C. Stephanidis (Ed.): Universal Access in HCI, Part I, HCII 2011, LNCS 6765, pp. 307–316, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 Some Issues Regarding the Design of Adaptive Interface Generation Systems Julio Abascal, Amaia Aizpurua, Idoia Cearreta, Borja Gamecho, Nestor Garay, and Raúl Miñón Informatika Fakultatea. University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea Manuel Lardizabal 1, 20018 Donostia, Spain {julio.abascal,amaia.aizpurua,idoia.cearreta,borja.gamecho, nestor.garay,raul.minon}@ehu.es Abstract. This paper describes the main issues related to the design of user adaptive interaction systems, in order to discuss their applicability to a specific domain: the automatic generation of accessible user interfaces for people with disabilities who make use of ubiquitous services. Advances in the domain of the accessible Web are especially interesting for this purpose. Nevertheless, even if several procedures are similar, there are specific features that require new approaches, such as the formal specification of the functionality of the interface that will be generated. Keywords: Adaptive Systems, Special Needs, Adaptive User Interfaces, Ubiquitous Computing, Knowledge Modelling. 1 Introduction It is well known that users with sensory, physical or cognitive disabilities have enormous difficulties using devices and applications, and obtaining services through them, because several of them are not accessible. Most frequently the main accessibility barriers lie in the user interfaces, which are habitually designed without taking human diversity into consideration. The most natural way to cope with diversity appears to be adaptation. In the last decades, people working in diverse areas of the Artificial Intelligence field have been working on adaptive systems, hence creating valuable knowledge that can be applied to the design of adaptive user interfaces for people with disabilities. Our laboratory is involved in a research effort to design accessible interfaces for people with disabilities using intelligent machines, such as ATMs, vending machines, information kiosks, home intelligent appliances, etc., in a ubiquitous context. In order to establish the foundations for our system, we reviewed and comment the state of the art in modelling for user adapted interaction in diverse domains and its applicability to the provision of ubiquitous services for people with disabilities. This paper summarises a number of results from our discussions. After this brief introduction, section 2 introduces the principal techniques for knowledge modelling. In section 3 the main adaptation methods are summarized. In the following section reasoning approaches are discussed. Section 5 provides examples of adaptive systems for personalizing the user interface, emphasizing the ubiquitous computing area. The paper ends with some conclusions.