Author Archives: E.A. Draffan

Realise Website with Support and Synthesis guidance

A day in Bristol at the JISC Open Innovation and Access to Resources Meeting gave us the chance to learn more about other Business and Community Engagement (BCE) strands as well as meeting members from the other projects on thee Access to Resources side and Open Innovation.

There was plenty of time to  discuss various aspects of the project that might benefit from outside support and linking up with other teams.

Some key points about engagement included thinking about:

  • Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
  • Stakeholders such as JISC TechDis offering support for a Stakeholder map…. Key contacts – internal and external –  have a look at the JISC TechDis Acumen site
  • Local business networks, associations etc.

Think about support from various organisations as well as others in the projects such as MyMobile, Openbiz and O2I.

Remember – the need  to collect evidence of impact throughout the project – use blog etc.

Think about where we want to be in a years time!  Examples of headline news included some edible ideas such as large pasties from Cornwall and much about funding for sustainability.

“Realise joins Mozilla Drumbeat – Google [Mike had Microsoft!] sponsors open source AT online market.”

Then we were asked to think about our partners!

“Scharr, LSL and OSSWatch to offer pan European advice about mainstreaming assistive technologies through Realising Potential through Partnerships”  etc etc!

Discussions around website development and how Web 1/2/3 and databases were being used and the problems of maintenance were discussed.  This is the next important milestone on our calendar!

Advisory Group Meeting and Workshops for JISC REALISE Project

Wednesday 1st December 11am – 3.30pm

Learning Societies Lab – Access Grid Room – Level 3, Building 32, University of Southampton.  Map and Directions http://www.lsl.ecs.soton.ac.uk/visit/

Agenda

Arrival from 10.30 onwards – Coffee/Tea and biscuits

11.00 – 11.30am Introduction to the day and REALISE Project – Dr Mike Wald and Dr Peter Cudd

11.30 – 1.00pm   Ross Gardler (OSSWatch) Licences and Business Models – Differentiation Tool

1.00 –2.00pm      Lunch and Advisory Group Meeting

2.00 – 3.30pm     Steve Lee (OSSWatch) Community Building and Governance Models – Differentiation Tool

Tea


Discussions around open source projects

We are planning a workshop with our Advisory Group in the next month and have been discussing the issues around licenses, business models, community and governance supported by OSSWatch,

In the meantime the subject has come up as part of a MSc course module on Assistive Technology and Universal Design and Seb Skuse, Russell Newman and Chris Phethean presented on the subject tying in with the Accessibility projects they have developed during the last year.   Their slides can be seen in pdf format “Developing Free and Open-Source AT Software.” The session is available on Synote with a transcript.

Steve Lee and Ross Gardler will also be hosting sessions on the subject in the coming month.  All the transcripts from the sessions will be available on Synote.

Minutes for the virtual meeting 23rd September, 2010

Minutes of last meeting and signing off of items.

Consortium agreements Action PC to follow up the consortium agreements.

OSSWatch models and differentiation tools

There was a long discussion about the need to develop tools to aid all sides of the community to engage with open source development. Both Ross and Steve agreed to help with this aspect in the coming months. Action RG and SL

Garry Paxton from the Advisory Group joined the discussion with some very helpful advice and guidance on the subject. He added the dimension of charities and trustees to the debate along with IPR and legal issues. The problem of knowing the right questions to ask as well as issues around risk management and liabilities.  Ross and Steve agreed that a November workshop was a possibility to discuss the early stages of support. The workshops at AAATE and RAATE would also provide good opportunities to gain community feedback as would providing appropriate material on the REALISE website. Action All

Advisory Group meeting

The full Advisory Group meeting has been postponed till the November group workshop due to the absence of many of the members of the group at this time. The location and date has yet to be decided. Action All

REALISE website discussion

The first template for a possible REALISE website was viewed  and discussions centred around the type of open source framework required and how an iteritive approach would be needed to ensure suitable functionality and community engagement. Issues discussed included the possibilities of joining an existing related open source project community such as Mozilla Drumbeat and persuading them to accept changes we required in their code or just changing their code without the support of their community. The various possibilies will be further investigated.

