Studies in health technology and informatics最新文献

Accessibility influencers play a pivotal role in the broader accessibility movement, leveraging social media to raise awareness and shape public opinion. This study explores the distinct goals, communication styles, and approaches these influential figures employ to make complex legislative content more accessible and engaging. Utilizing netnography for data collection and conducting thematic analysis of interviews, this research highlights the crucial role of accessibility influencers in disseminating knowledge, advocating for universal design, and enhancing digital accessibility. The findings emphasize the importance of integrating accessibility principles into educational curricula, ensuring the development of a workforce capable of creating inclusive environments. Moreover, the study underscores the need for continuous professional development and systemic inclusion of accessibility training across all educational levels.

Promoting inclusion and diversity is essential for creating an inclusive built environment. Next to building knowledge and understanding on the topic, it is also crucial to foster inclusive attitudes and awareness for both personal and professional growth. In developing a new architectural course 'Designing with People', our goal was to elevate knowledge and understanding of an inclusive built environment as well as to create more awareness on inclusion and diversity, guided by the Universal Design paradigm. To achieve this, the authors established a civic approach and facilitated interdisciplinary, intercultural collaborations to create a symbiotic learning environment among international students Interior Architecture and Architecture, students Occupational Therapy, clients and user/experts. This paper explores the strategy for advancing universal design through collaboration and examines if and how a network of stakeholders can mutually benefit from shared learning experiences. To understand stakeholders' perspectives, the study utilizes reflection reports, surveys with open-ended questions, and self-assessment questionnaires. Results point to notable positive learning experiences in knowledge-sharing, way of working and thinking, a more nuanced view on people with disabilities and the synergistic combination of diverse perspectives, indicating that 1 + 1 = 3. While enhanced awareness among students on diversity and disability topics was less noticeable throughout the course, the intensive collaboration with international students from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds seemed to increase awareness of other cultures and identities. The outcomes suggest that promoting mutual learning experiences among students from diverse disciplines together with other stakeholders, can not only enhance educational settings but also holds the potential to inform and improve universal design practices in various professional contexts. This opens up opportunities to significantly enrich the discourse on inclusion and universal design.

This study explores the proposition of requiring students to hand in universally designed coursework and the transferrable benefits of accessibility audits. Coursework that adheres to universal design (UD) principles will be more accessible to fellow students and teachers. In this study we investigate if the universal design perspective can have positive side effects as a vessel for plagiarism detection. An experiment confirmed that an accessibility checking tool indeed can help flag some cheating attempts that go undetected by the plagiarism detection tool, but not all. Universal designed coursework requirements may prevent students from exploiting several of these cheating techniques. Through the process of preparing universally designed assignments, students will gain practice, knowledge, increased competence, and awareness of UD.

Mobile ICT, such as smartphones and tablets, has become integral for everyday tasks like finance, communication, and entertainment. While these technologies offer significant opportunities for integration and combating loneliness, visually impaired individuals still face challenges. These include practical barriers due to poor universal design, motivational hurdles, and inadequate lifelong education. In this paper, we aim to identify both the motivational and educational facilitators, as well as the technical and societal inhibitors, to digital skill development in mobile ICT among visually impaired individuals. Our approach involved participating as silent observers in an IT course for visually impaired users. Our study underscores that visually impaired individuals value mobile ICT for enhancing their daily lives. We identify opportunities, including key motivations to learn about ICT, and compile a list of useful apps and devices for visually impaired people. Simultaneously, we identify challenges related to technical and universal design, competence and societal issues, motivation, and attitudes, as well as security, privacy, and fraud concerns.

This study investigates the accessibility of the Ruter mobile app, a major digital platform provided by the public transport authority for Oslo and Akershus counties in Norway. By employing a combination of case study analysis, accessibility audits, and user experience testing, the research evaluates the app's compliance with WCAG and its overall usability for individuals with disabilities. Despite the inclusion of several accessibility features, the findings reveal significant areas for improvement, particularly in contrast handling, form field support, and logical sequencing. Feedback from a group of six participants highlights the necessity for continuous enhancement of the app design to ensure it is user-friendly and accessible. This research emphasizes the importance of universal design principles and suggests that with targeted enhancements, Ruter AS can significantly improve the inclusivity and accessibility of its digital platforms.

