Transportation planning has become increasingly more performance-based over the past several decades. In part due the mandate from the 2012 Federal Surface Transportation Program authorization, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), agencies are adopting performance-based policies and programmatic frameworks to integrate the attainment of national goals into the transportation planning and decision making process. As agencies implement performance-driven decision making as a means to achieve national goals, local goals will become subject to the same framework. Although equity is not a national goal, transportation agencies continue to recognize it within their vision and planning goals. However, it is difficult to determine what constitutes equity, and to quantify and measure it. To plan for equitable outcomes in transportation therefore, it is necessary to develop evaluation methods that support the integration of equity in planning processes. The objectives of this research are to develop recommendations for procedures to formally incorporate equity considerations in transportation planning and program evaluation and to propose methodological revisions to existing analytical processes to enable evaluation of cumulative accessibility outcomes. A literature review -- drawing from the theories of equity, Federal regulations for addressing equity in transportation, performance management, and transportation and sustainability -- and practitioner interviews were used to gather information on the common and effective practices for addressing equity in transportation planning at the regional level. This information was an input in the development of a quantitative research approach to explore methodological limitations and planning gaps related to transportation planning for equitable outcomes. These results informed the development of a comprehensive approach to analyze and characterize cumulative impacts (i.e. accessibility) regionally. The approach is used to develop recommendations for regional transportation planning to influence equitable transportation outcomes for the full range of demographic groups over time. The research contributes to the knowledge base and professional practice of transportation planning by putting forward a construction for approaching equity in transportation planning and decision making based on equity theory, developing analytical methods to evaluate transportation investments for equitable outcomes, and offering a set of recommendations for moving transportation planning practices towards transportation planning for equitable outcomes.

Master of Arts / Department of Communications Studies / Timothy Steffensmeier / Due to a rising interest for degrees in higher education, more students with disabilities have enrolled in the university system. Still, accessibility issues on campuses suggest institutions are not meeting the needs of students in the classroom or through curricula. This study examines current academic adjustments and the lived experiences of students with disabilities in order to understand the ableist Othering phenomenon in higher education. Qualitative research methods have been commonly used to investigate the “disabled voice”; however, triangulation of such methodologies has been criticized for reinforcing Otherness. This study used a phenomenological design implementing rhetorical agency for disabled students to answer open-ended questions in semi-structured interviews about their lived experiences. Consequently, such interviews created a platform for social change. The author also reflects on his own lived experiences as a deaf student in higher education. Findings include major themes such as a percolation of institutional hegemony, a re-appropriation of stigma through “voice,” and a call for inclusive strategies. Results indicate disabled students experience discrimination likely due to organizational tension in their university institution. Further, this study elaborates on proposed policy changes to college classrooms on large university campuses. Contributions of this study lie in implications for the future of qualitative inquiry, including how current research practices could undergo methodological reinvention to examine the ableist Othering phenomenon.

Denna studie gjordes för att undersöka anabola androgena steroider (AAS). Problemformuleringarna som ställdes syftade till att identifiera tillgängligheten hos öppenvårdsenheter enligt behandlare samt att undersöka hur behandlare arbetar med dessa klienter. Community Readiness Model, transteoretisk förändringsprocess samt transformativt lärande har använts som teoretiska utgångspunkter i syfte att uppnå förståelse för så väl det organisatoriska lärandet samt för individens förändringsprocess. En kvalitativ studie har gjorts genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med behandlare, aktiva inom öppenvården. Intervjumaterialet har kodats samt analyserats och ställts emot tidigare forskning för att slutsatser kring syfte och problemformuleringar. Faktorer som kunskapsbrist samt låg motivation har identifierats som bidragande orsaker till missbruksvårdens svårtillgänglighet. Man har sett ett behov av samverkan och kunskapsspridning som faktorer som skulle kunna öka tillgängligheten. Studien visar att vårdens motivation till förändring och arbete med denna problematik är lika viktig som klientens.

