Design and Evaluation of Accessible Collaborative Writing Techniques for People with Vision Impairments

Collaborative writing tools have been used widely in professional and academic organizations for many years. Yet, there has not been much work to improve screen reader access in mainstream collaborative writing tools. This severely affects the way people with vision impairments collaborate in ability-diverse teams. As a step toward addressing this issue, the present article aims at improving screen reader representation of collaborative features such as comments and track changes (i.e., suggested edits). Building on our formative interviews with 20 academics and professionals with vision impairments, we developed auditory representations that indicate comments and edits using non-speech audio (e.g., earcons, tone overlay), multiple text-to-speech voices, and contextual presentation techniques. We then performed a systematic evaluation study with 48 screen reader users that indicated that non-speech audio, changing voices, and contextual presentation can potentially improve writers’ collaboration awareness. We discuss implications of these results for the design of accessible collaborative systems.

Barriers and Facilitators to the Introduction of Import Duties Designed to Prevent Noncommunicable Disease in Tonga: a Case Study

Background In Tonga, import duties were lowered on tinned fish and seafood in 2013 and raised on soft drinks, dripping and other animal fats. Additional import duties were applied to soft drinks and dripping and other fats in 2016 and duties were also applied to high fat meats, mutton flaps and turkey tails. The objective of this study was to describe barriers to and facilitators of these import duties from a policy-maker perspective.Methods A case study was conducted to analyse implementation of policies originally modelled by the Pacific Obesity Prevention in Communities project to reduce mortality in the Kingdom of Tonga. Policymakers (n=15) from the Ministries of Revenue, Health, Finance and Labour and Commerce involved in the development and implementation of Tonga’s food-related policies participated in key-informant interviews. Results The main facilitator of import duties were strong leadership and management, cross-sector collaboration, awareness raising and advocacy, nature of the policy, and the effective use of data to model policy impacts and inform the general public. The absence of clear lines of responsibility and a decline in collaboration over time were identified as barriers to implementation of the import duties. Conclusion Implementing import duties to prevent non-communicable disease can be straight forward providing policymakers and the community have a shared understanding of the health and economic costs of NCDs.

Level of awareness of dentists about the role of physiotherapy in temporomandibular disorders: a pilot study in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background Physiotherapy (PT) is a distinguished developing profession. It has a crucial role in treating temporomandibular disorders (TMD) as an effective intervention to reduce pain and improve TMD symptoms. Not all dentists are aware of the importance of collaboration with physiotherapists (PTs).Therefore, this study aimed to assess the level of dentists’ awareness about the role of PT in treating TMD, identify dentists’ willingness to collaborate with PTs, and create collaboration awareness. This cross-sectional study included Saudi dentists in Riyadh. An online survey was used to assess dentist’s awareness and their readiness to collaborate with PTs. Results Out of 1500 dentists, only 162 participated in the survey. About 46.9% of dentists were aware that PT can treat TMD. Generally, there was lack of awareness about the benefits of PT among dentists (61.8%), and 59.9% was not aware that the evidence suggested that PT can improve TMD symptoms. Only 29% referred patients to PT. Upon the completion of the survey, almost all dentists (97.5%) were likely to refer patients with TMD to PT, and 90.7% of them showed interest to learn more about collaborating with PTs. Conclusion The study concluded that, although 46.9% of the dentists are aware about the role of PT in treating TMD, there is a lack of awareness about the benefits of PT among the majority of them. The study helped to extend the awareness of surveyed dentists about the collaboration and multidisciplinary approach.

Feasibility Study of Multi-User Collaboration Awareness Concepts in Computer-Aided Design Applications

New, experimental, synchronous, multi-user CAD systems, such as BYU’s NXConnect, allow users to work together simultaneously in the same CAD model. Although multi-user CAD comes close to approximating the old collaborative drafting table experience, NXConnect still falls short in a few key areas, most notably of which is in collaboration awareness. This results in redundant work and lost time. Investigation was done with other multi-user software to see what features help each user to be aware of what is being worked on. This resulted in a proposed plugin for NXConnect consisting of two elements: a preview-based real-time feature update and a temporary plane indicating where a user is creating a sketch. Teams using NXConnect with and without the plugin were studied. Teams using the plugin found a small improvement in working collaboratively.