This study explores the application of Universal Design (UD) principles to university environments, aiming to improve the experiences of students and staff by fostering inclusivity in educational and social spaces. The research began with a literature review and employed the 'Design for All A.U.D.I.T.' tool, developed by Politecnico di Milano. This tool was adapted to evaluate six buildings across two universities in Milan:Politecnico di Milano and Statale University. The buildings ranged from the most recent to medium-aged and the oldest on each campus. The assessment focused on three main categories-physical, social, and sensory-cognitive quality-across eight key areas, including outdoor environments, entrances, halls, horizontal and vertical circulation, restrooms, classrooms, and study/leisure spaces. A binary scoring system was used to calculate the satisfaction of requirements, previously weighted by experts. The evaluation revealed that newer buildings generally scored higher on average (77%) compared to those from the 1960s (62%) and historical ones (67%). Despite higher scores, newer constructions often prioritized educational spaces over social and leisure areas, resulting in a lack of student gathering spaces. Significant issues included poor entrance design, inadequate wayfinding strategies, and a lack of inclusive classroom features, although restroom facilities consistently demonstrated good accessibility. The most recent building atPolitecnico di Milano scored highest overall but struggled in leisure and study rooms, as did the new building at Statale University. This research highlights both the current state and potential for improvement in university architecture through the lens of UD. The study underscores that innovative design does not always equate to user satisfaction and provides an objective tool to aid decision-makers in enhancing the accessibility and inclusivity of university spaces, ultimately improving the well-being of all users.

Public budgets are limited and priorities must be made between competing projects. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the standard tool to assess projects and prioritise between them, as is done, e.g., in national transport plans. Universal design (UD) is typically a legal requirement in new investments and their benefits and contribution in CBA have usually not received much attention. Therefore, there is a risk that benefits are underestimated in projects that include UD elements and that these projects are subsequently ranked lower than what they ought to according to CBA performance. In this paper, we develop a user-friendly methodology for CBA of UD projects in public transport and walk/cycle infrastructure which aligns with national handbooks and guidelines for project appraisal. It contains five core elements: 1. User benefit. User benefit stems from valuation studies and are summarized and discounted over an assessment period, which in Norway is 40 years. This includes annual real price adjustments and the use of a discount rate according to guidelines. 2. Non-user effects. The degree to which UD projects affect other travellers, this (dis)benefit is accounted for. 3. Costs. Budget costs include investment and possible reinvestment at the end of economic life and annual operation and maintenance costs. These are summarized and discounted over the analysis period. Residual value after 40 years is subtracted. 4. Demand. Increases in walking and cycling have health benefits. Moreover, demand diverted from motorized transport and car to public transport, walking and cycling will affect external costs of road congestion, emissions, and accidents. 5. Shadow prices. According to Norwegian practice, the use of public funds has an inefficiency cost. Therefore, we add a shadow price on money from the public purse. With worked examples, we demonstrate that UD projects in transport are indeed available for CBA appraisal. What is more, they compete surprisingly well with alternative uses of public budgets. In fact, UD projects outperform most other transport projects in Norway when considering their cost-benefit performance. Money spent on UD gives more welfare back to society than most other uses within the transport sector. This means that UD need not only be a legal requirement in new installations. UD can also compete with, and be prioritized over, other transport investments and projects.

Architecture still excludes users despite decades of increased attention towards the designing of built environments to accommodate all. Partially, this grand problem is due to the uncertainty and plurality of future usage, which challenge architects in identifying potentially excluding mechanisms of their designs. Common approaches in responding to these challenges are either top-down assessment of architecture, or bottom-up collection of situated accounts from users. However, both approaches face dilemmas in developing representations of usage. This paper presents a framework that integrates qualities of both approaches using user-narratives and a rule-based generative algorithm to generate libraries of designs that each depict potential usage reflecting the narrative of users. The aim is to give architects and other decision makers tools to conceptualise the future usage of their design as plural and diverse. The presented framework is at an early stage of development. However, the principles proposed could hold potential to mitigate exclusion by explicating multiple potential use-events.

In this paper, we extend the gap model of disability that supports digital equipment and cyber-physical situational variations. We explore an alternative approach to visualizing and understanding disability that takes into account the diversity of personal abilities, the diversity of digital equipment and equally important, the situation (environmental, psychological, and digital) in which the information system is used. The most important implications of this work are twofold. First, this work will contribute to the need for Universal Design to take into account not only the diversity of abilities and impairments of the users that are tangible and recognizable in the physical environment, but also the diversity of digital equipment and usage situations. Second, as part of the systems development cycle, in user testing of digital services, this work highlights the essential need to not only involve a diverse set of users, but also to conduct testing in diverse digital environments (smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop PCs), and in diverse realistic usage scenarios, including strong sunlight or low light situation, as well as tired, alert, stressed or distracted, and slow network. The proposed model attempts to give a more holistic view and promote a more comprehensive understanding of the disabilities that can occur during use of digital services or mediated communication in daily life.