Abstract

Abstract
The dropout of university students has been a factor of concern for educational institutions, affecting various aspects such as the institution’s reputation and funding and rankings. For this reason, it is essential to identify which students are at risk. In this study, algorithms based on decision trees and random forests are proposed to solve these problems using real data from 331 students from the University of Trásos-Montes and Alto Douro. In this work with these learning algorithms together with the training strategies, we managed to obtain an 89% forecast of students who may abandon their studies based on the evaluations of both semesters related to the first year and personal data.

Abstract
In this study, the development of a mobile application, for people with visual disabilities, is presented. The solution allows assistance to easily walk outside and be warned from the obstacles that could appear. Specifically, the application alerts, with audio stimulus, the user for the incoming dangerous objects by identifying them at a certain distance, in real time, via the phone camera. It can be used with voice commands and/or manually, in two different ways. In addition, location information of frequently visited places can be saved, at any time, and the user can use the app's audible navigation service for his/her next visit. Also, this application can be used only with the mobile phone, without any additional hardware device. It was developed to be used on both IOS and Android platforms. A preliminary usability assessment has been made and the overall results appeared positive as it was showed 86% successful rate in user interaction. In future work, we will introduce improvements within the voice command system, also in the synchronization of the camera and navigation service, and provide an advanced model training to object detection.

Abstract
When something is written regarding the need of accessibility, the authors typically put the emphasis in how it is something valuable for the people with disabilities (PwD) that need that accessibility in the first place in order to become included in the society; others follow the more debatable via of the human rights or the strive for a more humanist and inclusive society, even if such accessibility provision ends being legally enforced. Any benefits to non-PwD are usually seen as secondary effects due to PwDs becoming more autonomous or needing less support once the accessibility occurs to some extent. This article drives in a different direction, exposing direct benefits to the non-PwD when the world is more accessible, even when no actual PwD is needing any accessibility. For that purpose, examples are presented with non-PwD being benefited rather than PwD due to accessibilities that were thought to serve only for the PwD.

Abstract
Automatic test case generation is usually based on models of the software under test. However, those models may not exist or may be outdated and so, the test case generation must resort to other artifacts. In a software maintenance context, test cases must adapt to software changes and should be improved continuously to test adequately the new versions of the software. Mutation testing is a fault-based testing technique that evaluates the quality of the tests by applying simple changes to the source code and checking afterwards if the tests are able to detects those changes. This paper presents a web testing approach in which test cases are generated from user execution traces as a way to deal with the absence of models. In addition, it applies mutation operators over those test cases to enrich the test suite. The mutation operators were designed so as to mimic possible real failures. The additional tests are analyzed, and those that generate different outcomes are kept because they exercise additional behavior of the web application under test. At the end, the overall approach is illustrated and validated in a case study.

Abstract
Software testing can promote software quality. However, this activity is often performed at the end of projects where failures are most difficult to correct. Combining requirements specification activities with test design at an early stage of the software development process can be beneficial. One way to do this is to use a more structured requirements specification language. This allow to reduce typical problems such as ambiguity, inconsistency, and incorrectness in requirements and may allow the automatic generation of (parts of) acceptance test cases reducing the test design effort. In this paper we discuss an approach that promotes the practice of requirements specification combined with testing specification. This is a model-based approach that promotes the alignment between requirements and tests, namely, test cases and also low-level automated test scripts. To show the applicability of this approach, we integrate two complementary languages: (i) the ITLingo RSL (Requirements Specification Language) that is specially designed to support both requirements and tests rigorously and consistently specified; and (ii) the Robot language, which is a low-level keyword-based language for specifying test scripts. This approach includes model-to-model transformation processes, namely a transformation process from requirements (defined in RSL) into test cases (defined in RSL), and a second transformation process from test cases (in RSL) into test scripts (defined according the Robot framework). This approach was applied in a fictitious online store that illustrates the various phases of the proposal.