Date of next Meeting has yet to be fixed but the team will be meeting at AAATE conference and presenting on a wide range of topics.

Minutes from the REALISE Virtual meeting 25th August, 2010

Apologies from Ross

Minutes of previous meetings read with items signed off and actions taken forward.

Outstanding items not on the Agenda

  • JISC meetings with support and synthesis team

Sept 7th 2010 online Mike to attend organised by Simon Whitmore – Mike will relay news from the meeting. Action: MW

  • Ross will be attending Innovation meeting and to feedback to team
  • Ross will supply governance models for agreement by the team. Still to be actioned RG

Possible clarification needed from Ross and Rowan about ‘AT business model and licence differentiation tool’ Need to think about inviting Advisory Group, business community and JISC TechDis to interactive workshop on the subject – clarify time and days – I day workshop – 6 days work and one free.

Steve to supply ‘AT governance and community differentiation tool’ and may have a workshop with developers, professionals, JISC TechDis, carers and users.  Steve to provide estimate of days needed to complete this task. Action: SL

The work above should be linked to the REALISE project as well as client projects

  • RAATE Workshop –Accepted – need to work on paper and workshop Action All
  • Need to make a section for research – look at what other countries are doing – Peter has link to Harvard research on the subject, ? Australia.  Still to be Actioned ALL

  • Clear definition of what we mean by open innovation compared to the JISC BCE Open innovation (OI) Action PC if poss.

  • Need to engage with companies such as Sirius to see how we can help them and vice versa. _ Steve knows Mark Taylor CEO Action SL – discussed and care needed as to the specifics of this link up re: AT use in schools on a Linux platform.

Agenda Items

  • Southampton to confirm contractual agreements

David Woolley has sent an agreement for Sheffield.  Peter said that several universities have a standardised collaboration agreement and this includes Sheffield and Southampton and Barnsley Hospital have agreed (inc. D4D)

  • AAATE papers – Action All to be completed as soon as possible.
  • Advisory Group accepted –  Mike Wald, Peter Cudd, Steve Lee, Ross Gardler, E.A. Draffan, Garry Paxton. Lester Gilbert, Gary Wills, Nasser Siabi, Clare Chiba, Mark Hawley. Action: EAD and MW to write email of thanks, terms of reference – invite to project realise mail list.
  • Possibly make this a virtual meeting and ask the Advisory Group to the workshops planned by Ross and Steve. Possibly 15/16th and following weeks in Sept set up on Doodle.com Action: EAD
  • Project Web Site – logo design

Logo drawn -EA thanked Joe from LSL for help – it was accepted – Steve provided Website requirements analysis for phase 1. This did not include full functional specification but made reference to ATIB database and other features.

  • Evaluation methods for the site and logging etc.

Discussed the various services tested and agreed to continue with Linkedin API development – future criteria based on present analysis.  Discussed evaluation of various open source evaluation tools for logging, usage and user satisfaction with site.  Steve felt we may have been a bit hard on the Drupal system. (Comment added see evaluation) EAD to take forward.

  • Website initial requirements – fields for idea generation – Title, Summary (limited character count 100), Longer Description (free field), minimal category of AT (need to be able to choose multiple categories) – allow for a category to be added by user. Always ability to hide or remove their own ideas.  – More ideas to be sent to team. Need to be able to search other websites for open source ATs. Action: Provide sample framework – Soton team for further discussion.
  • AOB – Need to explore future opportunities for funding to ensure sustainability. Action: All
  • Date of next Meeting:  Start Skype meeting for team early 15-16th Sept and other dates to be put on www.doodle.com Action: EAD

REALISE – Web Services Evaluation

Introduction

This document is an evaluation of four different software packages that have been proposed as the foundation for the REALISE website. Two, Drupal and ATutor, are content management systems (CMS), and two, myExperiment and CloudWorks, are communities based on open-source software that would be available for us to re-use to create our own community.

