SIGACCESS

Welcome to the October 2015 issue of the SIGACCESS newsletter. In the first article Anke Brock and Christophe Jouffrais give an overview of their research on making geographic maps accessible to visually impaired users. They developed an accessible interactive map prototype composed of a raised-line overlay, an interactive tabletop, and speech output. Their work is currently being used in some classrooms in France for teaching geography to visually impaired children. In the following article, Kotaro Hara and Jon Froehlich talk about their research work aimed at developing scalable data collection methods for remotely acquiring street-level accessibility information and novel mobile navigation and map tools. Finally, Tiago Guerreiro writes an article about the shortcomings of current mobile devices, particularly in the social domain. He then presents his on-going research in areas such as security and privacy, inconspicuous interaction, and social context awareness.