DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil An e-gov service for retirement applying by illiterate and disabled people Daniel Pataca, Sônia Kutiishi, Esther Menezes and Graziella Bonadia CPqD – Telecommunication Research and Development Center Rodovia Campinas Mogi-Mirim km 118,5 13.083-970 – Campinas, SP, Brazil {pataca, sonia, esther, bonadia}@cpqd.com.br the socio-economic importance of Brazilian Social ABSTRACT This paper describes an e-gov service that provides a Security System. mean to require urban or rural retirement benefits. It The digital divide, or the constraints to access the also discusses its usability and accessibility in order to information and communication technologies (ICT), assist disabled and illiterate people. The conception of due to educational, psychological or socio-economic such service has been motivated by the identification of barriers is the current condition of a great amount of the major needs among the portion of Brazilian people Brazilians. Furthermore, visual or hearing impairments who is digitally excluded and whose functional or plain and complete or partial literacy deficiencies limit the illiteracy levels are significantly high. Furthermore, the access to technology, thus comprising some of the main percentage of people with visual or hearing impairments barriers to the use of computers and Internet [2]. These at retirement age is higher than overall population characteristics are more usual among people over 60 average. Such characteristics should be taken into years old, which is the average age to request for account when designing interfaces which can be easily retirement benefits. used by people with low literacy levels or visual or hearing impairment. This paper also describes the Within rural population, which corresponds to 19% of mechanisms for user identification and the assistive total Brazilian population, or 32 millions of people in technologies employed in the design for providing 20042, around 55% of the rural households had a autonomy to its target public. monthly income of approximately just two minimum wages3. In 2005, for the approximately 96 millions of Author Keywords Brazilian workers, 19 millions worked in the User Interface, e-gov Service, Illiterate People, Elderly agricultural sector. People, Sensory Disabilities, Digital Divide, Due to the low income of the majority of Brazilian Retirement. workers, the income received from retirement benefits has an important impact on the families, especially ACM Classification Keywords those who live in rural areas, where the retired citizen is Graphical User Interface, Screen Design, User-centered the main provider. In Northeast, a poor Brazilian region, design. the main source of income is from retirement payments to the workers, whose benefit represents 50% of the INTRODUCTION total income of almost all households [3]. For those We present a new electronic government service, which reasons, the retirement payments plays an important integrates in one place, only, the majority of role for reducing the poverty and the income inequality information and forms required for retirement request in Brazil [4]. [1]. Those forms together with personal documents will be delivered at the Brazilian Social Security System The development of an electronic service for office (INSS – Instituto Nacional de Seguro Social). solicitation of retirement must take into account the Such e-gov service may reduce the number of visits to profile of the majority of its target market. The illiteracy the INSS office by people eligible for retirement, rate among people who live in urban areas is 10% and making those procedures simpler, specially for those for people who live in rural area it increases to 28%. In who live in towns without INSS office. addition, about 20% of the population is partially illiterate. This number rises to 54% if we consider only The target public for the service is composed by rural people in retirement age, the target public of the service and urban workers who need to obtain their retirement through Social Security System. These workers are mostly elderly people and may be completely or 2 partially illiterate, have some visual or hearing The data related to Brazilian population mentioned in disabilities or even just be digitally illiterate. this article where extracted from IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). Two factors motivated the creation of such service: 1) 3 the identification of the target public needs which are Nowadays the Brazilian minimum wage is around those concerning mainly illiterate elderly people, and 2) US$ 190,00. 7 DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil proposed. Furthermore, in this group, 34% has visual Most of the information about retirement application and 18% some hearing impairments. Additionally, the procedures is available in official government Internet portion of Brazilian population whose level of sites but it is spread across different sites and use a instruction is lower than three years of study reaches complex language to be understood by most of people, 32%. Considering only workers at retirement age, that even by literate persons. Furthermore, sometimes it portion goes to 54%. In the case of rural workers presents contradictory information. eligible for retirement, this parcel increases even more, Our e-gov service offers an integrated information reaching 81%. system that supports the workers during requirement In association with the socio-economic importance of and tracking processes. retirement benefits, the evidences on Brazilian It innovates in presenting information using a language population needs impose a great challenge to the and interaction models appropriated for illiterate people conception and development of this