Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / People with disabilities do not face the same circumstances, in their journey through tertiary education, as do people without disabilities. Studies have revealed that learning disabilities are often invisible and not identified at an early stage. Generally, the move to university could be challenging for students with disabilities, but very stressful to the students with learning disabilities, in particular. The principles of inclusive education, where people with disabilities and those without disabilities are educated in the same setting, have been the main focus for policy makers in this era. However, scant research has been conducted on the experiences of students with disabilities in accessing tertiary education, particularly, students with learning disabilities. The focus of this current research was to explore the accessibility of tertiary education to students with learning disabilities, in all the faculties at the University of the Western Cape. The researcher aimed to explore and describe the experiences of students with learning disabilities, to inform recommendations for policy and practice. The study was guided by the anti-discriminatory practice and social inclusion theory. The research methodology involved a qualitative approach, using an exploratory descriptive design, with nine students and three staff members, sampled purposively and through snowball sampling. The researcher employed in-depth interviews and email interviewing to gather data, which were transcribed and analyzed qualitatively. All research ethics were considered and adhered to. The students with learning disabilities disclosed how their disability was diagnosed and how they experienced schooling. These experiences influenced the way they coped with teaching and learning at university. Most of them acknowledged that the university was supportive, in various ways, such as, assistive technology, support staff, extra time, as well as a separate examinations and testing area. However, they had difficulty disclosing their disability to lecturers, which made learning more challenging. They were of the opinion that, in order for learning to be inclusive, the university needed to do more to make this a reality. For example, the training of lecturers and staff on the realities of learning disabilities, as well as employing holistic approaches to educate students with learning disabilities.

Questionner une personne sur un comportement rend ce dernier plus susceptible d’être réalisé. Trois types d’explications pour cet effet question-comportement ont été étudiées au cours de neuf expériences : une explication normative, une explication attitudinale et une explication motivationnelle. Une première série de quatre études a testé l’explication normative. Seule une étude a présenté des résultats laissant penser que questionner l’individu sur un comportement normatif le conduit à réaliser ce comportement afin de ne pas ressentir de dissonance cognitive. Trois autres expériences ont montré que le comportement cible est plus accessible chez l’individu questionné et que cette accessibilité médie la relation entre les questions et le comportement. De plus, l’attitude associée est déterminante dans l’adoption du comportement. Enfin, les deux dernières études expérimentales ont testé l’explication motivationnelle sans parvenir à collecter des résultats nets en sa faveur. Selon cette dernière explication, répondre à des questions sur un comportement active le but de réaliser ce comportement, ce qui engendre d’autres processus cognitifs (i.e., motivation implicite, accessibilité des informations liées au but). Les résultats sont synthétisés à l’aide de méta-analyses et discutés afin de mieux comprendre le fonctionnement de ce phénomène. / Questioning people toward a behavior makes this behavior more likely to be performed. Three possible explanations of this question-behavior effect have been investigated in nine experiments: a normative, an attitudinal and a motivational explanation. Four studies tested the normative explanation. Only one of them shows results attesting that people perform the target behavior after questions to avoid cognitive dissonance. Three more experiments brought results supporting the implication of an accessibility (mediator) process in the question-behavior effect. Moreover, the attitude was decisive in the occurrence of the effect. The motivational explanation has been tested with two experiments who did not provide the expected results. The assumption was that questioning activates the goal of performing the behavior with goal pursuit consequences (i.e., implicit motivation and accessibility of the goal-related information). Results have been summarized with meta-analysis and discussed with the aim of improving the understanding of the question-behavior effect.

abstract: 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. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Technical Communication 2018