This paper aims to study the importance of media accessibility, as it is conceptually defined by current research, for the relationship between free media and corruption. Previous studies have determined that a free, independent media plays a vital role in not only curbing corruption but also in sustaining and monitoring a healthy democracy. They have also confirmed that there is a significant correlation between the degree of press freedom and the degree of corruption, in which a freer press has a negative impact on the conditions for corruption. Nevertheless, press freedom and independent media, as said studies have established, cannot be seen as an easy solution or a “quick fix” when fighting corruption. More recent studies have concluded that accessibility is a dimension that could possibly determine how effective the free, independent media is for fighting and preventing corruption. This paper aims to dig deeper into this theory.   The purpose of the study is to distinguish what kind of role media accessibility plays in maximising the free medias effectiveness in the role as a watchdog towards public power. This study hopes to achieve it’s purpose by analysing what the direct effects and consequences of media revelations surrounding corruption cases has resulted in for different countries in relation to the degree of accessibility. The study will also take into account the distinction between rule-based versus relationship-based cultures and how corruption can be perceived and viewed differently between the two. This perspective is to be seen as a complementary outlook and possible explanation when determining if the potential dissimilarities in the effects of media revelations amongst countries are due to differences in accessibility or due to inherent cross-cultural differences. Our work has shown clear differences in the resulted effects of media revelations. However, it is impossible to identify whether the variations among countries in regard to actual effects depend on the degree of accessibility or due to inherent cross-cultural differences between nations.

Syftet med fallstudien har varit att undersöka hur öppen dagvattenhantering och platsens användbarhet skulle kunna kombineras så det ena inte utesluter det andra. Studien utgick ifrån en hypotes om att det finns många konflikter mellan öppen dagvattenhantering och användbarhet. Motsättningarna mellan de olika perspektiven skulle därför innebära, enligt hypotesen, att det är omöjligt att planera för det ena perspektivet utan att skapa problem för det andra. Undantaget skulle vara om kombinationen varit en målsättning under förarbetet. Fallen som har studerats är Ekostaden Augustenborg i Malmö där öppen dagvattenhantering har prioriterats och Stadsparken i Borås där platsens användbarhet har varit en tidig målsättning. Fallen är goda exempel utifrån två olika perspektiv men har gemensamt att de hamnar under begreppet urban parkmiljö. Genom observation, intervjuer och textanalys har fallen studerats närmare. Hypotesen har kunnat verifieras utifrån de två fallen. För mer generella slutsatser behöver fler fall studeras. Resultatet från fallstudien presenteras i form av framtagna planeringsprinciper och förslag på vidare studier.

