About Me

About me

I’m a PhD researcher at EGOKITUZ, the Lab of HCI for Special Needs at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) – Department of Computer Architecture and Technology.

I am a PhD Researcher in the Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). I am also a member of the Laboratory of Human–Computer Interaction for Special Needs – EGOKITUZ, where I’ve been working since 2012 in different projects related with access to ICT for people with disabilities.

I received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of the Basque Country. You can access my PhD dissertation, entitled: “Assisted Interaction for Improving Web Accessibility: An Approach Driven and Tested by Users with Disabilities”.

I received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of the Basque Country for my research on web accessibility, assisted interaction, and user testing with people with visual and motor impairments – dissertation.

A summary of my most relevant personal information is available in my one-page CV.

Laboratory and university logos

I’m interested in studying ways of enhancing web accessibility for people with disabilities by means of software components, and so improve their performance and satisfaction when browsing the Web. My research work covers two main scopes:

  1. Building systems to automatically adapt UI, as well as alternative target acquisition techniques to assist conventional mouse pointing.
  2. Conducting user tests to study the behaviour of people with disabilities, as well as to evaluate and improve the proposed techniques on an iterative process.
  3. Conducting user tests to understand the behaviour of people with disabilities and evaluate the benefits of the proposed enhancements.

Some other topics of my interest are:

  • Assistive Technologies
  • Dexterity and visual impairments
  • Interaction analysis
  • User modeling
  • Usability evaluation
  • User Experience
IBM research Tokyo logo, with a silhouette of Japan in the background.

I’ve also worked on a navigational cognitive assistant. During my time on the accessibility team at IBM Research – Tokyo, I worked on the NavCog project, which aims to help blind people explore unfamiliar indoor environments with an iPhone app for audio-based navigation.

We implemented the navigation system in the Nihonbashi-Muromachi shopping center (Tokyo), and conducted a field experiment on site for several weeks. In order to provide audio guidance, a detailed description of the environment and every route was defined, as well as bluetooth beacons were installed throughout the building to recognise the users’ location.

The description of these user tests and the results about the usefulness of audio messages provided by NavCog were presented at the W4A 2017 conference – paper | slides

Since 2016, I am very proud to be a fellow of the Canon Foundation in Europe, awarded with one of their fellowships for pursuing my research career in Japan during a year. Feel free to visit the Canon Foundation website, and check the fellow register with all the researchers who have received this distinguished fellowship since 1990… including me!

This is the logo of the Canon Foundation in Europe.
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I’ve also worked in other areas of accessibility to ICT. During my time with the accessibility team at IBM Research – Tokyo I worked on the NavCog project, which aims to help blind people explore unfamiliar indoor environments with an iPhone app for audio-based navigation.
We implemented the navigational cognitive assistant at the Nihonbashi Muromachi Area (Tokyo), a space that includes a 3 building shopping center connected to an underground metro station.
My PhD research is focused on studying web navigation behaviors within the wide and heterogeneous group of users with upper-body physical impairments, and analysing the appropriateness of up-to-date proposed adaptation techniques. The objective is to obtain an adaptive system for this group of users, capable of personalizing diverse aspects of web interfaces (its content, presentation and navigation), in order to improve their productivity and satisfaction when interacting with the Web.
As for my academic training, I hold a BSc Degree in Computer Science, and a Master in Embedded Systems Engineering from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Since the beginning of 2014 I am working on my Ph.D. at EGOKITUZ, planning to complete my dissertation during the following 4 years. Since the beginning of 2014 I hold a research fellowship from the UPV/EHU for completing my Ph.D. dissertation during the following 4 years.