD with the medical setting and procedures. Two questionnaires were filled out by parents to describe the acceptability of the MyDentist experience for their children. Significant results were shown from T0 (before initiating MyDentist) to T1 (after 6 months...
Proceedings of the 3rd 2015 Workshop on ICTs for improving Patients Rehabilitation Research Techniques, 2015
The current aging of the population is linked to many societal challenges, especially in healthca... more The current aging of the population is linked to many societal challenges, especially in healthcare. Co-morbid chronic conditions are prevalent in older age and drastically affect people's wellbeing, but they are difficult to study due to the many health determinants involved. For this reason, we propose a multidisciplinary ICT-based approach for the prevention and rehabilitation of chronic conditions using unobtrusive and pervasive sensors, interactive activities, and predictive analytics. This framework allows fine monitoring of older people's health and improved personalized care for healthy aging. To illustrate the advantages of this pervasive and data-driven approach we set forth a conceptual model, in which we use cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression and falls as examples of common co-morbid conditions in older people.
In this paper we propose an integration between electronic mail and web services for people such ... more In this paper we propose an integration between electronic mail and web services for people such as library operators who need to send large files to Internet users. The proposed solution permits librarians to continue using the e-mail service to send large documents, but at the same time overcomes problems that users can encounter downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator sends the document as an attachment to the destination address, on fly the e-mail server extracts and saves the attachments in a web-server disk file and substitutes them with a new message part that includes the URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects using a user-friendly browser.
2016 Third International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG), 2016
One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potent... more One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potential in any sector, including eGovernment, eCommerce, and eHealth services. Certified Electronic Mail (CEM) systems of Member States are currently not interoperable, thus impacting on economic growth and competitiveness. The paper investigates the use of the DNSSec technology as a technological evolution of the Italian CEM System and the first step towards interoperability and adherence to international standards.
Universal access in the information society, May 10, 2024
Healthcare is one of the most important sectors of our society, and during the COVID-19 pandemic ... more Healthcare is one of the most important sectors of our society, and during the COVID-19 pandemic a new challenge emerged-how to support people safely and effectively at home regarding their health-related problems. In this regard chatbots or conversational agents (CAs) play an increasingly important role, and are spreading rapidly. They can enhance not only user interaction by delivering quick feedback or responses, but also hospital management, thanks to several of their features. Considerable research is focused on making CAs more reliable, accurate, and robust. However, a critical aspect of chatbots is how to make them inclusive, in order to effectively support the interaction of users unfamiliar with technology, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. In this study, we investigate the current use of chatbots in healthcare, exploring their evolution over time and their inclusivity. The study was carried out on four digital libraries (ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar) on research articles published in the last 5 years, with a total of 21 articles describing chatbots implemented and actually used in the eHealth clinical area. The results showed a notable improvement in the use of chatbots in the last few years but also highlight some design issues, including poor attention to inclusion. Based on the findings, we recommend a different kind of approach for implementing chatbots with an inclusive accessibility-by-design approach.
Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 2009
This study aims to improve Wikipedia usability for the blind and promote the application of stand... more This study aims to improve Wikipedia usability for the blind and promote the application of standards relating to Web accessibility and usability. First, accessibility and usability of Wikipedia home, search result and edit pages are analysed using the JAWS screen reader; next, suggestions for improving interaction are proposed and a new Wikipedia editing interface built. Most of the improvements were obtained using the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) suite, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) within the framework of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Last, a scenario of use compares interaction of blind people with the original and the modified interfaces. Our study highlights that although all contents are accessible via screen reader, usability issues exist due to the user's difficulties when interacting with the interface. The scenario of use shows how building an editing interface with the W3C WAI-ARIA suite eliminates many obstacles that can prevent blind users from actively contributing to Wikipedia. The modified Wikipedia editing page is simpler to use via a screen reader than the original one because ARIA ensures a page overview, rapid navigation, and total control of what is happening in the interface.
Today wikis are becoming increasingly widespread, and offer great benefits in a variety of collab... more Today wikis are becoming increasingly widespread, and offer great benefits in a variety of collaborative environments. Therefore, to be universally valuable, wiki systems should be easy to use for anyone, regardless of ability. This paper describes obstacles that a blind user may encounter when interacting via screen reader with Wikipedia, and offers some suggestions for improving usability.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that results in narrow interest ... more Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that results in narrow interest and impairments in communication and social relationships. Usually, unknown contexts generate anxiety and frustration in persons with ASD, and great impediment in accessing services, including health ones. This seriously compromises prevention and treatment interventions in different medical areas. Technology offers many opportunities for persons with ASD and can be used to act as a mediator, helping to manage communication and interpersonal relationships and to familiarize with the environment, especially in new contexts. Specifically, we used digital tools to reduce stress and anxiety while teaching adequate dental care to children with ASD (MyDentist project). To generalize the R&D approach, we followed in the context of the MyDentist project for its adoption for research and development of inclusive software in e-health. We analyze our design and development process using the three-c...
Proceedings of the 13th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter: Designing the next interaction, 2019
Guidelines for teaching music to children with autism mainly focus on the environment and activit... more Guidelines for teaching music to children with autism mainly focus on the environment and activities, often neglecting how to deliver music instructions in an accessible and effective way. Technology-enhanced intervention offers a structured, repeatable, and coherent training environment, which can be modulated according to the student's needs. The Suoniamo app is specifically designed to help students with autism learn to play music in a visually structured way. The app is co-designed with professionals experienced in training people with autism. It provides modules for learning how to read, identify and interpret musical notation (note position and values, pauses, etc.) on a virtual piano keyboard. After this structured training, the child may generalize mastered concepts on a real piano, being able to interpret notes, rhythms, pauses and simple scores in the pentagram. Preliminary results of a pilot study with three students with autism appear to confirm the validity of the proposed approach.