O censo demográfico apresentado pelo IBGE em 2010 apontou cerca de 45 milhões de pessoas com alguma deficiência vivendo no Brasil, dentre as quais 35 milhões são deficientes visuais. Apesar de consistir grande parcela da população, são notáveis as barreiras que esse público enfrenta para ter acesso à cultura e ao lazer, pois as iniciativas de inclusão em ambientes de convívio social são limitadas e muitas vezes inexistentes. Sob o olhar do Design, e com base em métodos relacionados Design de Serviços, este trabalho apresenta uma pesquisa não propositiva sobre acessibilidade daquele público em salas de cinema, considerando toda a complexidade que envolve essa experiência, desde, por exemplo, a produção de filmes até a experiência propriamente dita nos espaços de projeção. / The census presented by IBGE in 2010 showed about 45 million people with disabilities living in Brazil, of which 35 million are visually impaired. Despite this fact, persons with disabilities face obvious barriers to cultural and leisure services due to the limitation or lack of attitudinal and environmental inclusion initiatives. From a Design perspective, and based on Service Design methods, this paper presents a research on accessibility in cinemas, considering the complexity that surrounds this experience, the production of films, and the experience itself in projection rooms.

Com o aumento do uso e da complexidade de sistemas web, o desenvolvimento de tais sistemas com qualidade exige a adoção de uma abordagem sistemática e bem definida. Assim, a engenharia web é uma disciplina essencial que considera, além de características da engenharia de software, fatores inerentes aos sistemas web, como a multiplicidade de perfis de usuários. A engenharia web é apoiada por processos, métodos, técnicas e ferramentas que são elementos fundamentais para o desenvolvimento de sistemas web, os quais devem ser adequados para fornecer suporte às ações inerentes ao projeto e à implementação. Esses elementos devem ser selecionados, combinados e tecnicamente implementados de modo a produzir um sistema web acessível e usável. Nesta tese é proposto um processo de desenvolvimento que possui fases gerais bem definidas para a inserção de requisitos de acessibilidade e usabilidade no desenvolvimento de sistemas web, garantindo o seu uso pela maioria das pessoas e facilitando seus meios de acesso. Um estudo de caso foi realizado para verificar a efetividade da aplicação do processo formalizado, o qual possibilitou o desenvolvimento de um sistema acadêmico de agendamento de bancas. Considerando-se a dificuldade prática de avaliar diretamente o processo, foram realizados um experimento controlado e um estudo de viabilidade comparando o sistema acadêmico desenvolvido com outro sistema de mesmo propósito e funcionalidades, mas desenvolvido de maneira ad-hoc. Por meio das avaliações realizadas nos dois sistemas de agendamento de bancas, indiretamente avaliou-se o processo formalizado e foram encontrados fortes indícios sobre a efetividade do processo proposto. Adicionalmente, foi criado um instrumento de medição objetivo e quantitativo das características de acessibilidade e usabilidade de um sistema web. Foi também criado um método para avaliar, comparar e melhorar a acessibilidade e a usabilidade de sistemas web existentes. Tanto o instrumento de medição quanto o método de avaliação podem ser aplicados, independentemente, a qualquer sistema web. / With the increasing use and complexity of web systems, the development of such systems with quality demands the adoption of a systematic and well-defined approach. Thus, web engineering is an essential discipline that considers, in addition to characteristics of software engineering, factors inherent to web systems, such as the multiplicity of the users profiles. Web engineering is supported by engineering processes, methods, techniques and tools that are fundamental elements to the development of web systems, which must be adequate to support the activities of design and implementation. These elements should be selected, combined and technically implemented to produce an accessible and usable web system. This thesis proposes a development process with welldefined phases for including requirements of accessibility and usability in the development of web systems, enabling their use by most people, facilitating their means of access and foremost. A case study was conducted to verify the effectiveness of applying the process proposed and with this objective, a system to schedule thesis and dissertation presentations was developed. Considering the practical difficulty of directly measuring the proposed process, a controlled experiment and a feasibility study was conducted to compare the academic system developed with a legacy system with the same purpose and functionality but developed using an ad-hoc process. Considering the evaluation of both systems, the development process was indirectly evaluated and evidences related to its effectiveness have been identified. Additionally, an objective and quantitative method for measuring accessibility and usability of web systems was created. Finally, it was also created a method to evaluate, compare and improve the accessibility and usability of existing web systems, which was used to evaluate the system developed using the proposed process. Both the measuring instrument and the evaluation method can be applied, independently, to any web system

