A framework for accessible m-government implementation

The great popularity and rapid diffusion of mobile technologies at worldwide level has also been recognised by the public sector, leading to the creation of m-government. A major challenge for m-government is accessibility – the provision of an equal service to all citizens irrespective of their psychical, mental or technical capabilities. This paper sketches the profiles of six citizen groups: Visually Impaired, Hearing Impaired, Motor Impaired, Speech Impaired, Cognitive Impaired and Elderly. M-government examples that target the aforementioned groups are discussed and a framework for accessible m-government implementation with reference to the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices is proposed

Mobile Web Site Ease of Use: An Analysis of Orbis Cascade Alliance Member Web Sites

This paper analyzes 37 Orbis Cascade Alliance members’ websites to determine ease of use across mobile devices. Based on that analysis and a literature review, guidance is provided on how libraries’ mobile websites may be improved. Websites were examined to determine ease of locating frequently accessed resources on mobile devices that were identified in the literature: contact information, hours, databases, library accounts, and search boxes. Scalability of websites on mobile devices was also evaluated and was found to be non-existent in nearly a quarter of examined libraries. Areas for consideration and improvement are presented across Orbis Cascade Alliance libraries that can easily be applied globally

Extension Must Adopt Mobile-Friendly Websites

Mobile phones and tablets have become important tools for accessing information on the Web. We have found visitors to The Almond Doctor Extension blog and AgFax.com are increasingly using smart phones and tablets rather than desktop computers. However, only 40% of Extension websites have mobile-friendly layouts, and websites that are frustrating to use on mobile devices may be a deterrent to Web traffic and use of services. Therefore, it is critical for Extension websites to develop mobile-friendly designs to increase Extension\u27s presence on the Internet and maintain its relevance to current and future clientele

The Affective Triad: Smartphone in the Ethnographic Encounter

"Hanging out" and establishing "rapport" is an essential part of the ethnographic encounter in anthropology. But what happens when the smartphone, seemingly a distraction from the relationship in the making, creates a wall between the anthropologist and the interlocutor? While smartphones have been widely explored as a media technology used by the interlocutors, or as research tools, their affective grip on the researchers themselves has received less attention to date. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with visitors of two youth centers in Vienna, Austria, in 2019, I argue that the moment when the smartphone becomes part of the affective triad, alongside the researcher and the interlocutor, also presents a window on the entanglement of digital technologies with everyday life. Moreover, affective ripples emerging from such irritations also expose underlying assumptions about how ethnographic encounters should ideally proceed and what constitutes rapport and "good" ethnographic relationships, seemingly a prerequisite for successful ethnographies. Hence, affective entanglements and irritations that arise in this context are not disturbances to be discarded or smoothed over in the ethnographic narratives. While the smartphone appears to impair the ethnographic encounter at first, its designed porosity allows the researcher to develop a particular sensitivity to issues of rapport, consent, and privacy, and to negotiate the space of potentiality of ambiguous, door-like situations, thus becoming a methodological blessing rather than a curse

Locative-Media Ethics: A Call for Protocols to Guide Interactions of People, Place, and Technologies

Imagine yourself wherever you were 20 years ago, and that an entrepreneurial, fresh-faced, and friendly young newsboy comes to your doorstep. He asks you to subscribe to the local paper. There is no cost to this subscription, he says, but, in exchange for community news, the boy must be allowed to come into your house and look at all of your photos, even the most intimate ones, making duplicates for his boss as he sees fit. As a part of this transaction, he also gets to copy down all of the details from your desk calendar, your Rolodex, your letters, your diary, your to-do lists, your bookcase, your documents from work, anything he comes across that he finds interesting. He gets to follow you around and gather even more information about what you do, where you go, and when. He can do all of this for as long as he wants, in whatever depth he wants, and however he wants, and then can use this information freely for some vague commercial purpose. For just a free subscription, would you have taken this deal

M-Learning

The objective of M-Learning is to integrate technology with education in order to enhance the effectiveness of students' traditional learning process. In order to explore the use of mobile and handheld IT devices as a learning tool, many factors need to be considered and it is important that context-awareness factor is emphasized here. The main purpose of M-Learning is to create a flexible learning environment for students where the implementation ofjust-in-time learning is applied here. The main issues that arise here are the challenges and future of M-Learning. The most challenging area in implementing M-Learning is indelivering the content; how users will view the materials in mobile devices instead of the usual large screen desktops. Apart from that, the technology ofM-Learning is still new, so there are a lot ofrisks and challenges involved in this kind of project. The intended users for this project are targeted specifically at students. The scope of study will covers on how users view will be in M-Learning. Meanwhile, the methodologies used in the development of the system will follows four process which are planning, analysis, design and implementation. Efficiency and flexibility, together with ease ofuse, are likely the essential elements in the final system

Advanced Visualization and Interaction Techniques for Large High-Resolution Displays

Large high-resolution displays combine the images of multiple smaller display devices to form one large display area. A total resolution that can easily comprise several hundred megapixels makes them suited for the visualization of data sets that could not be perceived entirely on desktop PCs or laptops due to their size. At the same time, user collaboration benefits from an extended screen area that facilitates interaction with screen contents as well as interaction among users. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of large high-resolution displays and examines ways to set up display clusters both in terms of hardware and underlying software technology. Furthermore, it investigates how to effectively harness the computational power and resources of rendering clusters to visualize giga-scale data sets. Last but not least, traditional interaction metaphors and their scalability to large displays as well as the effect of new techniques on the user experience are discussed

How have smallholder farmers used digital extension tools? Developer and user voices from Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia

Digital extension tools (DETs) include phone calls, WhatsApp groups and specialised smartphone applications used for agricultural knowledge brokering. We researched processes through which DETs have (and have not) been used by farmers and other extension actors in low- and middle-income countries. We interviewed 40 DET developers across 21 countries and 101 DET users in Bihar, India. We found DET use is commonly constrained by fifteen pitfalls (unawareness of DET, inaccessible device, inaccessible electricity, inaccessible mobile network, insensitive to digital illiteracy, insensitive to illiteracy, unfamiliar language, slow to access, hard to interpret, unengaging, insensitive to user's knowledge, insensitive to priorities, insensitive to socio-economic constraints, irrelevant to farm, distrust). These pitfalls partially explain why women, less educated and less wealthy farmers often use DETs less, as well as why user-driven DETs (e.g. phone calls and chat apps) are often used more than externally-driven DETs (e.g. specialised smartphone apps). Our second key finding was that users often made - not just found - DETs useful for themselves and others. This suggests the word ‘appropriation’ conceptualises DET use more accurately and helpfully than the word ‘adoption’. Our final key finding was that developers and users advocated almost ubiquitously for involving desired users in DET provision. We synthesise these findings in a one-page framework to help funders and developers facilitate more useable, useful and positively impactful DETs. Overall, we conclude developers increase DET use by recognizing users as fellow developers – either through collaborative design or by designing adaptable DETs that create room for user innovation