Drupal

Drupal is an open-source content management system that has been in development for nearly a decade. It runs on PHP and has a large development community who have produced a range of third-party add-on modules.
Drupal appears to score well in accessibility based on the Web2Access test criteria, with minor issues noted in only four of the fifteen test categories (see http://www.web2access.org.uk/product/233/). It is also extensible, with a wide range of third-party modules available enabling it to provide a broad range of features (including all of the requirements of the REALISE project).
Installation is simple for a UNIX administrator – one simply downloads and extracts the files, sets appropriate permissions, creates an empty database and runs Drupal’s self-installation script. It is unlikely that anyone without technical experience would be able to install this system.
A fresh installation of Drupal uses only the most basic of modules required to run the system. Many other “official” modules, including forum and blog support, are inactive by default. However, one of the main drawbacks of Drupal is its immensity; the admin menu system is labyrinthine, and it can take a long time to locate any given option or feature. The system also looks and feels bloated. Having said this, it took only a couple of hours to have a dummy REALISE site (still available at www.realisepotential.org) up and running.
As detailed here, Drupal is known for using large amounts of memory. Fatal errors related to this were encountered whilst creating even this simple dummy site. It also has a reputation for security flaws and poorly written code, which could cause us expensive difficulties further down the road.
Overall, it may be simpler and more effective to create our own content management system using a framework such as Ruby on Rails or Python Django rather than to use a ready-made but buggy solution like Drupal.

ATutor

ATutor is another open-source web-based content management system. It describes itself as a “Learning Content Management System”, and is designed for use in an education setting. Content is built up into units called “Courses”, which are administered by “Instructors” and used by “Students”.
An immediate difficulty which arises with ATutor is the difficulty of mapping the requirements of the REALISE project (e.g. accessibility products) to ATutor modules (i.e. courses). ATutor is designed for a very specific purpose, and would need modification to be suitable for REALISE.
ATutor, despite having been designed with accessibility in mind, does not score as well for accessibility under the Web2Access test criteria as Drupal (see http://www.web2access.org.uk/product/235/). It performs solidly nevertheless, with notable deficiencies in only two areas; its rich text editor is completely inaccessible without a mouse, and the page layout breaks when using the zoom feature on any major web browser. This makes it unlikely to be suitable for visually impaired users.
As with Drupal, ATutor installation was simple enough for a UNIX administrator, but would be difficult if not impossible for an average user.
Being designed for a specific purpose rather than as a generic solution, ATutor is noticeably smaller and easier to navigate than Drupal. The admin menu systems could still be very confusing for a novice user, however. ATutor is also much less widely used than Drupal, and thus has far less third-party support and extensions. A dummy site was not created in ATutor due to the mapping difficulties mentioned above.
Overall, ATutor has few advantages over Drupal and does not appear to be suitable for use in the REALISE project.

myExperiment

myExperiment is a collaborative working environment designed to enable scientists to share their workflows and experiment plans. It was built using the open source Ruby on Rails, and ECS was involved in its development. Once logged in, a user can upload workflows and other files, and create “packs” that tie them together.
As with ATutor, this presents a mapping problem. In this case, the problem is almost certainly insurmountable, as the site does not provide all of the features necessary for the REALISE project; chiefly, it lacks a suitable method for submitting a product idea for review by the community.
Installation of myExperiment is a lengthy process, requiring existing knowledge of Ruby on Rails. The software has a number of dependencies on other packages, and would not be possible for someone without considerable knowledge of UNIX administration.
The site is seems quite easy to use from an end-user perspective, particularly if the user has a scientific background (in line with the site’s target demographic), but conversely, the average person would probably not understand what the term “workflow” means, let alone how to create one.
In terms of accessibility, myExperiment performs fairly well under the Web2Access tests (see http://www.web2access.org.uk/product/234/). The rich text editor is inaccessible with a keyboard, as is often the case, and the large amount of content displayed on each page makes navigation with the keyboard cumbersome, which is particularly evident when the stylesheet is removed. The tag clouds in particular take a long time to tab through.
In conclusion, myExperiment does not seem appropriate for use in the REALISE project.