Enligt “Teorin om planerat beteende” så finns det tre orsaker till beteendet. Denna teori handlar om vad som påverkar en persons förväntningar och beteende innan de ska utföra en uppgift på en webbplats. Tidigare forskning har visat att tillgängligheten på webbplatser fortfarande är bristfälliga för personer med synnedsättning, eftersom de har olika behov och det spelar en viktig roll hur webbplatserna är uppbyggda och anpassade för personer med synnedsättning. Det ska vara lätt för användaren att hitta, förstå och kunna ta del av informationen på webbplatsen. För att kunna anpassa en webbplats på bästa sätt för personer med synnedsättning, bör en designer ta hjälp av olika riktlinjer för att kunna designa webbplatsen mer tillgänglig med bra och användbar information för personer med synnedsättningar. Men dessa riklinjer hjälper inte alltid användare med svår synnedsättning, eftersom de är i behov av olika hjälpmedel. Forskningsområdet berör områdena universell design, tillgänglighet, användarupplevelse, tillgänglighet och förväntningar på webben. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka tillgängligheten för personer med synnedsättning på Linnéuniversitets webbplats och studera om webbplatsen är tillgänglig för dem, och studera om webbplatsen uppfyller deras förväntningar och upplevelse till att använda webbplatsen. Studien har studerat hur tillgängligheten påverkar användarupplevelsen för människor med synnedsättning på en webbplats och vilka förväntningar som användaren har på webbplatser. En empirisk studie genomfördes utifrån användartest med uppgifter och intervjuer på den befintliga webbplatsen med hjälp av personer med synnedsättning. I detta arbete har fullständig blindhet uteslutits, eftersom det är helt annan inriktning. Resultatet av intervjuerna sammanställdes och kategoriserades inom tillgänglighet, upplevelse och förväntningar av webbplatsen utifrån de mönster där testpersonerna hade angett liknande svar. Resultatet av sammanställningen av användartestet och intervjuerna på Linnéuniversitetets webbplats visade att testpersonerna anser att webbplatsen är tillgänglig för personer med synnedsättning och att deras förväntningar på webbplatsen uppfylldes. Resultatet visade att det som påverkar tillgängligheten på en webbplats är dåligt utformade med dåliga kontraster som till exempel ljus blått på vit bakgrund. På grund av dålig utformade webbplatser så kan inte personer med synnedsättning använda sina eventuella hjälpmedel, till exempel talsyntes, för att läsa upp innehållet på webbplatsen åt dem. Rörliga bilder, placering av objekt, otydliga menyer och rubriker, dåliga typsnitt eller att texten är för liten så att den blir svår att läsa. Det som personer med synnedsättning förväntar sig ska finnas på en tillgänglig webbplats: bra kontraster, bra typsnitt och tydliga rubriker. Bra placering av element så att det blir lätt att navigera sig, inga rörliga bilder, kunna lyssna på innehållet och att kunna använda sina eventuella hjälpmedel på webbplatsen. Genom detta får användaren en positiv upplevelse av webbplatsen. / According to “Theory of planned behavior", there are three reasons for the behavior. This theory is about what affect a person ́s expectations and behavior before they need to perform a task on a website. Previous research has shown that the availability of websites is still inadequate for people with visual impairment, because they have different needs and it plays an important role in how sites are built and adapted for people with visual impairment. It should be easy for users to find, understand and be able to take note of the information provided on the site. To be able to customize a site in the best way for people with visual impairment, a designer should take the help of various guidelines to design a website more accessible with useful information for people with visual impairment. But these guidelines don't always help users with severe visual impairment, because they are in need of different means. The research area relevant to the fields of universal design, accessibility, user experience, availability and expectations on the websites. The purpose of this study is to investigate the availability of people with visual impairment on Linnaeus University website and learn about how the site is available to them, and to study their expectations and experience of using the website. This study has studied how accessibility affects the user experience for people with visual impairment on a website and the expectations that the user has on websites. To be able to examine, I conducted an empirical study based on user tests with data and interviews on the existing site with the help of people with visual impairment. In this work I have excluded complete blindness, because it is quite a different focus. The results of the interviews were compiled and were categorised in availability, experience and expectations of the website based on the pattern in which subjects had stated similar answers. The result of the compilation of user test and interviews at Linnaeus University website showed that subjects think that the website is accessible to people with visual impairment, and that their expectations of the website were satisfied. The results showed that what affects the accessibility of a website is poorly designed interfaces with poor contrasts such as light blue on a white background. Because of badly designed websites, persons with visual impairment cannot use any assistive devices such as speech synthesizers to read out the contents of the site for them, pictures that moves, position of objects, obscure menus and headlines, bad fonts or that the text is to small, making it difficult to read. What person with visual impairment expects to find on an accessible website: good contrast, good fonts and clear titles. Good placement of the elements so that it will be easy to navigate, no pictures that moves, ability to listen to the content and to use any means at the site. Through this, the user receives a positive experience of the website.

