How the web continues to fail people with disabilities

The digital divide is most often understood as that between the IT haves and have-nots. However, if there is one minority group that can be, and often is excluded from the world wide web, even if they have a computer, it is disabled people. The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Act 2001 (SENDA) extended the provisions within the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 regarding the provision of services to the education sector. Yet accessible web design, dependent on professional coding standards, adherence to guidelines, and user testing, remains rare on the web. This paper examines the background to professional coding standards, and adherence to guidelines, in an attempt to find out why the web continues to fail people with disabilities. It begins by examining the progress of the transition in the 1990s from old style HTML to strict XHTML. It applauds the vision behind that transition, charts its progress identifying the principle constituencies that it involves – and how well each has played its part. It then focuses on the further problem of the requirement for user testing to iron out anomalies not covered by standards and guidelines. It concludes that validating XHTML code is desirable, but that user testing also needs to be undertaken. It identifies the complex and heterogeneous network of interrelated concerns through which the needs of disabled web users remain unheeded. To support its argument, the paper details the results of two studies – 1) of the homepages of 778 public bodies and blue chip companies, which found only 8% of homepages validated against any declared Document Type Declarations (DTD), and 2) a wider research project on employment websites which also included disabled user testing and a number of focus groups and interviews with disabled users and web development companies

In/Visibility of LGBTQ People in the Arab Spring: Making LGBTQ Voices Heard

LGBTQ use of the internet is a growing area of study. However most studies focus mainly on the US and the UK, and none pays much (if any) attention to the experience of LGBTQ people in countries where it is illegal to be LGBTQ. The events of the Arab Spring, significantly, signal the possibility that change may be possible in these countries, yet there seems to be little material on what LGBTQ people in these countries are actually thinking, doing, etc, and in\ud particular what role the internet may be playing in this. This is a research-inprogress paper introducing a project which sets out to make a contribution on these lines, by making their voices heard

Performing the Discourse of Sexuality Online

Though sometimes pitted against one another and at times contradictory, the ideas of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler on the nature and expression of our sexuality and our gender identities help us to gain a deeper and more rounded picture of the impact and import of the burgeoning phenomenon of internet dating websites. This paper looks at the use and prevalence of video-sharing technologies on sexual social networking websites, in the context of notions of sexual identity and an information systems approach to the phenomenon of internet dating

Theorising web 3.0 : ICTs in a changing society

Purpose: In this Editorial introduction the broad phases of web development – the read-only Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web 3.0 – are examined for the theoretical lenses through which they have been understood and critiqued. Design/Methodology/Approach: This is a conceptual piece, in the tradition of drawing on theorising from outside the Information Systems field, to shed light on developments in ICTs. Findings: Along with a summary of approaches to Webs 1.0 and 2.0, the Editors contend that a more complex and post-structuralist theoretical approach to the notion of, and the phenomenon of Web 3.0, offers a more interesting and appropriate theoretical grounding for understanding its particularities. Value: The discussion presages five further papers engaged with ICTs in a changing society, each of which similarly addresses novel theoretical understandings

Obesity, weight change and disease activity measures in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that causes inflammatory polyarthritis, typically of the small joints. Obesity, a serious global epidemic, has been shown to increase systemic inflammatory biomarkers, several of which are related to RA pathophysiology. Associations have been observed between obesity and worsened RA disease activity outcomes in crosssectional studies. Limited longitudinal studies investigated the effects of weight change on RA disease activity measures. Surgical interventions for weight loss in RA patients showed marked improvement in RA disease activity measures and outcomes but typical weight change in a clinical setting has not been investigated. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impact of typical weight change on RA disease activity measures. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study on 178 RA patients seen in typical clinical practice that met the inclusion criteria for the study, which included patients with a minimum of two clinical disease activity assessments (CDAI) with corresponding body mass index (BMI) measures. Medical record review was conducted for each clinic visit where CDAI and BMI were measured, and at each of these visits, sociodemographic, lifestyle, medication usage, questionnaire data, RA characteristics, laboratory values, and comorbidities were collected. Linear regression was used to analyze the association between ΔBMI and ΔCDAI, defined at the dates of minimum and maximum BMI for each subject, adjusting for confounders including sex, age, disease duration, smoking status, serologic status, and steroid usage. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate whether ΔBMI was associated with low/remission RA disease activity according to accepted CDAI cutoffs. RESULTS: Unadjusted linear regression was performed on all 178 subjects to analyze the overall trend within the sample population. For every 1 kg/m2 increase in BMI, CDAI increased by 0.49 points, but these results were not statistically significant (p=0.155, 95%CI -0.176, 1.097). Subjects were stratified into BMI gain, stable, and loss groups. Within the BMI loss group (defined as those whose BMI decreased by more than 1 kg/m2), a significant association was found with ΔCDAI (β= -2.61 [p=0.028, 95%CI -4.91, -0.298]). Unadjusted linear regression on the BMI gain and stable groups was found to be not statistically significant. This association remained significant after adjusting for sex, age, disease duration, smoking status, serologic status, and steroid usage (β=-2.499 [p=0.044, 95%CI -4.94, -0.061]). There was no association between ΔBMI and low/remission RA disease activity (OR 0.990, (95%CI 0.855, 1.146). When stratified by BMI gain, stable, and loss groups there was no significant association with low/remission RA disease activity. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that weight loss may be associated with improved disease activity among patients with RA seen in a typical clinical setting. Weight loss has the potential to be a non-pharmacologic intervention to improve RA disease activity. Prospective studies of weight loss and RA disease activity are necessary to replicate these results