Human Factors Design Guidelines for the Disabled

1989 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 490-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Ward

In an effort to develop human factors guidelines for designing consumer products for the disabled a series of interviews and surveys were conducted in the homes of noninstitutionalized disabled people. The study covered a variety of disabilities, and where possible, individuals with several different levels of a given disability were included. A detailed set of recommendations of specific controls for use on products to be used by disabled people was found to be impractical because interfaces which are desirable to one disabled person are often a bad choice for another. The greatest problem for most disabled consumers is the variety of controls often found on a product. If one key control is inoperable by a person, the product may be unusable for that person. A preferred method for designing for the disabled is to use less variety in the selection of controls on each product. By reducing the within product variability along certain key design dimensions an individual capable of using some of the controls is more likely to be able to use them all.

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Holder

With its emphasis on futurity, its close association with scientific plausibility, and its dedicated interrogation of contemporary ideologies, science fiction stands as a genre ripe with possibilities for disability studies. Many scholars have used the genre and its texts as platforms from which to either condemn or laud representations of disability within a field explicitly concerned with a society's future. My essay contributes to this discussion by foregrounding a science fiction text to theorize what a disabled future looks like. I take as my primary text a selection of short fiction from Uncanny Magazine, an online magazine that published a disability-themed issue Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction in 2018. The stories contained are penned exclusively by authors that identify as disabled; their visions of a disabled future, then, emerge from the contemporary experience of the disabled community. In addition to centering themselves in the discourse, these writers envision a disabled future as one that emphasizes community and frequently critiques and interrogates the costs, emotional and physical, inherent in the medical model of disability, announcing that a truly disabled future is one that features rather than erases the disabled mind and body. Running with the banner of destroying SF, these writers challenge the conventional, harmful tropes that SF has perpetuated and erects in its place an inclusive, intersectional, and disabled future.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-258
Author(s):  
Mónica Domínguez Pérez

This study deals with children's literature translated from Castilian Spanish into Galician, Basque and Catalan by a different publisher from that of the source text, between 1940 and 1980, and with the criteria used to choose books for translation during that period. It compares the different literatures within Spain and examines the intersystemic and intercultural relations that the translations reflect. Following the polysystems theory, literature is here conceived as a network of agents of different kinds: authors, publishers, readers, and literary models. Such a network, called a polysystem, is part of a larger social, economic, and cultural network. These extra-literary considerations play an important role in determining the selection of works to be translated. The article suggests that translations can be said to establish transcultural relations, and that they demonstrate different levels of power within a specific interliterary community. It concludes that, while translations may aim to change the pre-existent relationships, frequently they just reflect the status quo.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 361
Author(s):  
Su Jeong Yi ◽  
Yoo Mi Jeong ◽  
Jae-Hyun Kim

Physically disabled persons can have sleep problems, which affects their mental health more than those in non-disabled people. However, there are few studies on the relationship between sleep duration and mental health targeting physically disabled people in South Korea, and existing studies on the disabled have mostly used data collected from convenience rather than nationally representative samples, limiting the generalization of the results. This study used data from the second wave of the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled (PSED, 2016–2018, 1st–3rd year). Participants included 1851 physically disabled individuals. The Chi-square test and generalized estimating equation (GEE) were used and the Akaike information criterion (AIC) value and the AIC log Bayes factor approximation were used to select sleep trajectories. This is the first study to elucidate multiple sleep trajectories in physically disabled people in Korea, and the relationship between sleep duration trajectories and self-rated depressive symptoms. People with physical disabilities who sleep more than 9 h have the highest risk of depression and need more intensive management as a priority intervention.


Author(s):  
Brian Bush ◽  
Laura Vimmerstedt ◽  
Jeff Gonder

Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies could transform the transportation system over the coming decades, but face vehicle and systems engineering challenges, as well as technological, economic, demographic, and regulatory issues. The authors have developed a system dynamics model for generating, analyzing, and screening self-consistent CAV adoption scenarios. Results can support selection of scenarios for subsequent computationally intensive study using higher-resolution models. The potential for and barriers to large-scale adoption of CAVs have been analyzed using preliminary quantitative data and qualitative understandings of system relationships among stakeholders across the breadth of these issues. Although they are based on preliminary data, the results map possibilities for achieving different levels of CAV adoption and system-wide fuel use and demonstrate the interplay of behavioral parameters such as how consumers value their time versus financial parameters such as operating cost. By identifying the range of possibilities, estimating the associated energy and transportation service outcomes, and facilitating screening of scenarios for more detailed analysis, this work could inform transportation planners, researchers, and regulators.


Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Dale ◽  
Yvonne Latham

In this article, we are concerned with the ethical implications of the entanglement of embodiment and non-human materialities. We argue for an approach to embodiment which recognises its inextricable relationship with multiple materialities. From this, three ethical points are made: first, we argue for an ethical relation to ‘things’ not simply as inanimate objects but as the neglected Others of humanity’s (social and material) world. Second, there is a need to recognise different particularities within these entanglements. We draw on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas to think through how the radical alterity of these Others can be acknowledged, whilst also recognising our intercorporeal intertwining with them. Third, we argue that recognition of this interconnectedness and entanglement is a necessary ethical and political position from which the drawing of boundaries and creation of separations that are inherent in social organising can be understood and which contribute to the denigration, discrimination and dismissal of particular forms of embodiment, including those of non-human Others. In order to explore the ethical implications of these entanglements, we draw upon fieldwork in a large UK-based not-for-profit organisation which seeks to provide support for disabled people through a diverse range of services. Examining entanglements in relation to the disabled body makes visible and problematises the multiple differences of embodiments and their various interrelationships with materiality.


1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 363-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia R. Stovin ◽  
Adrian J. Saul

Although storage tanks provide an effective means of reducing the magnitude and frequency of combined sewer overflow discharges, and thereby of alleviating urban watercourse pollution, poorly designed storage structures frequently suffer from maintenance problems arising from sedimentation. The development of design guidelines that optimise the self-cleansing operation of storage structures is clearly a priority for urban drainage research. This paper describes a system that has been developed to study sediment deposition in laboratory model-scale storage structures. The patterns of deposition resulting from a selection of flow regimes are described, and the need for time-varying and time series storm tests is highlighted. Sedimentation patterns are shown to predominantly depend on the flow field, and the critical bed shear stresses for deposition and erosion in the model situation are identified. Hence, the potential application of numerical models to the design problem is discussed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 65-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Blažek

Incidences of powdery mildew were repeatedly evaluated for two years on 1 420 young seedlings of 20 progenies (of different levels of mildew susceptibility) in a green house, and then for 10 years on 642 seedlings in an orchard. Part of the seedlings in the orchard were pre-selected for the characteristic and others not. Except for the first scoring done in the first year, there was no correlation between mildew incidence on individual seedlings in the green house and their mean performance in the orchard. The seedlings with scores above 6 (resistant or tolerant) at the first stage of evaluation in the green house, however, yielded four times more desirable seedlings after final selection in the orchard than the mean of the total. The progenies that had a better healthy state as a whole yielded more partially resistant genotypes than those with low mean scores. Therefore, the progenies that most rapidly develop infestation on the whole lot should be discarded, whereas those that retain a healthy state longer should be subjected to individual selection according to the previous item.


Author(s):  
A.RAJESH KUMAR ◽  
C. DINESH ◽  
R. ARAVIND ◽  
SRIKRISHNA. C ◽  
PL. NAGARTHINAM

The purpose of this project is to increase the knowledge of technology and services of smart homes for disabled people. There is a clear need for such new knowledge since the number of disabled people is significant. Indeed, new technologies and services of smart homes have the potential to increase effectiveness and efficiency of caring disabled. With right solutions there is a great potential to increase disabled persons' quality of life. The need for the development of such technologies and services increases due to the disabled individuals' desire to remain independent in their own homes, the increasing costs of health care, and the aging of the population. This article discusses the concept of secured door lock/unlock system for the differently able. The juxtaposition of safety vs. privacy can be alleviated with this technology. Moreover, as there is need to assist disabled to protect them from various forms of abuse, and prevent immoderation of pleasure giving activities.


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