The third year students of the department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts visited the archaeological site of Kourion with their instructors Dr. Eleni Michaelidou and Dr. Fernando Loizides as part of their Design for All course. The lecture aims to develop the students’ understanding of technologies which relate to accessibility within the discipline of human-computer interaction. This year the students focused on accessible tourism and improving the accessibility of archaeological sites.

The purpose of the visit was to evaluate the archaeological site of Kourion in terms of accessibility for disabled and elderly individuals. Questions asked included: How can one with limited eye-sight read the available information? How can one with limited hearing listen to a tour guide? How can a child with autism explore the site in an enjoyable way and benefit by learning about his surroundings? How can a person on a wheelchair access all the spaces within the site? When a large group of tourists with disabilities visit Cyprus, how can their experience at Kourion be improved?

While working in groups, the students took on the task to solve some of the issues discovered using assistive technology to produce a prototype system. Each of the prototypes focused on one disability specifically. Different disabilities included: speech / communication impediments, dyslexia, down syndrome, autism, kinetic disabilities, limited hearing and limited sight.  The high fidelity prototypes that were developed included interfaces for mobile devices such as phones, tablets, voice recognition and haptic feedback.

Source: Cyprus University of Technology

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