Mapping Accessibility Over Time

The concept of "accessibility" has been coin in the transportation planning field for more than 40 years. Improving accessibility is a common element in the goals section in almost all transportation plans in the US. In this study we compare the changes in levels of accessibility over time in the Minneapolis - St. Paul region using two different modes (auto and transit). The importance of accessibility as a measure of land use and transportation planning performance in the region is revealed by comparing it over time. The longitudinal analysis being conducted shows improvements in most areas in the studied region in terms of the level of accessibility by automobile, and a drop in accessibility by transit over the period 1990 to 2000. The findings are compared to the levels of congestion in the region between the same time periods. This comparison shows the difference between the two measures and strengthens the importance of accessibility measures as a tool for monitoring and evaluating regional land use and transportation planning performance. Journal of Maps (in press).

Perceived accessibility:what it is and why it differs from calculated accessibility measures based on spatial data

Accessibility is usually evaluated using indicators calculated from spatial data. However, perceived accessibility, defined as the perceived potential to participate in spatially dispersed opportunities, is often poorly reflected by these calculated measures. This paper sets out to explain the mechanisms that lead to these mismatches. A conceptual model is constructed to establish what factors shape perceived accessibility. A schematic framework shows that mismatches between a calculated indicator and perceptions can stem from inaccuracies in awareness as well as from inaccuracies in the measure if the measure fails to take account of the subjective evaluations of accessibility components. When evaluating the performance of land-use and transport system configurations, calculated measures based on spatial and transport data only serve as proxies for how accessibility is actually experienced. This paper argues that bringing perceived accessibility to the fore of accessibility-based planning by acknowledging and evaluating potential mismatches with accessibility indicators will advance the evolution from mobility-based to accessibility-based planning

Spatial accessibility and social inclusion: The impact of Portugal's last health reform

Health policies seek to promote access to health care and should provide appropriate geographical accessibility to each demographical functional group. The dispersal demand of health‐careservices and the provision for such services atfixed locations contribute to the growth of inequality intheir access. Therefore, the optimal distribution of health facilities over the space/area can lead toaccessibility improvements and to the mitigation of the social exclusion of the groups considered mostvulnerable. Requiring for such, the use of planning practices joined with accessibility measures. However,the capacities of Geographic Information Systems in determining and evaluating spatial accessibility inhealth system planning have not yet been fully exploited. This paper focuses on health‐care services planningbased on accessibility measures grounded on the network analysis. The case study hinges on mainlandPortugal. Different scenarios were developed to measure and compare impact on the population'saccessibility. It distinguishes itself from other studies of accessibility measures by integrating network data ina spatial accessibility measure: the enhanced two‐stepfloating catchment area. The convenient location forhealth‐care facilities can increase the accessibility standards of the population and consequently reducethe economic and social costs incurred. Recently, the Portuguese government implemented a reform thataimed to improve, namely, the access and equity in meeting with the most urgent patients. It envisaged,in terms of equity, the allocation of 89 emergency network points that ensured more than 90% of thepopulation be within 30 min from any one point in the network. Consequently, several emergency serviceswere closed, namely, in rural areas. This reform highlighted the need to improve the quality of the emergencycare, accessibility to each care facility, and equity in their access. Hence, accessibility measures becomean efficient decision‐making tool, despite its absence in effective practice planning. According to anapplication of this type of measure, it was possible to verify which levels of accessibility were decreased,including the most disadvantaged people, with a larger time of dislocation of 12 min between 2001 and 2011

What's Different between Visual Question Answering for Machine "Understanding" Versus for Accessibility?

In visual question answering (VQA), a machine must answer a question given an associated image. Recently, accessibility researchers have explored whether VQA can be deployed in a real-world setting where users with visual impairments learn about their environment by capturing their visual surroundings and asking questions. However, most of the existing benchmarking datasets for VQA focus on machine "understanding" and it remains unclear how progress on those datasets corresponds to improvements in this real-world use case. We aim to answer this question by evaluating discrepancies between machine "understanding" datasets (VQA-v2) and accessibility datasets (VizWiz) by evaluating a variety of VQA models. Based on our findings, we discuss opportunities and challenges in VQA for accessibility and suggest directions for future work

Disability standards and guidelines for learning management systems: Evaluating accessibility

Currently, the great majority of institutions of higher education use Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) as pedagogical tools. In order to make these systems accessible to all students, it is important to take into account not only educational standards, but also standards of accessibility. It is essential to have with procedures and well-established method for evaluating these tools, so in this paper we propose a method for evaluating the accessibility of LCMSs and LMS based on a consideration of particular accessibility standards and other technological and human aspects. The method application is for all LMS, in order to illustrate the effectiveness of the evaluation method, we present a case study over the widely-used LMS Moodle1. In the case study, the accessibility of Moodle is evaluated thoroughly from the point of view of visually-impaired persons. The results obtained from the case study demonstrate that this LMS is partially accessible. The evaluation shows that the tool provides poor support to the authors of accessible educational contents.This research work was supported by the Research Network MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542) (see www.mavir.net/), GEMMA (TSI-020302- 2010-141) and SAGAS (TSI-020100-2010-184) research projects.Publicad