e-gov service: to or people with visual or hearing impairment. Depending create an interface with high usability and accessibility on the user, appropriated interfaces will be presented to its target public. It is important that such interface considering his profile, by using assistive technologies enables any illiterate or people with visual or hearing such as screen readers, touch screen, command voice, impairments to use the service without assistance. This audio and sign language videos for people with hearing service counts on its features to make it possible and impairment. that should be its great differential when compared to similar services. Through this service, the user will be able to access information about different kinds of retirement, CURRENT PROCEDURES FOR THE ACQUISITION eligibility rules, documentation required and institutions OF A RETIREMENT BENEFITS responsible for issuing such documents. That In order to obtain any kind of retirement benefit from information will be available in a understandable Brazilian Social Security System in present days, the language for the user. workers should go to an INSS office and ask for information and the required forms. Then, they must Many documents are demanded by the retirement return to the INSS office in order to deliver the filled request and the system will provide support for getting forms and a set of documents that prove their them by offering an electronic documents check list, identification and fulfillment of all the requirements to giving information on how to obtain them and, also, receive the benefit. After delivering all documents, the communication tools for contacting the institutions worker has to wait about 40 days for the process responsible for issuing them. Sometimes, special forms conclusion. are required for applying the retirement benefits. In that case, the service will help the user providing the The main barrier of a retirement applying is the necessary forms and supporting him to fill them. understanding of the information presented by the INSS. There is a great number of persons with low After reaching the eligibility rules and gathering the literacy or some sensory impairment and the style of the documentation, the user must go to a social security written information is highly technical. In addition, in a office to apply for retirement benefits. The service will considerable number of cases, it is difficult to collect allow the user to track the progress of his process and to documents with evidences of the number of working- update his data, for example an address change. years requested for retirement, especially for rural workers, usually not registered. Besides, until all PROCEDURES FOR APPLYING FOR RETIREMENT BENEFITS USING THE SERVICE required documents are complete and correct, it is possible that the worker has to return to the INSS office In order to use this service, the user must go to a several times. telecenter (Internet access point) or kiosk, located in public places easily accessible for the target audience, The effort of the worker to deliver all required such as rural schools and commercial areas, thus documents may be expensive, specially if there is no reducing the distance and time travel from and to his INSS office in the city where he lives. It is known that house. only 20% of the Brazilian cities have an INSS office. The user will access the service after an automatic At the INSS Internet site it is possible to obtain identification of his profile by the system, which information about many social security services as well includes the identification of type and degree of user's as to download forms and track the processes status. sensory disability or level of literacy. Furthermore, the However, as the case mentioned above, the excess of user may register himself in the system. In such case, formal and technical language imposes a barrier for the authentication will be made by means of biometric understanding those information, especially for those data. Figure1 illustrates the main functionalities of the with low literacy. service. SERVICE FEATURES The service purpose is to support both, urban and rural workers, offering them automatic tools to simplify the Social Security retirement applying. 8 DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil and assistive technologies for people with visual or hearing impairments. This way, the service should overcome the effect of those impairments and also the limitations caused by illiteracy. The interfaces are being designed in a way to break the resistance of the user in face of the ICTs and to make him interested in the service by offering an independent, efficient and pleasant use of the service. The service will provide an application with interactive interface, which is automatically adapted to the user characteristics and limitations. For that to happen, at the initial moment of the interaction between the user and the application, the system will have to identify his profile, for example, type and degree of sensory disability, level of literacy, etc. This profile will be classified and associated to interfaces set that will be provided by the service. The rural or urban worker, optionally, will be able to supply personal information, for example, rural or urban Figure 1 – Retirement service diagram. inhabitant, age and sex. The information and the profile Through the service, the user will be able to get all the will be stored with a biometric identity and used on his information about the procedures for applying for register for defining the more adequate interface for the retirement benefits without going to a social security user in his next login sessions in that application. office, usually not present in all cities, as mentioned The access to the