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- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Panchanathan, Sethuraman
Description
The conflict conditions that afflict the livelihoods of Palestinian residents living in the West Bank are embedded within the population's ability to travel more so than any other routine activity. For Palestinian residents, domestic and international travel is a process of following paths riddled with multiple barriers that are both physical and political. Past studies have done well to paint a clear picture of the harsh transportation landscape in the region. However, less attention has focused on how barriers interact to indirectly and directly affect levels of accessibility and well-being. Additionally, suggested development solutions are rarely capable of being successfully implemented given current political conditions. This dissertation uses a systems approach to understand drivers of accessibility challenges in the West Bank and uses the understanding to propose a method to identify transition strategies that may be presently initiated whilst maintaining the ability to provide adequate benefit. The research question informing the study asks, How do drivers influencing the issue of poor accessibility and well-being in the West Bank persist and interact, and how might solutions be approached? The dissertation approaches the question in four sequential actions that each produces a functional planning deliverable. First, a system map that depicts the drivers and influences to the problem of poor accessibility and well-being is constructed (Chapter 4). Second, a future vision for the transportation system in the West Bank is identified (Chapter 5). Third, the system map and vision are used to assess how conflict conditions affect transition research (Chapter 6). Finally, the previous three deliverables are used to suggest a guide for transition management for transportation development in the West Bank (Chapter 7). Combinations of four different data sets, including an extensive review of published literature, field observations, individual field expert interviews, and group commuter interviews inform the research. Additionally, the Transformational Sustainability Research framework provides a normative base for the steps taken throughout the research. Ultimately, the dissertation presents an interpretation of information that has theoretical and practical application potential in transformational sustainability research and development efforts in the region respectively.
ContributorsAhmad, Omaya Heidi (Author) / Golub, Aaron (Thesis advisor) / Aggarwal, Rimjhim (Committee member) / Saleh Sadaqa, Ahmad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT Fruit and vegetable intake is not uniform across levels of socioeconomic status (SES) and researchers have identified low SES as a risk factor for poor intake of fruits and vegetables. In an effort to eliminate public health disparities and increase fruit and vegetable intake, the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program implemented additional food assistance programs, with a specific emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables. The Farmers' Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) provides pre-existing WIC clients with coupons to purchase fresh, locally grown produce at farmers' markets. In addition, Congress also approved the WIC Cash Value Voucher (CVV) program, which provides WIC participants with vouchers to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers' markets or grocery stores. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the relation of FMNP coupon use with accessibility and WIC CVV redemption rates at farmers' markets. Furthermore, this thesis addressed whether WIC shoppers redeemed a higher percentage of their WIC CVV value at farmers' markets or grocery stores. WIC CVV and FMNP issuance and redemption data were analyzed to establish overall redemption rates and total perecent of WIC CVV value redeemed. Accessibility was assessed using the Geographic Information System, which allowed me to calculate the distance that WIC participants would have to travel to redeem their FMNP coupons at FMNP-approved farmers' markets. The results showed that less than 1% of WIC shoppers redeem their WIC CVVs at farmers'markets in Arizona. However, the redemption of WIC CVV was significantly higher during the months when shoppers had the option of using both WIC CVV and FMNP coupons at farmers' markets. Furthermore, the percent of total CVV value redeemed at farmers' markets was 99%, significantly higher than grocery stores (93.5%). Average FMNP coupon redemption rates for 2008-2010 was 43.3%, well below the national average of 59%. However, my spatial analysis revealed that there was no significant association between the distance traveled to farmers' markets and FMNP redemption rates. This indicates that the distance traveled to farmers' markets is not a major barrier to redemption of FMNP coupons in Arizona.
ContributorsTucker, Wesley Jack (Author) / Wharton, Christopher (Christopher Mack), 1977- (Thesis advisor) / Vaughan, Linda (Committee member) / Johnston, Carol S (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
With 285-million blind and visually impaired worldwide, and 25.5 million in the United States, federally funded universities should be at the forefront when designing accessible websites for the blind community. Fifty percent of the university homepages discussed in my thesis failed accessibility checker tests because alternative text was not provided in the alt-attribute for numerous images, making them inaccessible to blind users. The images which failed included logos, photographs of people, and images with text. Understanding image content and context in relation to the webpage is important for writing alternative text that is useful, yet writers interpret and define the content and context of images differently or not at all. Not all universities follow legal guidelines of using alternative text for online images nor implements best practices of analyzing images prior to describing them within the context of the webpage. When an image used in a webpage is designed only to be seen by sighted users and not to be seen by screen reader software, then that image is not comparably accessible to a blind user, as Section 508 mandates.
