Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Due to difficulties faced by people with disabilities, it is necessary to provide all citizens with mechanisms to guarantee the accessibility of information and services offered through the internet. This study aims to identify which models and tools support developers in the software coding phase in order to meet accessibility requirements. The data obtained were extracted from the literature and were evaluated with professionals working with information technology. It was possible to conclude that taking accessibility into account throughout the software development cycle from the early stages, as well as having models and tools that help during the software coding process are essential to succeed in creating accessible products.

A key component of the Internet of things (IoT) ecosystem is wide-area network connectivity, for which cellular network technologies are a promising option through their support of massive machine-type communications (mMTC). However, numerous devices transmitting sporadically small data packets in a highly synchronized way can generate overload on the radio access network. This situation leads to a shortage of resources, especially those associated with the random access procedure for contention, control, and data transmission, causing preamble collision, control message blocking, and data collision. As a result, mMTC traffic can jeopardize the provisioning of quality of service (QoS) to end-devices, decrease the network efficiency, and increase access latency and device energy consumption. This paper proposes medium access control (MAC) techniques for addressing problems related to the support of mMTC in cellularnetworks. First, a solution for allocating control resources with QoS provisioning and access differentiation is provided, including a resource management model, a scheduling algorithm, and a message prioritization policy. Second, a mechanism for reducing data collisions is also proposed. This solution comprises a protocol in which every device with scheduled retransmission uses a probabilistic policy to decide whether to retransmit, a novel method at the device to estimate the number of nodes trying random access, and two different retransmission policies employing this estimation. Results show that the proposals support QoS, decrease access latency, decrease the device energy consumption, and increase resource utilization under massive random access.  

This preface opens the special issue on invited papers related to the 2023 edition of the MSc. and PhD. thesis contests organized by CLEI, the Latin American Center for Computing Studies. One of the main objectives of CLEI is furthering the scientific development of all Computing areas in Latin America. To recognize such developments, as well as the achievements of the graduate programs in the region, and promote the development of new programs, CLEI organizes yearly since 1993 the LatinAmerican Master Thesis Contest (CLTM), and since 2016 the Doctoral Thesis Contest (CLTD). Both events take place jointly with the Latin American Computing Conference (also known as CLEI conference) . In the 2022 edition, the conference took place in Armenia, Quindio, Colombia; both the MSc. and PhD. contests received a number of high quality submissions, leading to very interesting presentations during the conference and to excellent prizes. After the conference, the authors of the best works (receiving prizes as well as runner-ups) were invited to submit original works, not already published, to the CLEIej journal. These submissions were evaluated by independent reviewers, following the usual review process of the journal. As a result of this selection process, we are proud to present the current Special Issue.  

The present work focuses on proposing an evaluation process focused on interfaces formobile devices. In this way, interviews were performed to understand how evaluationprocesses are considered within the routines of professionals who deal with mobile devices.The proposed process has a set of associated evaluation lenses. To facilitate access tothe process, an application was developed, and it is presented at the end of this paper.Tests were performed to understand the applicability of the proposed process. The resultssuggest that experts using the proposed process are able to identify problems and that theprocess itself is seen as useful in professional and educational settings. It is proposed thatin the future the process is subjected to tests that include the evaluation and redesign ofthe evaluated interface. In this way, it would be possible to observe how the conclusionsand reflections awakened in the specialists throughout the evaluation process can impactthe redesign of interfaces.

A new computational paradigm called the Internet of Things (IoT) has allowed various objects in our routine to communicate with each other. We can also observe that the global number of seniors with the effective potential to be its users grows, mainly dueto the increase in life expectancy. Then, the seniors can benefit from IoT technologies to achieve a better quality of life and healthy aging when these technologies consider accessibility and usability. This study aimed to better understand the main perceptionsof the seniors about the use of these IoT technologies, especially seeking to discover the expectations of these users to deal with them. Thus, 11 Brazilian seniors (over 60 years old) participated in interviews and, based on their responses, we carried out a thematic analysis. In this way, it was possible to analyze the narrations of the interviewees’ speeches and obtain their expectations to adopt IoT. As a consequence, we also developed and evaluated an IoT prototype to support seniors.

