An Architecture for Adaptive and Adaptable Mobile Applications for Physically Handicapped People

Context-awareness is an important capability needed in devices in a ubiquitous computing environment. Ubiquitous computing devices use different types of sensors along with the user’s interaction history in order to collect and store data. This data is then used to adapt the user’s behavior to suit the current environment. In addition to the explicit modifications by user control, the behavior of these computing devices along with the interaction amongst one another depends on the continuously changing environment conditions. These characteristics require the development of systems that have both, adaptive and an adaptable nature. Context-awareness is particularly important for physically handicapped people. This is due to the fact that context-aware ubiquitous devices are able to help them detect changes in the surrounding, which handicapped people can not do for themselves. In this research paper we suggest a general architecture of Context-Aware Adaptable System (CAAS). We exemplify this architecture with an Ambient Service prototype that we have developed. Keywords— Context-Aware Adaptable System (CAAS), Ambient Service (AS), End User Development (EUD), Adaptivity, Adaptability, Mediation