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- Creators: Byrne, Jared
Description
The lack of affordable pharmaceutical access in rural communities is a nationwide crisis for up to 14% of American homes. Pharm to Farm believes that individuals in rural areas deserve the treatment and accessibility that urban and suburban areas receive. Through our approach, we help to bridge this accessibility gap by empowering those marginalized homes to affordably access pharmaceutical health resources. Pharm to Farm achieves this with our business model that allows individuals to get their medications delivered at a cost of only $35 per month.
ContributorsHacnik, Julia (Author) / Byrne, Jared (Thesis director) / Plunkett, Nina (Committee member) / Swader, Melissa (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor)
Created2023-05
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
Description
Transportation around campus on time is crucial for in-person college students looking to succeed in their studies. Unfortunately, inequities have arisen between the ability of able-bodied students to get to and from class and permanently or temporarily disabled students looking to do the same. ASU’s solution to this problem, the Disability Access and Resource Transportation (DART) service, does not adequately address the needs of its targeted customers properly. Unfortunately, student surveys and anecdotal evidence from students’ lived experiences have demonstrated that DART often leaves students waiting for more than half an hour for a ride, causes students to miss class, and is altogether unreliable in today’s age where punctuality is key to success. Our goal in our thesis project was to create an equal on-campus transportation playing field for students with and without mobility issues so that a students’ ability to get around campus would never serve as a hindrance to his/her ability to, at a minimum, earn a degree; ideally empowering all students to thrive regardless of their personal circumstances.
ContributorsHabelt, Mark (Author) / Lu, Sharon (Co-author) / Pham, Benjamin (Co-author) / Vohs, Grace (Co-author) / Byrne, Jared (Thesis director) / Thomasson, Anna (Committee member) / Larson, Wiley (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of Military Science (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2022-05