Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Family Language Policy: Perceptions and Attitudes Toward African American Language

Bidialectal African American families are caught in a Family Language Policy (FLP) dilemma in which the goals of belonging in African American communities, and feeling free and relaxed with language, conflict with parents’ interactional, relational, and political goals of raising children who are accepted in the wider society as educated, respectful, and powerful. This study brings together research in FLP with research on race and language by looking at African American families and how they socialize their children into using AAL Researching the relationship between racial identity and language and the role of racism in FLP for African American parents in particular focuses on a missing factor in many FLP studies, family-external racism. By expanding FLP from blanket determinations of success with their streamlining effects, the field can develop a more inclusive approach that blends families’ linguistic goals, contribute to understanding how bidialectalism is intergenerationally experienced, and how systemic oppression and human agency interact in the family, as well as add depth and complexity to our understanding of AA families’ language policy. To explore the intimate domain of language policy within the 10 AA family homes, qualitative methods – surveys, group family interviews, in-home recordings – and an ethnographic approach to investigating the families’ language policy is employed. Interesting patterns emerged in their responses that lead to the suggestion that race and language are inseparable since they are linked to individuals’ racial identity. This study concludes that if family language researchers are excluding racism as an external factor in their research analysis, whether implicitly or explicitly, they are not providing a comprehensive account of the rationale behind distinct language ideologies, planning, and practices, they are missing important theoretical and practical constructs, and they are limiting the understanding of what causes parents to make particular language decisions

Teenage Mutual Understanding: BRIDGING THE CULTURAL GAP

The present project seeks to put into practice the instruments and programmes that the national system of education in Uruguay has been developing upon the three pillars of the global context of the XXI Century: • an increased access to Information Technology, • the emergence of New Pedagogies, • and the Democratization of Education

An Intonational Description of African American Language in Princeville, NC

This thesis uses data from the Princeville, NC section of the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) in order to address two topics concerning language: first, what the intonation of the Princeville participants of the CORAAL looks like acoustically; and second, if intonation is the salient feature that categorizes a speaker as Black or non-Black. The acoustic analysis software, Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2019), is used to take average, minimum, and maximum f0 measurements for 16 participants (9 women and 7 men) across three age groups. From these measurements, the rate of change is calculated in Hz/second to determine the fluctuations in pitch within the pitch range across an utterance. Results in response to the first question suggest that female participants followed a more identifiable average f0 pattern than their male counterparts. Additionally, female participants tended to have higher minimum and maximum f0 measurements, as well as higher rates of change. In response to the second question, the ethicality and morality of asking certain research questions is examined. It is suggested that, rather than potentially essentializing individual linguistic features which belong to a broader social system of meaning, we instead turn towards a critical examination of the field\u27s practices, methods, and theories, and how these in turn fit within broader systems of domination like white supremacy

Race, Racisim, and the Representation of Niger-Congo West African Grammar in African American language :Ebonics in Works by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mark Twain, and Zora Neal Hurston

An analysis of selected works written in African American Language (AAL): Ebonics by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mark Twain, and Zora Neale Hurston in historical, national American literature are used to document “Race, Racism, and the Representation of Niger-Congo West African Grammar in AAL: Ebonics. This study provides an overview of the Enlightenment period by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. which proved how world-renowned Euro-American meta-physicists justified slavery and colonization based on unsubstantiated science and religious beliefs. Further, Gates used his research to dispute the outlandish and biased historical documentation provided by some European scholars who claimed that Africans were animals and could not speak languages. During the last 50 years, renown linguist, Dr. Ernie A. Smith has provided research which has proven that slave authors could always speak languages. Evidence has demonstrated that AAs can learn to read and write languages comparable to Caucasians and all other human beings. In this study, Smith has presented a comparative analysis of Niger- Congo grammar with AAL: Ebonics’ grammar which validated that AAL: Ebonics is a continuation of the Niger-Congo grammar structure. Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mark Twain, and Zora Neal Hurston learned to speak fluently in English and “plantation talk”. In fact, when Dunbar and Joel Chandler Harris’s work in Ebonics was looked at diachronically and synchronically, it was proven that both men spoke Ebonics using the same rule-governed language. Mark Twain wrote a novel which proved that language develops through nurture vs. nature. Twain demonstrated how a slave protagonist and the slave owner’s baby learned to speak each other’s home language when the slave protagonist switched her slave son for the plantation owner’s son. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston built the first all-AA township to demonstrate how AAL: Ebonics was maintained through social isolation for 20 years. In summary, Dunbar, Twain, and Hurston documented AA history through literature. They were able to support the work of great scholars, such as, Gates, Smith and others by writing realistic stories experienced by African Americans by racist groups, such as, Jim Crow and minstrelsy who were the primary culprits of “race and racism.