O crescente número de pessoas que utilizam a Web e sua vasta quantidade de conteúdo têm motivado especialistas em computação a investigar e acompanhar a experimentação desses usuários. Podese observar que um grande número de usuários que adere ao uso da Internet é o das pessoas com meia-idade, de 40 a 59 anos, e os idosos com idade superior a 60 anos. Trata-se de um público interessado e potencialmente pró-ativo para usufruir das possibilidades que a Web proporciona a cada dia. No entanto, barreiras que dificultam o acesso à informação são naturalmente encontradas com o avançar da idade. Dificuldades como a perda parcial ou total da visão, a redução de precisão dos movimentos, e a diminuição de memorização dos passos a serem realizados são alguns exemplos dessas barreiras. Para superar as dificuldades apresentadas pelos usuários, estudos têm sido realizados visando minimizá-las, de maneira geral. Seus resultados encontram-se sintetizados em normas / orientações a serem seguidas visando proporcionar melhor usabilidade e acessibilidade para toda diversidade de usuários. Nesse contexto, na presente pesquisa, investiga-se quais dessas normas junto com os padrões para a criação de websites que disponibilizam conteúdos proporcionam melhor adequação para atender à demanda das pessoas com idade mais avançada. Assim, foram estudados diferentes tipos de menus de navegação que disponibilizam as subnavegações conforme a necessidade do usuário (no inglês conhecido como menus drop-down) com diferentes propriedades e avaliado qual menu e suas propriedades apresentavam melhores resultados, entre eles, foi verificado o tempo de uso do menu e o número de erros cometidos para uma determinada tarefa. Conclui-se que, menus com melhores contraste e um tempo mediano de resposta ao realizar a interação, apresentaram melhores resultados / With the constant number of people who use facilitated through the use of the Web and its vast amount of content, have motivated computer specialists to investigate and monitor the trial of those users. It may be noted that a large number of users joining the Internet use is that of people aged mature (middle-aged, 40 to 59 years, and the elderly aged 60 years). It is a potentially interested public and pro-active to enjoy the possibilities that the Web provides each day. However, barriers to access to information are found naturally with advancing age, difficulties as the partial or total loss of vision, reducing accuracy of movements, and decreased retention of steps to be performed are some examples of these barriers . To overcome the difficulties presented by the users, studies have been conducted in order to minimize them in general. Their results are summarized in standards / guidelines to be followed in order to provide better usability and accessibility for the whole range of different types of users. In this context, the present study, we investigate which of these standards along with standards for the creation of websites that provide content provide better adaptation to meet the demand of people with older age. Thus, we studied different types of navigation menus that provide the subnavegações as needed by the user with different properties and evaluated their properties which menu and had better results, among them was found the time to use the menu and the number of errors for a particular task. It can be concluded that menus with better contrast and a median time of response to make the interaction, showed better results

