Abstract
Technology plays a key role in daily life of people with special needs, being a mean of integration or even communication with society. By built up experience, we find that support tools play a crucial part in empowerment of persons with special needs and small advances may represent shifts and opportunities. The diversity of solutions and the need for dedicated hardware to each feature represents a barrier to its use, compromising the success of the solutions against, among others, problems of usability and scale. This paper aims to explore the concept of inclusive collaboration to enhance the mutual interaction and assistance. The proposed approach combines and generalizes the usage of human computation in a collaborative environment with assistive technologies creating redundancy and complementarity in the solutions provided, contributing to enhance the quality of life of people with special needs and the elderly. The CanIHelp platform is an embodiment of the concept as a result from an orchestrated model using mechanisms of collective intelligence through social inclusion initiatives. The platform features up for integrating assistive technologies, collaborative tools and multiple multimedia communication channels, accessible through multimodal interfaces for universal access. A discussion of the impacts of fostering collaboration and broadening from the research concepts to the societal impacts is presented. As final remarks a set of future research challenges and guidelines are identified.

Abstract
Technology entered in our lives and changed not only the way we communicate and interact with each other, but also our habits and the experiences in the real and digital worlds. However, due to the rapid progress, we use technology in every moment of our day and sometimes this causes some frustration because the way we interact with the applications is not the most effective for the context we are in. This problem is even more significant in the business environments, where effectively the time we take to finish some kind of task can mean profit or loss for the business. The key to these problems can be in the adaptation of the interface to user needs and constrains as it happens in solutions for situational induced impairment and disabilities (SIID). This can be made by inference the context in which the user it is by using different sensors available on mobile platform and different sources of information such as user profile, agenda and usage history. In this paper we propose a review of the main challenges of the dynamic adaptation of interfaces, with a case of application in a business environment. (c) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Abstract
Stroke episodes are a major health issue worldwide for which most patients require an initial period of special rehabilitation and functional treatment, involving medical doctors and specialized therapists, followed by ambulatory physiotherapy exercise. In this second period most do not fulfil the prescribed recovery plan, resulting in setbacks in their recovery. This paper reports on the design of a methodology to develop a system to support the ambulatory rehabilitation therapy, providing constant feedback to the clinicians, by means of an information system platform, and maintaining the patient motivation by using an exergames approach to design and deliver the therapy exercises to the patient.

Abstract
In this paper the orchestration of wearable sensors with human computation is explored to provide map metadata for blind navigation. Technological navigation aids for blind must provide accurate information about the environment and select the best path to reach a chosen destination. Urban barriers represent dangers for the blind users. The dynamism of smart cities promotes a constant change of these dangers and therefore a potentially “dangerous territory” for these users. Previous work demonstrated that redundant solutions in smart environments complemented by human computation could provide a reliable and trustful data source for a new generation of blind navigation systems. We propose and discuss a modular architecture, which interacts with environmental sensors to gather information and process the acquired data with advanced algorithms empowered by human computation. The gathered metadata should enable the creation of “happy maps” that are delivered to blind users through a previously developed navigation system. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.

Abstract
Human beings have developed a number of evolutionary mechanisms that allows the distinction between different objects and the triggering of events based on their perception of reality. Visual impairment has a significant impact on individuals' quality of life, including their ability to work and to develop personal relationships as they often feel cut off people and things around them, due to their impairment. The need for assistive technologies has long been a constant in the daily lives of people with visual impairments, and will remain a constant in future years. Cognitive mapping is of extreme importance for individuals in terms of creating a conceptual model of the surrounding space and objects around them, thereby supporting their interaction with the physical environment. This work describes the use of computer vision techniques, namely feature detectors and descriptors, to detect objects in the scene and help contextualize the user within the surrounding space, enhancing their mobility, navigation and cognitive mapping of a new environment.

Abstract
This paper describes the development of a mobile indoor navigation system, supported by a GIS and built using only open source tools. For the sake of simplicity a single building was chosen for the tests converting the floors to digital information from paper plans. The rooms geometry was saved on a proper database with all the adjacent information associated, which can in turn be provided to the clients application by APIs and Web Services. The system is able to calculate the most adequate path between any of the rooms taking into account the user profile which is defined by it's degree of mobility (eg. wheelchair). By reading a QR code placed in key places inside the building the user can obtain, on a mobile phone, his current position and receive orientations to any room that he might want to go. The directions hints are complemented with the presentation of real pictures associated to key locations in the path to validate that the correct path is taken by the user. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.