Linking experienced barriers during daily travel and transport poverty in peripheral rural areas:the case of Zeeland, the Netherlands

People living in peripheral rural areas are often considered to be prone to transport poverty and inaccessibility to activities. Previous identifications of transport poverty have mainly relied on accessibility measures based on land-use and transport data. However, such measures may be very different from how people themselves perceive accessibility. Therefore, explicitly considering perceptions of accessibility may be valuable in evaluating the nature of accessibility issues such as transport poverty. By conducting semi-structured focus group discussions in Zeeland, a rural area of the Netherlands, this paper shows that the mechanisms behind transport poverty are mediated by individual perceptions of accessibility. Local social norms related to accessibility appear to be important in shaping these perceptions. In peripheral rural areas, norms reflecting the dominance of the private car add to the negative appropriation of other transport options and shape expectations with respect to accessibility. Therefore, taking account of perceptions of accessibility, and the ways these are shaped, adds to the understanding of the nature of accessibility issues and is considered vital in designing responsive policies

A New Approach to Accessibility – Perceived accessibility versus objectively measured accessibility in daily travel

Accessibility has conventionally been measured and evaluated ignoring the user-perspective in favor for focus on travel time and distance to a number of pre-determined destinations. Acknowledging this gap, we recently developed a scale for perceived accessibility PAC (Lättman, Friman, & Olsson 2016) aimed at capturing the individual perspective of accessibility within a certain travel mode. In this paper, we 1) further develop the PAC measure of perceived accessibility in order to capture the perceived accessibility of the individuals’ actual daily travel 2) compare residents’ perceived accessibility to the objective accessibility level for the same residential area, and 3) compare levels of perceived accessibility between residential areas and main travel modes. Data from 2711 residents of Malmö, Sweden show that perceived accessibility is consistently higher than objective accessibility across 13 residential areas, with minor differences in levels of perceived accessibility between areas. Surprisingly, bicycle users rate their accessibility significantly higher than those who mainly use the car or public transport for daily travel, contrary to objective accessibility assumptions. These differences point at the importance of including perceived accessibility as a complementary tool when planning for and evaluating the transport systems.Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

What Can We Learn from Quality Requirements in ISO/TS 82304-2 for Evaluating Conversational Agents in Healthcare?

Evaluating conversational agents (CA) that are supposed to be applied in healthcare and ensuring their quality is essential to avoid patient harm. However, most researchers only study usability and use the CA in clinical trials before conducting such careful evaluation. In previous work, consensus on metrics for evaluating healthcare CA have been found. However, the metrics are still too generic to form an evaluation framework. In this work, we try to link the ISO technical specification ISO/TS 82304-2 Quality Requirements for Health and Wellness Apps to the set of metrics to come a step closer towards an evaluation framework. We identify three links between ISO requirements and the set of metrics, namely accessibility, usability, and security. Although the technical specification rather lists aspects to be considered during development instead of concrete metrics for studying the quality, we can link to some aspects that are also of interest for health CA evaluation. For example, measuring the readability for ensuring accessibility or implementing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are two aspects of relevance for health CA

Network Structure and City Size

Network structure varies across cities. This variation may yield important knowledge about how the internal structure of the city affects its performance. This paper systematically compares a set of surface transportation network structure variables (connectivity, hierarchy, circuity, treeness, entropy, accessibility) across the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. A set of scaling parameters are discovered to show how network size and structure vary with city size. These results suggest that larger cities are physically more inter-connected. Hypotheses are presented as to why this might obtain. This paper then consistently measures and ranks access to jobs across 50 US metropolitan areas. It uses that accessibility measure, along with network structure variables and city size to help explain journey-to-work time and auto mode share in those cities. A 1 percent increase in accessibility reduces average metropolitan commute times by about 90 seconds each way. A 1 percent increase in network connectivity reduces commute time by 0.1 percent. A 1 percent increase in accessibility results in a 0.0575 percent drop in auto mode share, while a 1 percent increase in treeness reduces auto mode share by 0.061 percent. Use of accessibility and network structure measures is important for planning and evaluating the performance of network investments and land use changes

Improving the Online Museum Experience: Dimensions of the Museum-Educator Relationship

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, located in Wellington, New Zealand, aimed to improve their online resources in order to create meaningful engagement with students and educators. By examining Te Papa’s current resources, evaluating the use of their Collections Online (CoL), and exploring other implemented museum models, we were able to understand the important aspects of a successful interactive pedagogical toolkit. We developed and presented potential models such that Te Papa may integrate these results into CoL, allowing greater accessibility to their resources and encouraging its effective use as an educational supplement