Information Technology Applications in Hospitality and Tourism: A Review of Publications from 2005 to 2007

The tourism and hospitality industries have widely adopted information technology (IT) to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and most importantly to improve service quality and customer experience. This article offers a comprehensive review of articles that were published in 57 tourism and hospitality research journals from 2005 to 2007. Grouping the findings into the categories of consumers, technologies, and suppliers, the article sheds light on the evolution of IT applications in the tourism and hospitality industries. The article demonstrates that IT is increasingly becoming critical for the competitive operations of the tourism and hospitality organizations as well as for managing the distribution and marketing of organizations on a global scale

Including accessibility in higher education curricula for ICT

This paper describes the successful experience carried out by professors of the CETTICO research group of the Technical University of Madrid to incorporate accessibility in the curricula of higher education in ICT in Spain. The paper covers the legal requirements to include accessibility in curricula in Spain, the courses and modules that we have been teaching through the years and the teaching techniques and tools that we have been using

Assessing web content accessibility of E-commerce websites for people with disabilities

In recent years online shopping has grown significantly. Due to the rapid growth of technology, companies also continuing to extend the functionality and design of their Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-business websites. However, it is also important to adopt web accessibility such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in B2C websites to increase the consumer's satisfaction of all ages and with disabilities. This study analyses 30 Australian B2C websites in accordance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) using an automated web service. The result shows that B2C websites in Australia are not paying attention to web accessibility for people with disabilities. However, e-commerce will succeed in meeting WCAG 2.0 by making B2C e-commerce websites accessible to consumer of all ages and with disabilities. Recommendations are proposed in order to improve web accessibility for people with sensory (hearing and vision), motor (limited use of hands) and cognition (language and learning) disabilities in B2C e-commerce websites