ContributorsSabbia, Michael Robert (Author) / Maid, Barry (Thesis advisor) / Brumberger, Eva (Thesis advisor) / Mara, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This paper presents the design and evaluation of a haptic interface for augmenting human-human interpersonal interactions by delivering facial expressions of an interaction partner to an individual who is blind using a visual-to-tactile mapping of facial action units and emotions. Pancake shaftless vibration motors are mounted on the back of a chair to provide vibrotactile stimulation in the context of a dyadic (one-on-one) interaction across a table. This work explores the design of spatiotemporal vibration patterns that can be used to convey the basic building blocks of facial movements according to the Facial Action Unit Coding System. A behavioral study was conducted to explore the factors that influence the naturalness of conveying affect using vibrotactile cues.
ContributorsBala, Shantanu (Author) / Panchanathan, Sethuraman (Thesis director) / McDaniel, Troy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
A lot of strides have been made in enabling technologies to aid individuals with visual impairment live an independent life. The advent of smart devices and participatory web has especially facilitated the possibility of new interactions to aide everyday tasks. Current systems however tend to be complex and require multiple cumbersome devices which invariably come with steep learning curves. Building new cyber-human systems with simple integrated interfaces while keeping in mind the specific requirements of the target users would help alleviate their mundane yet significant daily needs. Navigation is one such significant need that forms an integral part of everyday life and is one of the areas where individuals with visual impairment face the most discomfort. There is little technology out there to help travelers with navigating new routes. A number of research prototypes have been proposed but none of them are available to the general population. This may be due to the need for special equipment that needs expertise before deployment, or trained professionals needing to calibrate devices or because of the fact that the systems are just not scalable. Another area that needs assistance is the field of education. Lot of the classroom material and textbook material is not readily available in alternate formats for use. Another such area that requires attention is information delivery in the age of web 2.0. Popular websites like Facebook, Amazon, etc are designed with sighted people as target audience. While the mobile editions with their pared down versions make it easier to navigate with screen readers, the truth remains that there is still a long way to go in making such websites truly accessible.
ContributorsPaladugu, Devi Archana (Author) / Li, Baoxin (Thesis advisor) / Hedgpeth, Terri (Committee member) / Atkinson, Robert (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Over thirty years after the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the meaning of disability accessibility and justification for accessibility measures remains unclear. Connecting work in social and political philosophy to scholarship in disability studies and disability law, this project offers an account of what access is and why access is often owed to disabled people. This project argues that disability access is necessary both for the same reasons access is considered necessary for the non-disabled, and for counteracting harmful narratives about disability and disabled people. These narratives and stereotypes originate from a particular ideology, termed “the ideology of abledness.” This ideology informs the way policies are formed and the ways they are received; it also explains why considerations of disability are often absent in general policies, and why unique provisions for disability accessibility are necessary. In its effort to clarify disability access, the project tackles difficult questions such as the nature of accessibility, issues of cost and who is obligated to pay for accessibility measures, how all people with disabilities can be included in a social contract theory, and how disability accessibility relates to and can even expand the way non-discrimination is understood.
ContributorsLevit Ades, Rachel (Author) / McGregor, Joan (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Committee member) / de Marneffe, Peter (Committee member) / Francis, Leslie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
With the acceleration of urbanization in many parts of the world, transportation challenges such as traffic congestion, increasing carbon emissions, and the “first/last-mile” connectivity problems for commuter travel have arisen. Transport experts and policymakers have proposed shared transportation, such as dockless e-scooters and bike-sharing programs, to solve some of these urban transportation issues. In cities with high population densities, multimodal mobility hubs designed to integrate shared and public transportation can be implemented to achieve faster public connections and thus increase access to public transport on both access and egress sides. However, haphazard drop-offs of these dockless vehicles have led to complaints from community members and motivated the need for neighborhood-level parking areas (NLPAs). Simultaneously, concerns about the equitable distribution of transportation infrastructure have been growing and have led to the Biden Administration announcing the Justice40 Initiative which requires 40% of certain federal investments to benefit disadvantaged communities. To plan a system of NLPAs to address not only the transportation shortcomings while elevating these recent equity goals, this thesis develops a multi-objective optimal facility location model that maximizes coverage of both residential areas and transit stations while including a novel constraint to satisfy the requirements of Justice40. The model is applied to the City of Tempe, Arizona, and uses GIS data and spatial analyses of the existing public transportation stops, estimates of transit station boardings, population by census block, and locations of disadvantaged communities to optimize NLPA location. The model generates Pareto optimal tradeoff curves for different numbers of NLPAs to find the non-dominated solutions for the coverage of population nodes and boardings. The analysis solves the multi-objective model with and without the equity constraint, showing the effect of considering equity in developing a multimodal hub system, especially for disadvantaged communities. The proposed model can provide a decision support tool for transport and public authorities to plan future investments and facilitate multimodal transport.
