A computer system architecture providing a user-friendly man machine interface for accessing assistive technology in cloud computing

Abstract Assistive Technology (AT) includes hardware peripherals, software applications and systems that enable a user with a disability to use a PC. Thus, when a disabled user needs to work in a particular environment (e.g., at work, at school, in a government office, etc.) he/she has to properly configure the used PC. However, often, the configuration of AT software interfaces is not trivial at all. This paper presents the software design, implementation, and evaluation of a computer system architecture providing a software user-friendly man machine interface for accessing AT software in cloud computing. The main objective of such an architecture is to provide a new type of software human–computer interaction for accessing AT services over the cloud. Thus, end users can interact with their personalized computer environments using any physical networked PC. The advantage of this approach is that users do not have to install and/or setup any additional software on physical PCs and they can access their own AT virtual environments from everywhere. In particular, the usability of prototype based on the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is evaluated in both private and public cloud scenarios.