from Issue Investigation to Design Solutions

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 산업공학과, 2021.8. 윤명환.가전제품을 포함한 현대 기술은 사용자의 삶에 혜택을 제공하지만 제조업체와 설계자의 접근성 지원 부족으로 인해 장애인 및 고령 사용자는 그 혜택으로부터 소외되었다. 여러 신 기능의 개발 및 발전은 비장애인 사용자의 삶의 질을 풍요롭게 한 것과는 반대로 이러한 기능들은 복잡도가 상향되어 장애인 및 고령 사용자의 접근성과 독립적 사용을 저해하고 이내 사용자 경험을 저하시켰을 뿐이다. 이와 같이 접근성 지원이 필요한 상용자의 사용자 경험을 수집하는 것은 생각보다 번거로운 일이다. 대상 사용자들은 민감한 개인정보상의 이유로 사용자 경험 제공을 꺼릴 수도 있고, 인터뷰나 설문조사를 수행하기에 적합한 조건이 아닐 수도 있으며, 더 나아가 소통에 어려움이 있을 수도 있다. 이와 같은 문제는 제조업체나 설계자와 같은 이해당사자와 대상 사용자 간에 장벽을 만들고, 이러한 장벽은 사용자들이 일상 제품을 사용하며 겪게 되는 문제를 온전히 이해하고 정의하는 것을 어렵게 만들어 공감의 형성이 불가능해진다. 이해당사자들은 장애가 있다는 것, 고령이 된다는 것을 경험해 보지 못 했기 때문에 그들의 사용자 경험을 잘못 해석할 수 있고, 이러한 공감의 부족은 장애인 및 고령 사용자에 대한 편견과 오해로 이어진다. 결국, 접근 가능한 제품 개발을 목표로 하는 제조사나 설계자가 이들의 불편사항 및 요구를 인지한다 해도 대상 사용자의 이러한 문제를 해결하기는 어렵거나 심지어 불가능하기도 하다. 이러한 문제로, 본 연구의 3장에서는 인터뷰와 관찰 데이터를 기반으로 가전제품 사용 맥락에 따른 네 가지 사용자 유형에 대한 여덟 종류의 퍼소나를 개발하였다. 시각장애(전맹, 저시력), 청각장애(농아, 인공 와우), 척수장애(주먹 쥔 손, 펴진 손), 고령자(할머니, 할아버지) 퍼소나는 각각 퍼소나 카드의 시나리오와 같은 형식으로 접근성 이슈를 제공하여 실 사용자와 면대면으로 만나기 어려운 이해당사자로 하여금 대상 사용자의 접근성 이슈를 파악하고 공감할 수 있도록 하는 것을 목표로 한다. 또한, 이해당사자들은 사용자 인터랙션 관점에서 장애인 및 고령 사용자의 다른 행태를 파악하고 이해할 도구가 필요하다. 본 연구의 4장에서는 위계적 작업분석(Hierarchical Task Analysis; HTA)을 수행하여 가전제품 사용 시 시간 순서에 따른 일반적 작업 구조를 제시하여 사용자의 작업 행태를 시각화 하였다. 이 구조와 함께 서블릭(Therblig)을 통해 사용자의 작업을 미시적으로 표현하였다. 서블릭은 가전제품 맥락에 맞도록 재정의하고 사용자군 별로 문제가 있는 서블릭이 파악된 경우 동작경제 원칙에 의한 설계 가이드에 따라 개선안을 제시하도록 하였다. 동작경제원칙은 사용자의 작업측면에서의 문제점과 설계측면에서의 해결안을 연관 지어 해석하는 짐을 덜어주는 역할을 해, 제안하는 접근성 도구는 접근성 평가 도구로서 큰 가치를 가진다. 마지막으로 본 연구의 5장에서는 기존 표준과 가이드라인을 수집해 설계 가이드라인을 개발하였다. 기존 표준 및 가이드라인은 여러 수치를 제공하고는 있지만 장애인 및 고령 사용자의 사용 맥락을 충분히 반영하지 못 하고 사용자의 신체 능력, 환경, 제품의 형태에 따라 적용이 어려워 실제적 활용도가 낮은 문제가 있다. 또한 접근성과 인간공학적 전문성이 부족할수록 실 적용이 어려워져 이러한 문서의 가치는 더욱 낮아질 수밖에 없다. 이에 장애인과 고령자의 사용 맥락을 반영해 가이드라인을 재정립하고 이를 기반으로 총 일곱가지의 프로토타입을 개발하였다. 총 14명의 참가자가 프로토타입을 평가하여 대상 가전제품의 접근성 향상 여부를 평가하였다. 대부분의 프로토타입은 성공적으로 접근성에 향상을 보여 설계 가이드라인의 유효성 또한 반증하였다. 또한, 본 논문에서 사용된 절차를 따라 접근성 보장 제품 설계 시 각 가이드라인의 수치를 어떤 식으로 설계에 적용하는지를 참고할 수도 있다. 본 논문의 의의는 다음과 같다. 첫 째, 본 논문은 시각장애, 청각장애, 척수장애인을 대상으로 사용자 조사를 진행하고 이를 기반으로 사용자들의 접근성 이슈를 퍼소나 형식으로 구체화하여 이해당사자가 대상 사용자와 보다 쉽게 공감할 수 있도록 하였다. 둘째, 본 논문은 접근성 연구분야에서 부족한 접근성 평가 도구를 제안하여 접근성 연구의 연구장벽을 낮추는데 기여하였다. 마지막으로 실제 접근성 향상 제품을 개발을 위한 가이드라인과 이를 기반으로 제작된 프로토타입을 실제 사용자들이 평가하도록 해 가이드라인의 실효성을 검증하였다. 전반적으로, 본 연구는 접근성 문제의 장벽을 돌파하기 위해 전반적인 제품 개발 프로세스를 적용하였으며 유니버설 디자인 관점에서 접근성 문제 해결을 위한 일련의 새로운 접근 방식으로 제안하여 사용자가 본인의 장애나 연령과 상관없이 제품 – 특히 가전제품 – 을 자유롭고 안전하게 사용하도록 하였다.Modern-day technologies - including home appliances - deliver benefits to our lives yet the lack of accessibility supports from the manufacturers and designers have forsaken a considerable number of elderly and disabled people. Unlike how the development and advancement with a variety of new functions and features enriched the quality of life for non-disabled users, it only degraded the user experience for the elderlies and disabled users since such functions and features come along with the increased complexity, which hinders not only the accessible use but also the independent use of a disabled or elderly user. Collecting user experience from the users in need of accessibility support is much more troublesome than one might think. The users may be reluctant to provide their user experience for sensitive privacy reasons, may not be in the appropriate physical conditions for interviews or surveys, or even have communication problems. Such barriers between the stakeholder and the target users do not allow the stakeholders to fully understand and define the problems these users confront every day; simply, impossible to build empathy. The lack of empathy breeds misconceptions on the elderly and disabled users, created by misinterpretation of the users’ experiences since the stakeholders have never experienced what it is like to be a disabled or elderly user. Even if manufacturers and designers who oversee developing accessible products recognize the needs and frustrations of the disabled population, it is challenging or even inaccessible for them to address these issues of their target customers. In Chapter 3, based on the interview and observation data, this study developed eight personas for four different types of disabled users under the context of home appliance usage: visually impaired (blind and low-vision), hearing impaired (deaf and cochlear implemented), spinal cord injured (opened palm and closed fist), and elderly (grandma and grandpa). Each persona provides their accessibility issues through a persona card and scenario-like explanation. Personas created in this study will help manufacturers and designers empathize with their users although they did not meet the