CloudWorks

CloudWorks is an online community for sharing ideas about learning and teaching. Content is posted in the form of “Clouds”, and can consist of anything that can be marked up in HTML or that can be embedded from another site such as YouTube. Other users can comment on each Cloud, and can add links to other clouds and web pages as well as references to academic papers. Clouds with common themes can be grouped together into sets called “Cloudscapes”. There is a potential mapping between Clouds in CloudWorks and product ideas in REALISE. Other requirements of the REALISE process are also present, including tagging, text search, and discussion (though this is not threaded and cannot be sorted).
At present, ease of installation is unknown. This is because the source code is not yet available publicly. ECS will be able to obtain this in a couple of weeks, but this would slow the project down considerably. We will ideally need to set up our own instance of CloudWorks in order to apply REALISE branding to the project,, rather than simply creating our own Cloudscape on the existing site.
CloudWorks is easy to use on the whole, and the average user would likely be able to grasp how to use it in a fairly short space of time. The interface is very clean, with little clutter on the screen. Online help (including an optional introductory video) and e-mail support is available.
Accessibility according to the Web2Access guidelines is very good, with the only notable issue being the lack of on-screen feedback after content is submitted. It has performed better under these tests then the other three products that we are evaluating (see http://www.web2access.org.uk/product/236/).
In essence, CloudWorks may be the most appropriate solution out of the four services evaluated, but it will be difficult to know for sure until we can acquire the source code.

LinkedIn

The LinkedIn API is being considered for use in the REALISE project. This would enable users to log in to the REALISE site with their LinkedIn credentials, and would allow the REALISE site to make use of LinkedIn users’ profiles and networks.
The accessibility of LinkedIn.com is important if we are to require users of REALISE to have a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn was checked against the Web2Access accessibility criteria in August 2009. The results obtained then still apply, though it has been noted that the sign-in form for the site is not located on the home page and must be navigated to, which is unusual and potentially confusing for some users. The only other problems with the site, as noted in the original review, are that it makes use of font sizes that are too small to read comfortably, that form feedback is sometimes incompatible with some screen readers, and that some non-critical page elements can only be used with a mouse.
The LinkedIn API could be a useful addition to the REALISE site as it would enable us to draw on LinkedIn’s social networking features and may encourage LinkedIn users to make accessibility projects a part of their LinkedIn portfolio. However, there is a potential caveat – some users, particularly those of a more casual nature, may be put off by having to make a LinkedIn account in order to use the REALISE site. It may be possible to work around this by making it optional to link one’s REALISE profile to one’s LinkedIn account.

Realise has a logo

REALISE logo

We are very grateful to Joe Price for developing a logo that links up with the work carried out by the team with Liz Paxton in the Brand Essence meeting when a strap line was developed “Realising Potential Through Partnerships”.   We are very grateful for her help and would also like to thank  Garry Paxton for being willing to join the Advisory Group.

The team has analysed several types of websites that allow for partnerships and the building of community with the generation of ideas.   The results for accessibility can be found on Web2Access – ATutor, Drupal, Cloudworks, Linkedin and MyExperiment.

Minutes for the REALISE meeting – 26th July 2010, 10.30 – 15.30

Location – Turing Room, Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN, UK

