Digital Barriers: Making Technology Work for People

This paper was originally given as an oral presentation at the ‘3rd International Conference for Universal Design’, International Association for Universal Design, Hamamatsu, Japan (2010) and subsequently published. Peer reviewed by the conference’s International Scientific Committee, it looks at how the emerging techniques of design ethnography could be applied in a business context and qualitatively evaluates the benefits. It outlines the differences between inclusive design research conducted for digital devices/services and the large body of existing research on inclusive products, buildings and environments. It advances the view that technology companies are today in danger of repeating the same inclusive design mistakes made by kitchen and bathroom manufacturers 20 years ago, and calls for technology companies to develop new techniques to avoid this happening. The paper charts in detail the challenges and processes involved in transferring academic inclusive design research into the business arena, describing research conducted by Gheerawo and his co-authors on projects with research partners Samsung and BlackBerry. The paper helped define the ‘people and technology’ research theme in the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design’s Age & Ability Research Lab, which Gheerawo leads. It was also important, as part of evidence of the benefits of an inclusive technology approach, in persuading a number of companies (Sony, BT, Samsung) to undertake new studies with the Lab. Gheerawo used this pathfinder paper in further work, including an essay on digital communication for www.designingwithpeople.org (i-Design3 project EPSRC), membership of the steering committee for Age UK’s Engage accreditation for business, and lectures at ‘CitiesforAll’ conference, Helsinki (2012), ‘WorkTech’, London (2010), ‘Budapest Design Week’ (2011) and the ‘Business of Ageing’ conference, Dublin (2011). Gheerawo also co-wrote an article ‘Moving towards an encompassing universal design approach in ICT’ in The Journal of Usability Studies (2010), for which he was also a guest editor

Interactions around a contextually embedded system

This paper discusses observations of visitor interactions around a museum installation, focusing on how physical setup and shape of two variants of the installation, a telescope-like viewer and a barrier-free screen, shaped visitor experiences and interactions around and with the system. The analysis investigates contextual embedding, and how the two system variants affected people's ability of sharing the experience and negotiating use

On the character and production of ‘active participation’ in neuro-rehabilitation: an Actor-Network perspective

The importance of patients’ active involvement in neuro-rehabilitation after acquired brain injury has been consistently emphasised in recent years. However, most approaches fail to show how ‘active participation’ is practically enacted, focusing on individualised explanations of patient choice and behaviours, or notions of inherent patient traits. Using Actor Network Theory (ANT) as a sensitising concept, we investigated neuro-rehabilitation practices, asking how participation is shaped through biological and socio-material specificities, how rights to knowledge and expertise are constructed, and how a body acclimatises and adjusts within an order of participation and transformation. We analysed video-recorded fieldwork extracts, examining the work of adjusting, testing and transforming; the construction of competence and incompetence; and material and social processes involved in the division of the body and its re-composition. Our findings show how an ANT-sensitised approach provides a critical understanding and context-specific characterisation of ‘active participation’, produced through the association of heterogeneous actors at any one time. Such specificity and the distribution of work suggest that efforts to account for optimum therapy ‘dosages’, and clinical attention to establishing individually-located levels of ‘self-efficacy’ or ‘motivation’ are misdirected. The performance of ‘active participation’, rather, should be re-imagined as a product of diverse, mutually attuned entities

Book, Video, and Film Reviews

Produced by The Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, The Frank Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts and The School of Social Sciences, The university of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas for The Study for Disability Studies

Disability: Discourse, Experience and Identity

Produced by The Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, Hawaii and The School of Social Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, Texas for The Society for Disability Studies

Tracking changes in everyday experiences of disability and disability sport within the context of the 2012 London Paralympics

The 2012 Paralympics was the biggest ever, the most accessible and best attended in its 64-year history. The Paralympics and ideas of disability associated with the Games provide significant opportunity for reflection on how far societal opinions, attitudes and behaviour have changed regarding disability. In 2012 – the first ever “legacy games” – an explicit aim of the Paralympics was to “transform the perception of disabled people in society”, (Channel 4), and use sport to contribute to “a better world for all people with a disability” (IPC 2011). The 2012 Games therefore came with a social agenda: to challenge the current perceptions many people have about disability and disability sport. Within this report – commissioned by the UK’s Paralympic broadcaster, Channel 4 – we consider everyday experiences of disability and disability sport within the context of the London 2012 Paralympics and televised coverage of the Games. The analysis is based 140 in-depth interviews that took place in the UK over a period of eighteen months, during the lead up to, and immediately after, the Games: between January 2011 and September 2012. Embedded in the lifeworld of our participants, we ask whether the 2012 Paralympics was successful in changing perceptions of disability