real users face-to-face. Moreover, stakeholders need a tool to investigate how their users in need of accessibility support behave differently from non-disabled users, which provides a deeper understanding of the users’ perspectives in terms of “interaction.” In Chapter 4, this study conducted Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) and created general task structures of home appliances based on their product compartment and chronological usage phase. This task structure visualizes the user behavior. Combined with the task structure, therbligs expressed the user task on a micro-scale. Therbligs were redefined to fit the home appliance context and, if found problematic, there was the principle of motion economy to provide design guidance to solve the problems of corresponding therbligs. Moreover, the principle of motion economy is valuable because it reduces the burden of a researcher to convert a task-oriented problem found in terms of user behavior into a design-oriented solution. Lastly, in Chapter 5, a design guideline is developed by collecting existing standards and guidelines. Existing standards and documents related to accessibility lack a detailed explanation of real-world application, although the documentations provide various numerical values related to designs. The numbers are not directly implementable since the context-of-use of elderly or disabled users may vary by their capability, environment, and basically by the form factor of the products they use. Lower the expertise in ergonomics and accessibility less valuable the standards and guidelines will be to implement in a product design. With the design guideline developed and ideas collected from an ideation workshop, a total of seven prototypes were built. A total of 14 participants evaluated the prototype whether it enhanced the accessibility of target home appliances or not. As a result, most prototypes successfully improved the accessibility and approved the validity of design guidelines. This procedure as a case study will provide how to implement the principles and dimensional values found in the existing standards and guidelines when developing an accessible product. Overall, this study applied a whole product development cycle to breakthrough the barriers of accessibility problems and proposes it as a set of novel approaches for accessibility issues resolution based on the perspectives of universal design so that a user can freely and safely use their products – especially home appliances – regardless of their disability or age.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Accessibility Barriers 1 1.1.1 Barriers for Users 1 1.1.2 Barriers for Stakeholders 3 1.2 Research Objectives and Study Outline 12 Chapter 2 Background 15 2.1 Target Users and Products 15 2.1.1 Target Users 15 2.1.2 Target Home Appliances and Compartments 19 2.2 Definition of Accessibility 29 2.3 Design Approach 33 2.3.1 Accessible and Universal Design 33 Chapter 3 Persona to Investigate the Accessibility Issues of Disabled and Elderly Users Under the Context of Home Appliances Usage 35 3.1 Overview 35 3.2 Methods 38 3.2.1 User Data Collection 38 3.2.2 Data Analysis for Personas 42 3.2.3 Persona Creation for Identifying Accessibility Issue 45 3.3 Persona Development 48 3.3.1 User Behaviors and Characteristics 48 3.3.2 Created Personas 53 3.4 Results and Discussion 59 3.4.1 Behaviors and Characteristics of Personas 60 3.4.2 Accessibility Issues from Personas 67 3.5 Probable Applications and Future Studies 77 Chapter 4 TAT: Therbligs as Accessibility Tool 82 4.1 Overview 82 4.1.1 Task Analysis 84 4.1.2 Therbligs and Motion Studies 86 4.1.3 Redefining Therbligs 89 4.1.4 Changes in the Principles of Motion Economy 95 4.2 Methods 102 4.2.1 Therblig-based Task Analysis 103 4.2.2 Task Evaluation 107 4.3 Results 109 4.3.1 General Task Structures 109 4.3.2 Accessibility Evaluation Results 116 4.4 Discussions 122 4.4.1 Problematic Therbligs and Related Principles of Motion Economy for Improvements 125 4.4.2 The Final Set of Therbligs for Accessibility Evaluation 133 4.4.3 New Task Design for Disabled and Elderly Users 139 4.5 Conclusion 142 Chapter 5 Accessible Home Appliance Designs : Prototyping and Design Guidelines 145 5.1 Overview 145 5.2 Ideation for accessible home appliances 148 5.2.1 Ideation Workshop 148 5.2.2 Ideation Result 153 5.3 Development of Design Guidelines and Prototypes 156 5.3.1 Design Guideline Principles 161 5.3.2 Prototyping 173 5.4 Experiment for validation 186 5.4.1 Evaluation Results 188 5.5 Discussion 197 5.6 Conclusion 201 Chapter 6 Conclusion 203 Bibliography 206 국문 초록 222 감사의 글 225 Acknowledgment 226 APPENDICES 227박