ContributorsQuan, Hejun (Author) / Kuby, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Frazier, Amy (Thesis advisor) / Tong, Daoqin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Over the past decade, advancements in neural networks have been instrumental in achieving remarkable breakthroughs in the field of computer vision. One of the applications is in creating assistive technology to improve the lives of visually impaired people by making the world around them more accessible. A lot of research in convolutional neural networks has led to human-level performance in different vision tasks including image classification, object detection, instance segmentation, semantic segmentation, panoptic segmentation and scene text recognition. All the before mentioned tasks, individually or in combination, have been used to create assistive technologies to improve accessibility for the blind.
This dissertation outlines various applications to improve accessibility and independence for visually impaired people during shopping by helping them identify products in retail stores. The dissertation includes the following contributions; (i) A dataset containing images of breakfast-cereal products and a classifier using a deep neural (ResNet) network; (ii) A dataset for training a text detection and scene-text recognition model; (iii) A model for text detection and scene-text recognition to identify product images using a user-controlled camera; (iv) A dataset of twenty thousand products with product information and related images that can be used to train and test a system designed to identify products.
This dissertation outlines various applications to improve accessibility and independence for visually impaired people during shopping by helping them identify products in retail stores. The dissertation includes the following contributions; (i) A dataset containing images of breakfast-cereal products and a classifier using a deep neural (ResNet) network; (ii) A dataset for training a text detection and scene-text recognition model; (iii) A model for text detection and scene-text recognition to identify product images using a user-controlled camera; (iv) A dataset of twenty thousand products with product information and related images that can be used to train and test a system designed to identify products.
ContributorsPatel, Akshar (Author) / Panchanathan, Sethuraman (Thesis advisor) / Venkateswara, Hemanth (Thesis advisor) / McDaniel, Troy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Libraries provide a needed third place for students to engage with their peers and faculty, both academically and socially. Staff behavior, knowledge, and skills in providing an accessible and inclusive environment are key to helping students with disabilities feel that they belong in the libraries. This makes training in disability and accessibility awareness a necessary component of the overall program for the library. This study assessed a locally-developed, online training program for staff of all levels that was intended to improve staff knowledge and skills in disability etiquette, library services and spaces that support people with disabilities, and the policies that govern this work. The program used the four-part Deines-Jones (1999) model for its content and the core principles of andragogy for its instructional design. Assessment focused on changes in beliefs and knowledge using an adapted standardized scale, and evidence for learning from responses to training program questions, focus group discussions, and survey responses. Further development of the training program was informed by the principles of andragogy. Participants in the training program improved their scores in the knowledge domain but had no change in their beliefs domain. Learning was most evident in spaces where it engaged with previous knowledge and supportive customer service approaches. Participants identified and, in several cases, independently pursued new questions that were prompted by the training program. On the whole, participants found the training to be supportive and engaging, with minor changes to structure and focus recommended for the next iteration.
ContributorsVaughan, K.T. (Author) / Bernstein, Katherine (Thesis advisor) / Puckett, Kathleen (Committee member) / VanScoy, Amy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Individuals with voice disorders experience challenges communicating daily. These challenges lead to a significant decrease in the quality of life for individuals with dysphonia. While voice amplification systems are often employed as a voice-assistive technology, individuals with voice disorders generally still experience difficulties being understood while using voice amplification systems. With the goal of developing systems that help improve the quality of life of individuals with dysphonia, this work outlines the landscape of voice-assistive technology, the inaccessibility of state-of-the-art voice-based technology and the need for the development of intelligibility improving voice-assistive technologies designed both with and for individuals with voice disorders. With the rise of voice-based technologies in society, in order for everyone to participate in the use of voice-based technologies individuals with voice disorders must be included in both the data that is used to train these systems and the design process. An important and necessary step towards the development of better voice assistive technology as well as more inclusive voice-based systems is the creation of a large, publicly available dataset of dysphonic speech. To this end, a web-based platform to crowdsource voice disorder speech was developed to create such a dataset. This dataset will be released so that it is freely and publicly available to stimulate research in the field of voice-assistive technologies. Future work includes building a robust intelligibility estimation model, as well as employing that model to measure, and therefore enhance, the intelligibility of a given utterance. The hope is that this model will lead to the development of voice-assistive technology using state-of-the-art machine learning models to help individuals with voice disorders be better understood.
ContributorsMoore, Meredith Kay (Author) / Panchanathan, Sethuraman (Thesis advisor) / Berisha, Visar (Committee member) / McDaniel, Troy (Committee member) / Venkateswara, Hemanth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020