Reasonable Accommodations for Attorneys with Disabilities

[From Introduction] Diversity in the legal profession has been the subject of much discussion and study for a number of years. A 2003 report by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), entitled Diversity in Law Firms, notes the significant role that lawyers play in social, economic, and political life and the influence that minorities and women have been able to attain as their numbers in the legal profession increase. This fact sheet addresses the application of the reasonable accommodation obligation to attorneys and their employers. Attorneys with disabilities, both as applicants and employees,may need a range of accommodations in order to apply for and perform many types of legal jobs. Most of the accommodations that attorneys with disabilities may need are similar to those needed by other professionals with disabilities who work in an office setting. Thus, much of the discussion in this document will apply to a wide range of administrative and professional jobs

System upgrade: realising the vision for UK education

A report summarising the findings of the TEL programme in the wider context of technology-enhanced learning and offering recommendations for future strategy in the area was launched on 13th June at the House of Lords to a group of policymakers, technologists and practitioners chaired by Lord Knight. The report – a major outcome of the programme – is written by TEL director Professor Richard Noss and a team of experts in various fields of technology-enhanced learning. The report features the programme’s 12 recommendations for using technology-enhanced learning to upgrade UK education

Translation and human-computer interaction

This paper seeks to characterise translation as a form of human-computer interaction. The evolution of translator-computer interaction is explored and the challenges and benefits are enunciated. The concept of cognitive ergonomics is drawn on to argue for a more caring and inclusive approach towards the translator by developers of translation technology. A case is also made for wider acceptance by the translation community of the benefits of the technology at their disposal and for more humanistic research on the impact of technology on the translator, the translation profession and the translation process

Dark Patterns in the Design of Games

Game designers are typically regarded as advocates for players. However, a game creator’s interests may not align with the players’. We examine some of the ways in which those opposed interests can manifest in a game’s design. In particular, we examine those elements of a game’s design whose purpose can be argued as questionable and perhaps even unethical. Building upon earlier work in design patterns, we call these abstracted elements Dark Game Design Patterns. In this paper, we develop the concept of dark design patterns in games, present examples of such patterns, explore some of the subtleties involved in identifying them, and provide questions that can be asked to help guide in the specification and identification of future Dark Patterns. Our goal is not to criticize creators but rather to contribute to an ongoing discussion regarding the values in games and the role that designers and creators have in this process

Human Factors and Innovation with Mobile Devices

Advancements in technology are a significant driving force in educational innovation, but a strong focus on technology means that human aspects and implications may not be given the attention they deserve. This chapter examines usability issues surrounding the use of mobile devices in learning. A key aim is to empower educators and learners to take control of personal devices and realise their potential in relation to teaching and learning. The background section reviews the development of usability studies and explores why mobile device usability presents specific new challenges. The impact of changing requirements in education, and new visions for ways of thinking and competences that learners should be acquiring, are also examined. Finally, the chapter provides a set of concepts that can inform conversations between educators and learners, mobile system engineers, developers, support staff, and others

Collaborative video searching on a tabletop

Almost all system and application design for multimedia systems is based around a single user working in isolation to perform some task yet much of the work for which we use computers to help us, is based on working collaboratively with colleagues. Groupware systems do support user collaboration but typically this is supported through software and users still physically work independently. Tabletop systems, such as the DiamondTouch from MERL, are interface devices which support direct user collaboration on a tabletop. When a tabletop is used as the interface for a multimedia system, such as a video search system, then this kind of direct collaboration raises many questions for system design. In this paper we present a tabletop system for supporting a pair of users in a video search task and we evaluate the system not only in terms of search performance but also in terms of user–user interaction and how different user personalities within each pair of searchers impacts search performance and user interaction. Incorporating the user into the system evaluation as we have done here reveals several interesting results and has important ramifications for the design of a multimedia search system

Studying web 2.0 interactivity: a research framework and two case studies

With more than one third of the world’s population being online, the Internet has increasingly become part of modern living, giving rise to popular literature that often takes a teleological and celebratory perspective, heralding the Internet and Web 2.0 specifically, as an enabler of participation, democracy, and interactivity. However, one should not take these technological affordances of Web 2.0 for granted. This article applies an interaction framework to the analysis of two Web 2.0 websites viewed as spaces where interaction goes beyond the mere consultation and selection of content, i.e., as spaces supporting the (co)creation of content and value. The authors’ approach to interactivity seeks to describe websites in objective, structural terms as spaces of user, document, and website affordances. The framework also makes it possible to talk about the websites in subjective, functional terms, considering them as spaces of perceived inter-action, intra-action and outer-action affordances. Analysis finds that both websites provide numerous user, document, and website affordances that can serve as inter-action or social affordances