Bringing universal design and the web of things into the supermarket

Abstract

While there will ever be a place for developing assistive technology products directed to people with disabilities, design for all implies the development of universally accessible and usable products and services. This means these products should be capable of accommodating individual differences in terms of users' requirements including the contexts of use, devices and environments, representing enormous challenges. In this paper, we faced the challenges by using the novel possibilities brought by the web of things within the design for all paradigms. We illustrated the main ideas proposed with the design of a system prototype to help customers in a supermarket to navigate, find and choose their products. The proposed solution was preliminarily experimented; results of experimentation suggest the viability of the idea and technologies used, and encourage further studies.

Investigating Natural User Interfaces (NUIs)

“…Universal Navigation, Exploration and eXchange with Things (U-NEXT) is a pervasive system that uses Internet of Things services to promote interaction and exchange of information among people, objects and smart devices. It seeks to promote direct and indirect collaboration between users, devices and environment [82]. As it was conceived, this system architecture is meant to adapt to several contexts and scenarios, but this research focuses on Accessibility and Universal Design issues.…”

“…In its initial idea, the U-NEXT System was designed with a laptop-based core connected with a USB RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader and RFID tags that acted as devices in an Internet of Things scenario [82]. The system core (our authorship) identifies codes (IDs) from RFID tags and identifies text messages associated with those IDs, converting them to a synthesized voice, which in turn the user hears.…”

“…Initial tests with the U-NEXT system, in its preliminary stage [82,131] has shown that the technology used could be directed to a more autonomous and flexible solution. In this article, we introduce the concept of enhanced mobility for the system user.…”