The last decade has been defined by the forced displacement of an unprecedented number of people, on a scale not seen since World War II. As of 2018, more than 71 million people across the globe have been forced to migrate as a result of conflict, natural disasters, drought and famine. More than 19 million crossed international borders seeking safety, and were formally registered as refugees. Forced migration has placed stress and pressure on surrounding low-and middle-income countries. This has been most notable in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of the crisis in Syria. Host countries in the Middle East and North Africa are overwhelmed by this rapid influx, particularly by the healthcare needs of this population. Stakeholders face difficulties providing health services to refugees, owing to the increased number of refugees in urban settings, the large demands on host country health systems and the epidemiologic transition towards non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Health challenges have been exacerbated by weaknesses in the global humanitarian architecture, that result in a fragmented and competitive sector that is unprepared for the current context. Few comparative analyses have examined the diversity of policies and practices aimed at improving services for urban-based refugees with NCDs in the MENA region. Furthermore, a variety of quantitative studies examined NCD incidence, prevalence and service utilization. However, these studies have quickly become outdated and do not explore, in adequate depth, the refugee experience and perspective on accessing NCD services in urban settings. Lastly, numerous NCD interventions have been recommended for LMICs. However, very little guidance exists to support actors addressing these health concerns in crisis-affected contexts. As a result, this dissertation is presented in three papers and responds to these gaps in the literature. Each paper focuses on a specific aim and research question and together they identify and provide recommendations for improvement to service delivery and policy formulation. Paper 1 identifies policies and practices, implemented by host countries and humanitarian actors, aimed at improving access to NCD services for urban refugees in the Middle East and North Africa. Paper 2 examines, using qualitative methods, the healthcare access experience of urban-based Syrian refugees who have been diagnosed with NCDs in Jordan. The third portion of this dissertation (Paper 3) is a policy series that provides recommendations for the government of Jordan and humanitarian actors to improve healthcare access for urban-based refugees with NCDs. It is anticipated that this series of publications will be relevant to traditional and non-traditional actors that respond to the health needs of refugees in urban settings in the MENA region.

Excerpt: There has been a recent push for more electronic sound amplifiers to provide affordable and accessible options that meet the needs of a large swath of people with hearing loss, particularly aging adults.

Adult attachment theory continues to play an important role in explaining pathology within couples. Pornography is becoming more and more pervasive since the inception of the internet. This study looked at the relationship between insecure attachment, accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement with frequency of male pornography use. Little is known about pornography use and its impact on couple dynamics. This study specifically looked at pornography use predicting insecure attachment within couples. The sample was taken from the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE) and consisted of 189 couples. Male pornography use was found to be a predictor of insecure attachment and low levels of responsiveness in him. The female partner's assessment of her male partner's low engagement, responsiveness, and accessibility in their relationship was predicted by his pornography use. These findings may inform therapists of the possibilities for direction in therapy when a couple is struggling with insecure attachment development.

Cultivation theory (Gerbner & Gross, 1976) suggests that the cumulative effect of heavy exposure to television's underrepresentation and negative portrayal of people 65+ as sexless, insignificant, and comical can cause people to assume such television-like perceptions of the age group in the real world. This study's purpose was to explore not only television's cultivation effect on viewers' perceptions of the number and nature of people 65+, but also the psychological processes that are expected to mediate this effect. As an extension of Shrum, Wyer, and O'Guinn's (1998) study on the role of source discounting in cultivation, this quasi-experiment employed three experimental conditions-no-priming, source-priming, and relation-priming-to manipulate participants' awareness of television as the source of the information they retrieve to make judgments about people 65+. The experimental conditions were expected to moderate the cultivation effect like they did in Shrum, Wyer, and O'Guinn's (1998) study; in the no-priming condition, but not in the source-priming or relation-priming conditions, heavy viewers were to report more television-like perceptions of people 65+ than light viewers. The results of this study revealed six major findings: first, heavy television viewing does not cultivate viewers to underestimate the 65+ population in the U.S.; second, heavy television viewing cultivates viewers to perceive people 65+ as sexless (specifically, "not sexually attractive" and "not sexually passionate") and comical (specifically, "unintentionally funny"); third, priming is not necessary to induce source discounting of television information for judgment-making about the number and nature of the elderly in the real world; fourth, whether people are prompted to recognize television as an information source, they will discount television information when making judgments about the number of people 65+, and they will count television information when making judgments about the nature of people 65+; fifth, high perceived reality of television encourages heavy viewers to perceive people 65+ as "comical"; sixth, high direct experience with people 65+ discourages heavy viewers to perceive people 65+ as "insignificant in society."