Social capital and social media: the effects of Facebook use on social capital and perceived community involvement

The purpose of this paper is to look at the effect of social media use on social capital. This paper attempts to establish a dichotomy between 'real' and 'perceived' social capital and the effect of social media use on both. I use a survey instrument measuring both the social media use and `real' social capital of one group compared with the social media use and `perceived' social capital of the second group. I find that while social media use is related with survey respondents feeling more involved politically and in their community, there is no correlation between actual political/community involvement for other respondents

Spartan Daily, February 6, 2003

Volume 120, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9806/thumbnail.jp

Accessibility Evaluation of Dubai e-Government Websites: Findings and Implications

Most governments today are promoting the transition of their countries towards an information society where e-Government websites are becoming the primary gateways to citizens and businesses for government information and eservice delivery. E-Government can be broadly defined as the unification of information and communication technologies, and administrative practices to provide government e-services to citizens, businesses and other e-Governments (Deakins and Dillon, 2002). The benefits of online government e-services include better efficiency, user convenience and more citizen political involvement (Freeman and Loo, 2009). To enable all citizens to benefit from the full potential of eGovernment services, it is important to secure universal accessibility. This accessibility enables persons with disabilities to take full advantage of the information and services offered by eGovernments; the same way a person with no disability would

Bahasa Melayu (BM) Screen Reader for Visually Impaired Internet Users

Currently, the Internet usage is rising at a frenzied rate as knowledge and information sharing becomes easy and is time-saving. Regrettably, the visually impaired do not enjoy this liberty and they are facing difficulties in using computer and the Internet to seize any shared and available information. This difficulty is faced especially among the visually impaired Malay language medium Internet user. Specifically, existing screen reader cannot fully cater for users who need to browse the Malay language web pages. The inability of screen reader narration to enunciate Malay words correctly has become a restriction for the visually impaired to acquire any information in the Malay language. Narration of the words are done by non-Malay speakers and the enunciation of those words confuses and at times, do not help users. Thus, this project addresses this issue by investigating the difficulties for visually impaired Internet user to understand what is spoken when using screen readers without a native Malay narrator or speaker. This project aims to reduce the time needed for the visually impaired to understand the information in the Malay language read by the narrator of the screen reader. This project also strives to develop a screen reader prototype, which is able to read in Bahasa Melayu (BM) using local accent. To achieve all the objectives, preliminary interviews and testing session were conducted to collect data to test the hypothesis made. The findings are then will be used as main source of data to develop a prototype of the screen reader. From the built prototype, user testing will be conducted with a sample group of visually impaired to test the functionalities and evaluate the effectiveness of the software. The results and recommendations will be shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future enhancement