Made for All - a validation and optimization framework for radical improvements in accessibility of ICT products

The awareness about accessibility is growing among ICT product developers, but the tools available to them for validating their products are limited - mostly rule based and validating at a syntactical level. Developers do not have tools that can simulate usage of their product by a person with limited capabilities. Made for All aims to develop tools that will simulate usage of software products, validate them, and also provide optimization suggestions. The process will be based on rules, heuristics and collaborated knowledge. Tools will be integrated in the development frameworks and provide learning opportunities.

The tools developed in the project will provide the software developer an opportunity to simulate usage of their software by an impaired person. It will answers questions like, how will a blind person use the software? Or how will a hearing impaired person use this website? The developer will first use the application like a normal user, and the system will then simulate usage of an impaired person. The developer will see this simulation on the screen, with annotations, and be able to learn from that.

Based on the simulation, the tools will suggest optimization techniques and guide the developer through them. The simulation and optimization data will be pushed to a central repository, which will in turn enhance the heuristics of the system.


Project activities:

• Develop a protocol for validation, leverage on existing standards - W3C etc.
• Assimilate usage behavior data and develop intelligent data mining techniques
• Develop heuristic algorithms,
• Define simulation techniques, options, rendering
• Evaluate existing open source / other solutions that validate software, develop open source tools
• Develop collaboration and developer training modules
• Disseminate the learning through online and offline resources

accessibility, full inclusion, testing, validation framework, software, web, IDE / browser plugins, simulation, rendering, data mining

• Experts & Researchers in developing and designing accessible software and websites - for overall guidance
• Experts in heuristics and data mining - for developing intelligence in the system to learn from usage data
• Experts in multimedia simulation - for creating simulation of the usage
• Experts in plugin development for integrated development environments for software
• Partners for testing

Profile 1:
Develop the framework for the project, coordinate actions, support in testing and integration

Profile 2:
Support in collecting behavior data through research and tests. Verify the results and validate findings.

Profile 3:
Develop the client side tools and techniques. Also for plugins to IDEs.

Profile 4:
Disseminate the project learnings, tools

• Universities and Research Organizations in accessibility an inclusion
• SMEs with development capacities
• Support organizations for disabled people

Yes