Tsotsi and yesterday : an anthropological appraisal

ABSTRACTThis article compares two stories told in the cinema – Tsotsi and Yesterday – with my own analytic experience, shaped in large part by my fieldwork in South Africa. Rather than propose an examination from the out- side inwards, I propose a reading of these works of fiction guided by three different lines, taken, by the people I knew personally, to be essential to com- prehending their lives. The first are the proper names of the subjects. The sec- ond, their houses or dwelling places. And the third, their degree of proximity and importance to the people with whom they interact. Here fiction enables us to reflect not on the verisimilitude of what is filmed in relation to reality, but on the creative process that ethnography can perform in exploring the dis- tances and proximities between the history of a country and the individual biographies of their citizens. ______________________________________________________________________________ RESUMOO presente artigo coteja duas histórias narradas no cinema – Tsotsi e Yesterday – com minha experiência analítica particular, conformada em grande medida a partir de meu trabalho de campo na África do Sul. Ao invés de propor um exame de fora para dentro, faço uma leitura dessas obras de ficção orientada por três eixos distintos, entendidos, pelas pessoas que conheci pessoalmente, como fundamentais para a compreensão de suas vidas. O primeiro são os nomes próprios dos sujeitos. O segundo, suas casas ou locais de moradia. E o terceiro, a maior ou menor proximidade em relação à relevância das pessoas com as quais se relacionam. Aqui a fabulação dá margem para pensarmos não na verossimilhança do que é filmado em relação à realidade, mas no processo criativo que a etnografia pode desempenhar em uma reflexão sobre as distâncias e proximidades entre a história de um país e as biografias individuais de seus cidadãos

Autoethnography as an Accessible Method of Research

Reflecting on my own experiences as a researcher with a disability who lives and works in Poland, I examine methodological issues critical to conducting qualitative research. I argue that autoethnography is a viable method for researchers who must overcome physical and/or cultural obstacles associated with a disability. I also maintain that autoethnography as well as its usefulness as a research method is inherently situated within the sociocultural conditions in which research is being conducted. Concluding, I imply that further studies are necessary for people with disabilities to re-gain voice and articulate their experiences

Whole home exercise intervention for depression in older care home residents (the OPERA study) : a process evaluation

Background: The ‘Older People’s Exercise intervention in Residential and nursing Accommodation’ (OPERA) cluster randomised trial evaluated the impact of training for care home staff together with twice-weekly, physiotherapist-led exercise classes on depressive symptoms in care home residents, but found no effect. We report a process evaluation exploring potential explanations for the lack of effect. Methods: The OPERA trial included over 1,000 residents in 78 care homes in the UK. We used a mixed methods approach including quantitative data collected from all homes. In eight case study homes, we carried out repeated periods of observation and interviews with residents, care staff and managers. At the end of the intervention, we held focus groups with OPERA research staff. We reported our first findings before the trial outcome was known. Results: Homes showed large variations in activity at baseline and throughout the trial. Overall attendance rate at the group exercise sessions was low (50%). We considered two issues that might explain the negative outcome: whether the intervention changed the culture of the homes, and whether the residents engaged with the intervention. We found low levels of staff training, few home champions for the intervention and a culture that prioritised protecting residents from harm over encouraging activity. The trial team delivered 3,191 exercise groups but only 36% of participants attended at least 1 group per week and depressed residents attended significantly fewer groups than those who were not depressed. Residents were very frail and therefore most groups only included seated exercises. Conclusions: The intervention did not change the culture of the homes and, in the case study homes, activity levels did not change outside the exercise groups. Residents did not engage in the exercise groups at a sufficient level, and this was particularly true for those with depressive symptoms at baseline. The physical and mental frailty of care home residents may make it impossible to deliver a sufficiently intense exercise intervention to impact on depressive symptoms