Difference between revisions of "Unified (Federated) Listing validation procedure"

Revision as of 14:27, 6 February 2013

This page is used to work at the "validation procedure" that will be followed to store information on AT product in the Unified Listing database (also known as Solution Registry). The figure below shows where the validation procedure fits in the connection scheme between EASTIN and the GPII Unified Listing.

1. Who will do the validation

validation is not completely automatic, it must be done by a human aided by automatic functions. He/she must be an expert in ICT assistive technology products; he/she should have a deep knowledge of the AT products available on the market. Ideally he/she should have used most of the AT products or have the possibility to test them in a Laboratory (this could be feasible for the software products that are Cloud4all compliant)

2. Steps of the validation procedure

the results of the query (i.e. the data retrieved form EASTIN) are analized by the validator that has to:

1. decide what products are of interest for GPII unified listing (according to Inclusion/exclusion criteria described below)
2. find out duplicated products (aided by automatic functions)
3. information of duplicates is merged into one record (automatic procedure) that will include:
   • all the commercial names (alias)
   • all the manufacturer names (In principle only one manufacturer name should be present for a product. Anyway there might be the case of products whose manufacturer is not easily identifiable (in case of open source software for example)).
   • all the ISO codes
   • all the images
   • all the text descriptions
   • the sum of the detailed information
4. Validator reads the merged information and, if needed, completes the data
5. Validator adds settings for the product (automatically if the product is Cloud4all compliant??)

3. Inclusion/exclusion criteria

In the GPII Unified Listing only part of the product records coming from the EASTIN databases will be included. Other databases of mainstream ICT products will also contribute to create the Unified Listing (e.g. the GARI database). An "incremental" approach will be used for populating the Unified Listing, the inclusion criteria reported in the following allow to build a core set of AT products that could be expanded in the future. A proposal for the general inclusion criteria of product in the Unified Listing could be the following: 

• Mainstream devices with an IT like interface on it that has accessibility features (those are not included in the databases of EASTIN)
• Assistive products to provide enhanced access/usability for mainstream ICT (e.g. special keyboard, on screen keyboard …)
• Assistive products, based on ICT, used by people with disability to improve functioning in activities related to communication and/or information

This last point restricts the field of activities to communication and information. This excludes ICT based Assistive products used in other fields (such as mobility, personal care, housekeeping,...). This allows us to use the ISO classification as a filter for selecting the ICT products in the EASTIN databases.

Discussion is ongoing whether to include ICT Products for training in skills (e.g. software for training in reading or writing).

"low tech" accessories (e.g. a mounting system for fixing a push button on a wheelchair) or products (e.g. a mouth stick used to type on a keyboard) related to ICT devices are excluded.

The first filter for retrieving only ICT assistive products from the EASTIN databases (that also includes other kinds of assistive technology products such as products for personal mobility, products for personal care, …) will be based on the ISO 9999 classification. The table that follows is a proposal for ISO 9999 codes to be retrieved (2nd level ISO code are reported here but 3rd level ISO code will be used for filtering). On the right column some example of EASTIN subdivision included is reported. In the right column links to example of product in EASTIN are included

as described above, the validator will then be responsible of deciding what product should be included in the Unified Listing

Example of validation procedure

The following is just an example ment to generate discussion.

EASTIN sends a set of records each including the following details:

• commercial Name
• image
• ISO codes
• Manufacturer name and country
• insert date
• last update
• Source database
• provider country
• text description
• technical details (multiple fields)

The validator goes through the product  list. For each product he/she:

1. decides if it should be included in the Unified Listing (according to the inclusion/exclusion criteria).
2. If the product is to be included then he/she activates the “similarity function”. Result list is sorted according to the similarity with the selected product (see figure below). The validator then decides on records that represent the same product. Also product records already stored in the Unified Listing must be compared with the list of results.

When the "Select as base for comparison" function is activated the list is sorted according to similarity

3. Merged detailed information on records representing the same product are shown for a final validation. If any relevant information is missing (e.g. a supported operating system for a software) the validator may decide to add the information. If this is done an alert will be sent automatically (by mail) to the information provider(s) that do not have this information included in their record. When the info is complete he/she press “save the record”.

Steps 1, 2, 3 are repeated for the next product.

In the first stage this procedure might require some time because many products need to be stored in the Unified Listing. After that initial “bulk storing” the following queries will only return new product records or products that have been updated.

1. Detailed settings for the specific product are added….<DRAFT clarification are still needed for this part>

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• if the product is somehow available to the validator and is “cloud4all” compliant, he/she can retrieve the product settings from the product itself.
• if it is not available….  download the user manual (if any) and add setting manually
• if the user manual is not available….