AAL platform with a “de facto” standard communication interface (TICO): Training in home control in special education

Framed within a long-term cooperation between university and special education teachers, training in alternative communication skills and home control was realized using the “TICO” interface, a communication panel editor extensively used in special education schools. From a technological view we follow AAL technology trends by integrating a successful interface in a heterogeneous services AAL platform, focusing on a functional view. Educationally, a very flexible interface in line with communication training allows dynamic adjustment of complexity, enhanced by an accessible mindset and virtual elements significance already in use, offers specific interaction feedback, adapts to the evolving needs and capacities and improves the personal autonomy and self-confidence of children at school and home. TICO-home-control was installed during the last school year in the library of a special education school to study adaptations and training strategies to enhance the autonomy opportunities of its pupils. The methodology involved a case study and structured and semi-structured observations. Five children, considered unable to use commercial home control systems were trained obtaining good results in enabling them to use an open home control system. Moreover this AAL platform has proved efficient in training children in previous cognitive steps like virtual representation and cause-effect interaction

Active Ageing and Independent Living Services: The Role of Information and Communication Technology

Ageing populations influence services and traditional social support systems like social and health care in the European countries, as well as global patterns in labour and capital markets. It is widely accepted that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications can provide new ways of helping older citizens to live independently. ICT-based applications for independent living vary from general purpose and communication applications to applications specifically for e-learning, e-work and e-health. ICT-based services and understanding the needs of older people are key to supporting Active Ageing in upcoming ageing societies. However, there is still limited understanding of older people's technology-related needs. This report aims to support the research and policy development activities of DG Information Society and Media towards the European Research Area. It highlights the main policy areas related to ageing, where ICT-based applications could play a role, and suggests a number of research and policy challenges that need to be resolved in order to maximise the opportunities offered by ICT.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

Too Tired to Codeswitch: Analyzing the Prophetic Rhetoric of Critical Black Language Awareness

This dissertation examines the rhetorical discourses of three critical Black Language teacher-scholar-activists through the lens of Black or African American prophetic rhetoric. This transdisciplinary project aims to expand the conversation regarding the role of rhetorical communication in the activity of instruction. This research brings teaching and instruction to the forefront as a rhetorical situation in which the cultural politics of Black languages and literacies are prophetically addressed. Based on close reading of selected texts, this dissertation offers the development of three rhetorical frameworks: (a) womanist prophetic rhetoric, (b) Black prophetic fugitivity, and (c) prophetic rehabilitation. Each framework indexes a specific prophetic persona that corresponds to respective rhetors’ pedagogic performance. These include: (a) the womanist prophet, (b) the fugitive prophet, and (c) the rehabilitating prophet. These frameworks and personae shed light on what it means to be a prophetic teacher in this world. In analyzing selected texts through a Black or African American prophetic lens, this research lays the bricks for a path toward prophetic approaches and understandings to teaching and instruction in myriad subject areas. The concluding chapter expands on the development of Prophetic [Communication] Pedagogy—a liberatory pedagogic approach rooted within the Black prophetic-rhetorical tradition which combines critical analysis with rhetorical performance. Consistent with the reading in the body chapter analyses, this framework explains what it means for educators to prophetically employ rhetorical strategies in their teaching to encourage hope and bear witness to injustice