The dental health of children with autism presents many challenges, since they usually perceive s... more The dental health of children with autism presents many challenges, since they usually perceive sensory experiences differently and have problems accepting unknown social contexts. In a dental care setting, there are many strong sound-visual stimulations that are not experienced in any other setting. This usually upsets a patient with autism, often forcing dentists to administer chemical sedation in order to carry out dental work. Recently, many technology-enhanced systems and apps have been proposed to help people with autism adapt and cope with distressing situations. However, few studies have attempted to exploit ICT to simplify dental care in people with autism. This study explores the potential of personalized digital tools to help children with autism become familiar with dental care procedures and environments and to learn how to perform proper oral hygiene at home. To this aim, we carried out a 3-month exploratory study involving a multidisciplinary team of researchers, deve...
The world population is rapidly aging and becoming a burden to health systems around the world. I... more The world population is rapidly aging and becoming a burden to health systems around the world. In this work we present a conceptual framework to encourage the research community to develop more comprehensive and adaptive ICT solutions for prevention and rehabilitation of chronic conditions in the daily life of the aging population and beyond health facilities. We first present an overview of current international standards in human functioning and disability, and how chronic conditions are interconnected in older age. We then describe innovative mobile and sensor technologies, predictive data analysis in healthcare, and game-based prevention and rehabilitation techniques. We then set forth a multidisciplinary approach for the personalized prevention and rehabilitation of chronic conditions using unobtrusive and pervasive sensors, interactive activities, and predictive analytics, which also eases the tasks of health-related researchers, caregivers and providers. Our proposal represe...
Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 2020
This work aims to promote musical learning in order to ease the inclusion of students with autism... more This work aims to promote musical learning in order to ease the inclusion of students with autism in the classroom and during musical performances. To this end, a web application was developed using a user-centered design approach involving professionals experienced in training people with autism, to help end users learn the basic concepts of music. The app allows teachers or caregivers to set up a customized learning environment according to each student's needs, so that these students can play songs in collaboration with classmates. Preliminary results suggest a key role for technology in facilitating music teaching and in supporting the learning process for students with autism.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show worse oral health than their peers. Their acces... more Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show worse oral health than their peers. Their access to health services is, at present, inadequate: few high-quality interventions have been designed and implemented to improve their care procedures so far. The purpose of this study is to describe an experience of dental care supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), for children with ASD in a public health service. In our study, 59 children (mean age 9.9 years; SD = 5.43) participated in the MyDentist project. It integrates classic dental care techniques with new practices for desensitization and fear control, delivered through an enhanced customized ICT-based intervention aiming at familiarizing the child with ASD with the medical setting and procedures. Two questionnaires were filled out by parents to describe the acceptability of the MyDentist experience for their children. Significant results were shown from T0 (before initiating MyDentist) to T1 (after 6 months...
Proceedings of the 3rd 2015 Workshop on ICTs for improving Patients Rehabilitation Research Techniques, 2015
The current aging of the population is linked to many societal challenges, especially in healthca... more The current aging of the population is linked to many societal challenges, especially in healthcare. Co-morbid chronic conditions are prevalent in older age and drastically affect people's wellbeing, but they are difficult to study due to the many health determinants involved. For this reason, we propose a multidisciplinary ICT-based approach for the prevention and rehabilitation of chronic conditions using unobtrusive and pervasive sensors, interactive activities, and predictive analytics. This framework allows fine monitoring of older people's health and improved personalized care for healthy aging. To illustrate the advantages of this pervasive and data-driven approach we set forth a conceptual model, in which we use cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression and falls as examples of common co-morbid conditions in older people.
In this paper we propose an integration between electronic mail and web services for people such ... more In this paper we propose an integration between electronic mail and web services for people such as library operators who need to send large files to Internet users. The proposed solution permits librarians to continue using the e-mail service to send large documents, but at the same time overcomes problems that users can encounter downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator sends the document as an attachment to the destination address, on fly the e-mail server extracts and saves the attachments in a web-server disk file and substitutes them with a new message part that includes the URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects using a user-friendly browser.
2016 Third International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG), 2016
One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potent... more One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potential in any sector, including eGovernment, eCommerce, and eHealth services. Certified Electronic Mail (CEM) systems of Member States are currently not interoperable, thus impacting on economic growth and competitiveness. The paper investigates the use of the DNSSec technology as a technological evolution of the Italian CEM System and the first step towards interoperability and adherence to international standards.
The European population is aging steadily. As a consequence neurodegenera-tive pathologies are be... more The European population is aging steadily. As a consequence neurodegenera-tive pathologies are becoming widespread, impacting heavily on social costs, so it is important to support independent living as long as possible, especially in the healthy elderly. This paper proposes an idea for advancing current monitoring technologies by breaking down the current paradigm and exploiting augmented everyday objects. Monitoring and behavior analysis can be exploited as triggers for motivating behavior changes in an elderly person. Thanks to progress in Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) one scenario is described to illustrate the proposed design concept. With a collaborative multidisciplinary effort, this view could be fast become a reality.
The European population is aging steadily. As a consequence neu-rodegenerative pathologies are be... more The European population is aging steadily. As a consequence neu-rodegenerative pathologies are becoming widespread, impacting heavily on social costs, so it is important to support independent living as long as possible, especially in the healthy elderly. This paper proposes an idea for advancing current monitoring technologies by breaking down the current paradigm and exploiting augmented everyday objects. Monitoring and behavior analysis can be exploited as triggers for motivating behavior changes in an elderly person. Thanks to progress in Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) one scenario is described to illustrate the proposed design concept. With a collaborative multidisciplinary effort, this view could be fast become a reality.
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Papers by Marina Buzzi