Investigating Access in Ubiquitous Scenarios: A Case Study and Evaluation Instrument

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing brings new possibilities of contemporary technologies for designing new scenarios of interaction. New challenges are also raised, for example, regarding the access of people in these scenarios, which has not been covered by formal accessibility standards yet. This paper investigates aspects of accessibility in these scenarios. The study is conducted through analysis of guidelines and success criteria of standard instruments (the Universal Design and the WCAG) applied to scenarios of socioenactive systems (systems are constituted by a coupled tripartite relationship among the social, the physical and the digital components). A case study is presented to analyze the applicability of the standard instruments and to raise accessibility challenges in socioenactive scenarios. The main contributions of this paper are: 1) an instrument to evaluate access to ubiquitous scenarios; 2) A practical study with two installations; 3) Possibilities of informing the evaluation of access in ubiquitous scenarios.