An e-services integration platform for serving and supporting the needs of disabled residents, pilgrims, and visitors of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Worldwide the number of people who have some form of disability approximates to 1 billion people (i.e., that is a staggering 15% of the world’s population). In Saudi Arabia, the general authority for statistics indicated that around 10% of the Saudi population reported a disability of a varying degree (i.e., which equates to 3 million people). Despite the massive technological advances, disabled users received little attention with respect to the electronic services (e.g., delivered to their electronic devices such as smartphones) that support their daily activities. This project aims to develop an e-services platform (which we call Hemem) to provide a myriad of specialized electronic services, such as e-forms, that support the needs and wants of disabled pilgrims and visitors as well as the locals. These e-services would be delivered and accessed using smartphones and mobile devices. The proposed project endeavors to empower and facilitate the daily activities of people with special needs in Saudi Arabia and its visitors through a dedicated online platform aimed at designing and integrating e-services. Essentially, the software platform will host and provide access to atomic services that can be assembled to form usable and accessible e-services for residents and visitors with special needs. Developers and researchers around the globe can contribute various software services to the platform for others to experiment with, use, or even sell. The disseminated e-services will have unique characteristics related to the user interface design and interaction styles to accommodate the limitations of the disabled. Moreover, the produced services may be published for consumption by the disabled Muslims in a dedicated online marketplace. There are various research challenges that will be addressed in this project, including services representation and interoperability, services integration as well as the fitness of the user interfaces, and interactions with the disabled people. This promising project is anticipated to have a significant impact as one of kind endeavor to care for and serve the disabled locals, pilgrims, and visitors of Saudi Arabia using technological innovations.

Research Priority

Improving Quality of Life and Smart Cities Technologies