Mutualism is widely recognised as key to the origin of welfare states in central and northern Europe. However, there is little knowledge about this relationship in the southern region, where welfare systems took on a particular character (Minesso, 2018). This article provides an overview of the long-term relationship between the mutualist movement and the emergence of a welfare system in Portugal. It is hoped that this study will contribute to our understanding of the agency of social movements in the design of social policies, taking into account the Portuguese case study.Following Topalov’s analytical model (Topalov, 1999), it examines the mutualist movement as a network that fostered social reform. To this end, the resolutions of mutualist congresses were analysed, from the 1865 1st Social Congress to the 1934 Mutualist Congress, the last before the 1974 revolution. Additionally, official surveys and social policies were examined from the first 1860 survey of mutual aid associations to the extinction of the Compulsory Social Insurance Institute in 1933.The relational analysis of this evidence proves the importance of mutual societies as a laboratory of experimentation, observation, and statistical inquiry into social welfare, promoting consensus-building on state intervention in the sphere of social security, dealing with specific social risks. These findings contribute substantially to our understanding on the relationships between social mobilisation and public policies in a Southern setting during the liberal period.

This paper investigates which factors are more effective when taking advantage of benefits perceived by firms in their collaborations with public research organizations (PROs). The empirical study is based on a survey of firms that have collaborated with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the largest PRO in Spain. We performed an ordinal probit regression, where the dependent variables reflect the importance of benefits from the interaction. We add to previous literature by considering benefits beyond innovation results and by studying the firm´s absorptive capacity and knowledge search strategy as determinants of such benefits. Our results show that firms need to have a certain level of absorptive capacity to take advantage of the collaboration with PROs, but that R&D is not the only antecedent that must be considered. Prior collaborative experience with PROs appears as an important factor to exploit these interactions, in particular as a way to develop internal capabilities and obtain long-term benefits. The study also outlined the firm´s external search strategy as a relevant factor in determining the benefits obtained from interactions with PROs.

Este documento trata sobre cómo aprender de la experiencia pasada y cómo avanzar hacia las nuevas formas de capitalismo que deben estar en el centro de un sistema impulsado por la misión, en el que los grandes problemas de nuestro tiempo, como la brecha digital, los sistemas sanitarios y el cambio climático sean centrales, y cómo trabajar juntos para abordarlos. Este documento trata sobre cómo diseñar un sistema de producción que sea colectivo, pero sobre todo que distribuya adecuadamente las recompensas, en lugar de la forma disfuncional en que lo hacemos actualmente, que consiste en socializar los riesgos y los costes y privatizar después los beneficios. He tenido el honor de trabajar con responsables políticos de todo el mundo para llevar la noción de reto, propósito e impulso hacia la misión al corazón del diseño de las políticas públicas. Este documento trata también de los cambios sistémicos, de lo que realmente significan, de cómo entendemos la economía, de cómo producir de otra manera.

This paper is about how to learn from past experience and how to move towards the new forms of capitalism that must be at the heart of a mission-driven system, in which the big issues of our time such as the digital divide, health systems and climate change are central, and how to work together to address them. This paper is about how to design a production system that is collective, but more importantly one that properly distributes the rewards, rather than the dysfunctional way we currently do it, which is to socialise the risks and costs and then privatise the benefits. I have had the honour of working with policy makers around the world to bring the notion of challenge, purpose and mission-drive to the heart of public policy design. This paper is also about systemic change, about what it really means, about how we understand the economy, about how to produce differently.

Este documento aborda lo que considero los principales problemas del mundo, aunque reconozco que también hay otros problemas en la actualidad, como la inflación y la guerra en Ucrania. Intentaré abordar los principales problemas, que son de interés para el CIRIEC, que es una organización internacional que presta especial atención a lo que se denomina el Tercer Sector” o “Economía Social”, un área que se sitúa entre el sector empresarial privado y el gobierno a pesar de que no soy, debo admitirlo, un experto en este último campo. Lo trataré en el contexto de la discusión de un par de problemas a los que nos enfrentamos en el mundo y que me parecen realmente importantes. El primer problema es la desigualdad económica, de la que sé algo. El segundo problema es el cambio climático y los problemas medioambientales, que creo que son los más importantes. También me referiré al final a algunos problemas relacionados con la pandemia del COVID. En todos los problemas, lo que podríamos llamar el Tercer Sector puede desempeñar un gran papel.