This proposal has been tested in real setting with 62 senior people at their homes. Users included both individuals with experience using computers and others reluctant to them.

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IntroductionThe computing capabilities of state-of-the-art television sets and media centres may facilitate the introduction of computer-assisted evaluation at home. This approach would help to overcome the drawbacks of traditional pen-and-paper evaluations administered in clinical facilities, as they could be performed in a more comfortable environment, the subject’s home, and they would be more flexible for designing complex environments for the evaluation of neuropsychological constructs that are difficult to assess through traditional testing. The objective of this work was to obtain some initial evidence about the technical acceptance by senior adults of serious games played at home on the TV set and therefore about the convenience of further investigating such an approach to cognitive assesment.Materials and MethodsWe developed a collection of games to be deployed on a TV environment. These games were tried by a group of senior adults at their homes. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to validate this approach. Surveys were performed to study the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of such technical setting as an instrument for their cognitive evaluation; that is, its technical acceptance. Subjective information collected from participants was correlated with actual interaction data captured. An additional survey was performed 36 months after pilot testing to have an indication about the long-term perceptions about usefulness and ease of use.ResultsMore than 90% of participating subjects perceived cognitive games on TV as useful or very useful. The majority of participants selected the TV set as their preferred option to interact with serious games at home, when compared to other devices such as smartphones, tablets or PCs. This result correlates with the number of participants perceiving them as easily usable or very easy to use, and also with automatically captured interaction data. Three out of four seniors expressed their interest in keeping the system at home after the pilot. Besides, these perceptions are fairly stable in time as shown by the survey performed 36 months after pilot testing.LimitationsAlthough participating users are a representative sample of the Galician population, which in turn is comparable to the population of most rural areas in Europe, a larger and more diverse user sample would be needed to obtain significant results for a wider population profile.ConclusionThe study confirmed the technical acceptance, that is, the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, of the TV-based home technical setting introduced as a means of cognitive evaluation. This study provides initial evidence on the viability of a TV-based serious games approach for cognitive longitudinal screening at home with little intervention of clinical professionals, thus contributing to the early detection of cognitive impairments in the senior population.

This article discusses a modular, accessible platform that provides a computing environment for people with disabilities accessible through adapted control devices and the television set at users' homes. Relying on a standard television set as the presentation device allows dependent individuals, especially people with disabilities, to introduce new technological advances in communication and information management in their everyday lives. As a proof-of-concept, the solution presented offers a collection of educational and training services related to teleworking and the search of employment targeted to people with disabilities. A smart job advisor included among these services, which was designed to help our target users to locate job offers that best suit the abilities and disabilities of a particular individual, is also discussed to illustrate how semantic technologies can be applied to increase the perceived accessibility and inclusion by reducing the dependence from other persons. The platform developed, the introduction of semantic technologies, and the way adapted interfacing and presentation devices were integrated may also serve as inspiration to provide services to people with disabilities.

The evolution of the Web from the original proposal made in 1989 can be considered one of the most revolutionary technological changes in centuries. During the past 25 years the Web has evolved from a static version to a fully dynamic and interoperable intelligent ecosystem. The amount of data produced during these few decades is enormous. New applications, developed by individual developers or small companies, can take advantage of both services and data already present on the Web. Data, produced by humans and machines, may be available in different formats and through different access interfaces. This paper analyses three different types of data available on the Web and presents mechanisms for accessing and extracting this information. The authors show several applications that leverage extracted information in two areas of research: recommendations of educational resources beyond content and interactive digital TV applications.