55,179 research outputs found
Middle Level Education Aims for Equity and Inclusion, but Do Our School Websites Meet ADA Compliance?
An often-overlooked component of a middle school website is the necessity for that website to be accessible to those with disabilities, while following the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act. In support of the belief that support the belief that inclusive education and respect for diversity should be integrated throughout the school, this study investigated the accessibility of middle school websites in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio by selecting a random sample of 150 schools and analyzing their homepages using WAVE (Web Accessibility Versatile Evaluator), which reports accessibility violations by annotating a copy of the page that was evaluated and presenting embedded icons and indicators to disclose breaches with ADA. Out of 150 districts, 54% had errors that need immediate attention and all 150 schools had alerts of likely violations that ranged from alt-text omissions and empty or confusing links to issues with color contrast and keyboard-only navigation. The article proceeds to give practical suggestions for eliminating many of the errors, even for those shareholders with less than sophisticated technological expertise
Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns
Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse
Medical data processing and analysis for remote health and activities monitoring
Recent developments in sensor technology, wearable computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and wireless communication have given rise to research in ubiquitous healthcare and remote monitoring of human\u2019s health and activities. Health monitoring systems involve processing and analysis of data retrieved from smartphones, smart watches, smart bracelets, as well as various sensors and wearable devices. Such systems enable continuous monitoring of patients psychological and health conditions by sensing and transmitting measurements such as heart rate, electrocardiogram, body temperature, respiratory rate, chest sounds, or blood pressure. Pervasive healthcare, as a relevant application domain in this context, aims at revolutionizing the delivery of medical services through a medical assistive environment and facilitates the independent living of patients. In this chapter, we discuss (1) data collection, fusion, ownership and privacy issues; (2) models, technologies and solutions for medical data processing and analysis; (3) big medical data analytics for remote health monitoring; (4) research challenges and opportunities in medical data analytics; (5) examples of case studies and practical solutions
Analyzing recommender systems for health promotion using a multidisciplinary taxonomy: A scoping review
Background: Recommender systems are information retrieval systems that provide users with relevant items
(e.g., through messages). Despite their extensive use in the e-commerce and leisure domains, their application in
healthcare is still in its infancy. These systems may be used to create tailored health interventions, thus reducing
the cost of healthcare and fostering a healthier lifestyle in the population.
Objective: This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes the existing knowledge in terms of the literature
published over the past 10 years on the use of health recommender systems for patient interventions. The aim of
this study is to understand the scientific evidence generated about health recommender systems, to identify any
gaps in this field to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) (namely, “Ensure healthy
lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”), and to suggest possible reasons for these gaps as well as to
propose some solutions.
Methods: We conducted a scoping review, which consisted of a keyword search of the literature related to health
recommender systems for patients in the following databases: ScienceDirect, PsycInfo, Association for Computing
Machinery, IEEExplore, and Pubmed. Further, we limited our search to consider only English-lan-guage journal
articles published in the last 10 years. The reviewing process comprised three researchers who filtered the results
simultaneously. The quantitative synthesis was conducted in parallel by two researchers, who classified each
paper in terms of four aspects—the domain, the methodological and procedural aspects, the health promotion
theoretical factors and behavior change theories, and the technical aspects—using a new multidisciplinary
taxonomy.
Results: Nineteen papers met the inclusion criteria and were included in the data analysis, for which thirty-three
features were assessed. The nine features associated with the health promotion theoretical factors and behavior
change theories were not observed in any of the selected studies, did not use principles of tailoring, and did not
assess (cost)-effectiveness.
Discussion: Health recommender systems may be further improved by using relevant behavior change strategies
and by implementing essential characteristics of tailored interventions. In addition, many of the features required
to assess each of the domain aspects, the methodological and procedural aspects, and technical aspects
were not reported in the studies.
Conclusions: The studies analyzed presented few evidence in support of the positive effects of using health recommender
systems in terms of cost-effectiveness and patient health outcomes. This is why future studies should
ensure that all the proposed features are covered in our multidisciplinary taxonomy, including integration with
electronic health records and the incorporation of health promotion theoretical factors and behavior change
theories. This will render those studies more useful for policymakers since they will cover all aspects needed to
determine their impact toward meeting SDG3.European Union's Horizon 2020 No 68112
Raising awareness of the accessibility challenges in mathematics MOOCs
MOOCs provide learning environments that make it easier for learners to study from anywhere, at their own pace and with open access to content. This has revolutionised the field of eLearning, but accessibility continues to be a problem, even more so if we include the complexity of the STEM disciplines which have their own specific characteristics. This work presents an analysis of the accessibility of several MOOC platforms which provide courses in mathematics. We attempt to visualise the main web accessibility problems and challenges that disabled learners could face in taking these types of courses, both in general and specifically in the context of the subject of mathematics
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