Accessibility of Health Data Representations for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Design

Health data of consumer off-the-shelf wearable devices is often conveyed to users through visual data representations and analyses. However, this is not always accessible to people with disabilities or older people due to low vision, cognitive impairments or literacy issues. Due to trade-offs between aesthetics predominance or information overload, real-time user feedback may not be conveyed easily from sensor devices through visual cues like graphs and texts. These difficulties may hinder critical data understanding. Additional auditory and tactile feedback can also provide immediate and accessible cues from these wearable devices, but it is necessary to understand existing data representation limitations initially. To avoid higher cognitive and visual overload, auditory and haptic cues can be designed to complement, replace or reinforce visual cues. In this paper, we outline the challenges in existing data representation and the necessary evidence to enhance the accessibility of health information from personal sensing devices used to monitor health parameters such as blood pressure, sleep, activity, heart rate and more. By creating innovative and inclusive user feedback, users will likely want to engage and interact with new devices and their own data

The Global Care Ecosystems of 3D Printed Assistive Devices

The popularity of 3D printed assistive technology has led to the emergence of new ecosystems of care, where multiple stakeholders (makers, clinicians, and recipients with disabilities) work toward creating new upper limb prosthetic devices. However, despite the increasing growth, we currently know little about the differences between these care ecosystems. Medical regulations and the prevailing culture have greatly impacted how ecosystems are structured and stakeholders work together, including whether clinicians and makers collaborate. To better understand these care ecosystems, we interviewed a range of stakeholders from multiple countries, including Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, India, Mexico, and the U.S. Our broad analysis allowed us to uncover different working examples of how multiple stakeholders collaborate within these care ecosystems and the main challenges they face. Through our study, we were able to uncover that the ecosystems with multi-stakeholder collaborations exist (something prior work had not seen), and these ecosystems showed increased success and impact. We also identified some of the key follow-up practices to reduce device abandonment. Of particular importance are to have ecosystems put in place follow up practices that integrate formal agreements and compensations for participation (which do not need to be just monetary). We identified that these features helped to ensure multi-stakeholder involvement and ecosystem sustainability. We finished the paper with socio-technical recommendations to create vibrant care ecosystems that include multiple stakeholders in the production of 3D printed assistive devices

International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022

This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate