Mario Chacón-Rivas

In today's society, information in digital formats provides support in the fields of health, education, many others. Therefore, it is essential to have the knowledge and skills to access it. Therefore, the processes of training digital skills are a basic and highly valuable element for people in today's society. However, for people with disabilities, these digital skills present a series of barriers that hinder their interaction and personal and independent development. For this reason, it is urgent that the institutions and organizations responsible for the education and training processes be aware of and committed to the training of digital skills using all accessibility and inclusion criteria. This work presents the experiences that were achieved in Costa Rica by developing a training workshop on digital skills for 12 visually. A set of conclusions is presented that are expected to be helpful for organizations that train skills in people with disabilitie.

The integration of immersive technologies in education and training has shown significant promise for enhancing learning experiences. However, the high cost of common virtual reality (VR) equipment, such as Meta Quest and HTC Vive, has limited widespread adoption in classrooms. Low-cost alternatives like Google Cardboard offer economic accessibility but present challenges in interaction design due to limited input options. This paper presents an elicitation study to gather user preferences while performing 3D actions with Google Cardboard. This study aims to inform the development of effective interactions for cost-effective immersive learning experiences. The findings contribute to understanding the feasibility of employing low-cost viewers in educational settings and provide guidance for optimizing interaction design, particularly for applications where external input devices are not readily available.

El uso y aprendizaje de las lenguas de señas es de interés tanto de personas sordas como oyentes, ya que esto garantiza los derechos de acceso a la información para todo tipo de personas. Por lo que el crear tecnologías de apoyo para el uso, mejora y dominio de las lenguas de señas es de vital importancia, y más aun si estas tecnologías apoyan el multilingüismo en un mundo tan globalizado. Por esta razón el proyecto PIELS como plataforma internacional de edición de lengua de señas, busca la unión del Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica y de universidades del estado de Sao Paulo, para enriquecer una plataforma con contenidos en LESCO y LIBRAS que apoyen el multilingüismo.

Different fields such as linguistics, teaching, and computing have demonstrated special interest in the study of sign languages (SL). However, the processes of teaching and learning these languages turn complex since it is unusual to find people teaching these languages that are fluent in both SL and the native language of the students. The teachings from deaf individuals become unique. Nonetheless, it is important for the student to lean on supportive mechanisms while being in the process of learning an SL. Bidirectional communication between deaf and hearing people through SL is a hot topic to achieve a higher level of inclusion. However, all the processes that convey teaching and learning SL turn difficult and complex since it is unusual to find SL teachers that are fluent also in the native language of the students, making it harder to provide computer teaching tools for different SL. Moreover, the main aspects that a second language learner of an SL finds difficult are phonology, non-manual components, and the use of space (the latter two are specific to SL, not to spoken languages). This proposal appears to be the first of the kind to favor the Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO, for its Spanish acronym), as well as any other SL. Our research focus stands on reinforcing the learning process of final-user hearing people through a modular architectural design of a learning environment, relying on the concept of phonological proximity within a graphical tool with a high degree of usability. The aim of incorporating phonological proximity is to assist individuals in learning signs with similar handshapes. This architecture separates the logic and processing aspects from those associated with the access and generation of data, which makes it portable to other SL in the future. The methodology used consisted of defining 26 phonological parameters (13 for each hand), thus characterizing each sign appropriately. Then, a similarity formula was applied to compare each pair of signs. With these pre-calculations, the tool displays each sign and its top ten most similar signs. A SUS usability test and an open qualitative question were applied, as well as a numerical evaluation to a group of learners, to validate the proposal. In order to reach our research aims, we have analyzed previous work on proposals for teaching tools meant for the student to practice SL, as well as previous work on the importance of phonological proximity in this teaching process. This previous work justifies the necessity of our proposal, whose benefits have been proved through the experimentation conducted by different users on the usability and usefulness of the tool. To meet these needs, homonymous words (signs with the same starting handshape) and paronyms (signs with highly similar handshape), have been included to explore their impact on learning. It allows the possibility to apply the same perspective of our existing line of research to other SL in the future.

Es sabido que América Latina es la región más desigual del planeta. Para hacer frente a la realidad, una de las cuestiones clave es impulsar la colaboración en la región, que permitan que la innovación y el conocimiento sean instrumentos fundamentales para erradicar la pobreza, combatir el hambre y mejorar la salud, así como para alcanzar un desarrollo sostenible, integrado, inclusivo y equitativo de la región. Este articulo presenta algunas iniciativas en el ámbito latinoamericano en el periodo 2010-2020, en la intersección entre la Computación y la Educación, que han surgido como redes colaborativas para fomentar la educación apoyados con las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación. En ese sentido, desafíos de investigación en el campo de la Informática Educativa son planteados y las perspectivas para nuevas colaboraciones posibles son delineadas.

Las evaluaciones en accesibilidad web son un mercado laboral y tecnológico en aumento en Costa Rica. En dicho panorama, la participación de personas con discapacidad dentro de los procesos de evaluación se vuelve principalmente relevante. El Observatorio de Tecnologías Accesibles (OTAI) del Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica hace aportes en este respecto al incorporar evaluadores con discapacidad visual como parte del equipo de trabajo permanente. El objetivo de este trabajo es expresar la experiencia de usuario de un evaluador con discapacidad visual que ve contrastada su vivencia al expresar sus necesidades bajo criterios de cumplimiento generales que puedan impactar a más de un posible usuario final. El aporte de esto es que, dentro del surgimiento de la importancia de la accesibilidad digital en Costa Rica y Latinoamérica; y el creciente mercado de evaluaciones web en el país, la posibilidad de tener evaluadores con discapacidad que verifiquen los criterios a la luz de sus necesidades abre futuras puertas de empleo en un escenario que aún se encuentra en etapas tempranas en la región y nuestro país.