Attendees : Peter Cudd, Steve Lee, Ross Gardler, Mike Wald, EA Draffan,

Minutes

  • Minutes of previous meetings read with items signed off and actions taken forward.
  • Peter and E.A. to set out qualitative and quantative evaluation methods for the site and logging etc. Criteria still to be discussed Action PC and EAD
  • JISC meetings with support and synthesis team Ross will be attending Innovation meeting and to feedback to team – await news from synthesis group.
  • Mike W. to invite Mark Hawley, Lester Gilbert – still to be actioned MW and Peter to ask 50+ group for a representative, Ross to invite someone from Wikimedia, Nasser Siabi to be asked as a member of the business community, Ross to talk to Mark Pedley. Garry Paxton has accepted the invitation to be a member of the Advisory Group.
  • Advisory group – first meeting moved to September and the addition of a final AG meeting to respond to their views at the Dissemination Even in April 2011. Signed off
  • Southampton to confirm contractual agreements David Woolley has sent an agreement for Sheffield.
  • Ross will supply governance models for agreement by the team. Still to be actioned RG
  • Copyright issues that may arise with ATIB – no longer apply as evaluation showed that ATIB system not suitable for open AT innovation. Signed off.
  • Submission to RAATE – Mike Wald has written an abstract. Signed off awaiting result.
  • Set up RSS feed and Google Mailgroup – Signed off.
  • Put work packages on website and have sign off at the end of each meeting.  Work packages and project plan for JISC still to be actioned EAD
  • Project website – signed off – needs meeting calendar link
  • Brand Essence – Minuted thanks for this process – need to send letter of thanks to Liz Paxton for all her work still to be actioned EAD
  • Need to make a section for research – look at what other countries are doing – Peter has link to Harvard research on the subject, ? Australia.  Still to be Actioned ALL
  • Website URL – decision to go with www.realisepotential.org – Signed off
  • Clear definition of what we mean by open innovation compared to the JISC BCE Open innovation (OI) Action PC if poss.
  • Need to engage with companies such as Sirius to see how we can help them and vice versa. _ Steve knows Mark Taylor CEO Action SL – discussed and care needed as to the specifics of this link up re: AT use in schools on a Linux platform.
  • PC will send us the PowerPoint for the minutes and any other appropriate materials for the research part of the project.  Still to be actioned PC
  • REALISE – the vision – some came of the Brand Essence meeting – key words Serendipity connecting inspiring  ” Realising Potential through Partnerships”
    • Project Plan – Work packages on website – Action MW and EAD to make draft based on template http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/projectmanagement.aspx
    • Project Web Page on JISC Web Site – awaiting information from JISC.
    • Project Web Site – logo design, Forum – Mailing list – Action EAD Joe from ECS to develop ideas that will be shared with team
    • Consortium Agreement – see above
    • Advisory group Membership – See above
    • Links with D4D and ATIB with overview from Peter – PC to send slides

From Agenda 26/07/2010

Initial version of REALISE online marketplace following a Co-design meeting to specify essential and desired requirements –  Initial version of REALISE online marketplace following a Co-design meeting to specify essential and desired requirements –  Evaluate Drupal v A- tutor v My experiment and feedback to team Action EAD – PC to send specification for ATIB to aid planning of innovation broker (correction by SL)

  • Consultancy Requirements/plan/milestones – OSS Watch till Dec. 6 days to include AT Licence Differentiator and 1 day workshop Business models (7-12 attendees possibly with JISC TechDis support?). Steve Lee to be contracted for work on Governance and Community. Future work in following year? 4 paid days and 1 supported by JISC. Interim and final report. Action MW and EAD
  • Participative stakeholder blog – Part of innovations broker website
  • AAATE 2010 sessions – Ross to present AT and open source, other workshops by team require papers 2-4 pages long. Action All
  • RAATE 2010 Workshop – Action All workshop if accepted
  • A.O.B.
    • See above for evaluation of website and consider A-tutor etc.
    • Website design – see above for ECS support
    • Ross discussed – What roles do we have for users…
      • Innovator (needs exploitation)
      • Consumer of AT innovation
      • Gatekeepers to the end users – how do those who engage do it – find the process for those who do link with innovators and make diagram (action SL and PC)
      • Needs
        • Find innovations
        • Communicate needs – end user
        • Satisfy needs – end user and innovator.
  • Set up times for  Virtual Skype meeting –  http://www.doodle.com/eepf6zxgvn8kxsmn