application will be carried out through before. a customized portal, constructed from the The service supports the user to get the required characteristics, limitations and preferences of the user. documents by instructing him on how to contact the If the user is registered, that is, he has a profile institution responsible for the document emission associated with a biometric identity, the portal will (person of contact, e-mail, telephone and address) and, contain its preferential applications, such as tools of on how to obtain the document. Furthermore, if communication, browsers, text editor and the service necessary, the service provides communication tools proposed; alternatively, the portal will contain based on text or voice so that the user can contact applications of more general use. different institutions and ask for more information For non-registered users, the system will have to related to the documents. identify their profiles and to configure automatically the In the particular case of rural people who have worked most adequate interface each time they use the system. in more than one city, this service may be especially For the registered ones, the system will only have to helpful because they must get a declaration from the recognize the user, through his biometric identity, and rural labor union of each city confirming their rural to recover his interface and gateway in the system. activities during an specific period of time. This new If he wishes, the user will be able to configure his service could avoid a journey to each city to obtain a profile in accordance with his preferences and needs, declaration from its rural labor union. being allowed to configure the interface and to add or to remove applications easily. USER IDENTIFICATION The user interfaces play a crucial role for the acceptance Sets of interfaces are being specified and developed, of the service by its target public. Whilst the access each one directed to a group of users in accordance with terminals are the equipment employed by the users to their characteristics, such as, low vision or blind people, access the system, the interfaces offer the capability of full or partial hearing impaired people, plain or an effective interaction by exchanging visual, audio or functional illiterates, and users without disability. The tactile information. sets referring to partial impaired users and functional illiterates will be composed by more than one type of Beyond technical aspects, the interfaces enclose social, interface, depending on the degree of the sensory cultural, cognitive and subjective aspects of the user. impairment or on the level of illiteracy. They will employ a language and a model of interaction that favor the establishment of a communication Different medias will be used depending on the type of between the system and its users. They are being impairment, for example, in the case of blind people, adapted to the level of knowledge and abilities of its the sound will be privileged for the communication, target public and use elements (such as expressions, whereas for the illiterates, the images, sounds and concepts, images, figures and words) of its knowledge figures will prevail. 9 DEGAS 2007 | Proceedings 10 September 2007 | Rio de Janeiro y Brazil The communication language will be of easy Initially conceived to the rural and urban retirements, interpretation for people with low level of literacy in a this service could be extended in the future for the way that the majority of population can understand the attainment of other social benefits as aid for illness and information provided by the Social Security System maternity-aid. Internet site. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONCLUSION This work was supported by FUNTTEL – Fundo para o In this article, an electronic assistant for the retirement Desenvolvimento Tecnológico das Telecomunicações applying process for rural and urban workers was presented. The importance of such service can be REFERENCES conferred in the projections of retirements to be granted 1. Pataca, D. M., Bonadia, G.C., Menezes, E., Zanco in the future and in the social function of the Brazilian Neto, R.A., Kutiishi, S.M. Especificação Funcional – Social Security System, responsible for a significant Serviço de Governo Eletrônico para obtenção de amount of retirements and the social protection of Aposentadoria pelo Trabalhador Urbano e Rural. elderly people. Another important aspect is the PD.30.12.36A./RT-03-AC. FUNTTEL. CPqD (internal availability on Internet site of all the information and report in Portuguese) procedures required for the processes for applying the 2. Holanda, G.M., Dall'Antonia, J.C. An Approach for retirement benefits for the rural and urban workers. e-inclusion: Bringing illiterates and disabled people into The main contribution of our work is the development play. JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT of a universal communication language and interfaces & INNOVATION 1, 3 (2006), 29-37. with a universal design for the attendance of all the 3. Delgado, G. Previdência social e mercado de types of workers, not only those without deficiencies. trabalho no Brasil. Ciência e Cultura 58, 4 (2006), 44- All the functional and technical specifications have 45 (in Portuguese). been already carried through and currently we are 4. Delgado, G., Castro, J.A. Financiamento da testing different assistive tools for the most appropriate Previdência Rural: Situação Atual e Mudanças. Texto choice, choosing the places for field trials and initiating para Discussão IPEA, 992 (2003) (in Portuguese). the software codification. Also, the developments of the interfaces and studies to find the more appropriate communication languages for our target public have been initiated. 10