Inclusive Design Institute (IDI)

Web Page: http://wiki.atutor.ca/display/atutorwiki/Google+Summer+of+Code+2011

Mailing List: http://atutor.ca/forums/

The overarching goal of the Inclusive Design Institute is to help ensure that emerging information technology and practices are designed inclusively from the very beginning. We define inclusive design as design that enables and supports the participation of individuals and groups representing the full range of human diversity. We see disability as a mismatch between the needs of the individual and the service, education, tools or environment provided and accessibility as the adaptability of the system to the needs of each individual. Our research, development, education and service are all grounded in this principle.

The IDI supports open standards - as well as open access and open source wherever possible - to distribute our work as widely as possible and to encourage broad participation in our initiatives. All our work is collaborative.

We are strong advocates of the overlooked principle that people with disabilities should be producers and not only consumers of information, knowledge and culture. Society as a whole is impoverished and deprived if we exclude through action or omission. Inclusion benefits everyone, it should be everyone's concern and, in this digitally transformed reality that we live and work in - where consumption does not consume and space has no limits - there is no downside to inclusion and it is possible to make room for us all.

Projects

• Accessible Visualizations with HTML5 and Infusion The aim of this project is to design inclusive data representations using HTML5 canvas and Fluid Infusion to create visual and aural representations of data sets to address the diversity present in cognitive principles of human interpretation and understanding.
• AChecker report export system Currently AChecker works in a way that accessability validator returns report in HTML format that is displayed in the tool itself. The main goal of this project is to implement report export system such that the report could be generated and saved depending on user selection in various file formats as PDF, Excel, XML (both pure and EARL), CSV.
• ATutor Calendar Module The ATutor Calendar module will gather dates from other modules in the system and compile them into a personal calendar that lists all relevant dates from all courses an individual user is enrolled in. The calendar module also features a personal calendar where users can record personalised events. The calendar can also export/import calendar data.
• ATutor Social Mobile App To develop native mobile app for ATutor Social that runs on smartphones and hand-held devices running on iOS, Android and other mobile platforms using PhoneGap and web-technologies.
• ATutor Social Open Social Gadget Here you can find my proposal for the ATutor project. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask, I will be glad to answer them. You can also find my proposal and CV sent to the ATutor mailbox.
• BigBlueButton module for ATutor Project will integrate BigBlueButton with ATutor as a module that will allow instructors to add learning activities to course content. This will not only allow conducting video lectures but also enable features like desktop sharing which will bring in a new dimension to learning activities on ATutor.Work on improving the accessibility of BigBlueButton will help the visually impaired people.
• Image Editor Build a tool that allows user to perform basic image processing operations on images in a webpage. It would use Fluid Infusion and HTML5. In addition to this, it would also allow the user to perform the operations using keyboard instead of mouse. The tool would allow operations to resize, crop and tag an image. In addition to this, if time permits, I would also like to add other operations like rotation and transformations on the image.
• Instructor & Administrator mobile themes for ATutor I propose to extend the ATutor mobile custom theme, which is suited for Student users, to Administrator, Instructor, and tablet users.
• OpenLearn Module for ATutor OpenLearn module for ATutor is integration of two excellent systems. This project will create a search functionality in ATutor which will search OpenLearn's repositories for content. OpenLearn contains a lot of articles on a variety of subjects. So this can be utilized by ATutor via my project.
• Proposal for Fluid's accessible videoPlayer project The goal of this project is to make a HTML 5 video player using Fluid's Framework easily accessible to anyone. This has to be an highly scalable and user friendly application and respect the IDI philosophy (see disability as a mismatch between the needs of the user and the service). For more info please see the full up to date proposal in pdf at this link: http://goo.gl/UJZFT (It is published under creative commons By so feel free to do whatever you want with it).