Biomass recalcitrance has been recognized as one of the major barriers that hided the cost-effective conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to bioethanol, therefore the current bioconversion process require an essential step known as pretreatment to increase the cellulose accessibility. This thesis provides information about changes in cellulose accessibility upon different pretreatments, along with how these pretreatments alter the chemical and physical structures of biomass, will be extremely helpful to further optimize the current pretreatment process. Multiple promising analytical techniques including Simons’ stain, NMR cryoporometry, relaxometry, mercury porosimetry was introduced and successfully applied on pretreated biomass samples to characterize the cellulose accessible surface area and biomass porosity. Different pretreatments increase cellulose accessibility through different mechanisms to different extent. Dilute acid pretreatment is more effective than steam explosion in terms of increasing accessible surface area of cellulose as reflected by Simons’ stain and NMR cryoporometry, while NMR relaxometry suggested steam explosion is more effective at pore expansion for the cell wall water pools detected by changes in NMR relaxation time. Alkaline pretreatment decreased cellulose degree of polymerization, cellulose crystallinity, lignin content and subsequently increased cellulose accessibility, with sodium hydroxide pretreatment proved to be much more effective compared lime or soaking in ammonia pretreatment. Delignification through alkaline-based pretreatment is found less effective than removal of hemicellulose using acid in terms of cellulose accessibility increase. Lignin didn’t directly dictate cellulose accessibility but rather restricted xylan accessibility which in turn controls the access of cellulase to cellulose. Pore size distribution analysis based on mercury porosimetry also indicated that the most fundamental barrier in terms of biomass porosity scale for efficient enzymatic hydrolysis is the nano-pore space formed between coated microfibrils, despite some of the porous architecture such as cell lumen and pit could be severely destroyed after pretreatment. The action of cellulase on the characteristics of cellulosic fractions obtained from pretreated biomass was also investigated. Cellulose accessibility was found to increase at the beginning of hydrolysis, and after reaching a maximum value then starting to decrease. Enzymatic hydrolysis resulted in a rapid decrease in the cellulose degree of polymerization then gradually leveled off, suggesting the existence of a synergistic action of endo- and exo-glucanases that contribute to the occurrence of a peeling off type mechanism.

Transportation planning and urban development in the United States have synchronously emerged over the past few decades to encompass goals associated with sustainability, improved connectivity, complete streets and mitigation of environmental impacts. These goals have evolved in tandem with some of the relatively more traditional objectives of supply-side improvements such as infrastructure and capacity expansion. Apart from the numerous federal regulations in the US transportation sector that reassert sustainability motivations, metropolitan planning organizations and civic societies face similar concerns in their decision-making and policy implementation. However, overall transportation planning to incorporate these wide-ranging objectives requires characterization of large-scale transportation systems and traffic flow through them, which is dynamic in nature, computationally intense and a non-trivial problem. Thus, these contemporary questions lie at the interface of transportation planning, urban development and sustainability planning. They have the potential of being effectively addressed through state-of-the-art transportation modeling tools, which is the main motivation and philosophy of this thesis. From the research standpoint, some of these issues have been addressed in the past typically from the urban design, built-environment, public health and vehicle technology and mostly qualitative perspectives, but not as much from the traffic engineering and transportation systems perspective---a gap in literature which the thesis aims to fill. Specifically, it makes use of simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) to develop modeling paradigms and integrated frameworks to seamlessly incorporate these in the transportation planning process. In addition to just incorporating them in the planning process, DTA-based paradigms are able to accommodate numerous spatial and temporal dynamics associated with system traffic, which more traditional static models are not able to. Besides, these features are critical in the context of the planning questions of this study. Specifically, systemic impacts of suburban and urban street pattern developments typically found in US cities in past decades of the 20th century have been investigated. While street connectivity and design evolution is mostly regulated through local codes and subdivision ordinances, its impacts on traffic and system congestion requires modeling and quantitative evidence which are explored in this thesis. On the environmental impact mitigation side, regional emission inventories from the traffic sector have also been quantified. Novel modeling approaches for the street connectivity-accessibility problem are proposed. An integrated framework using the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory MOVES model has been developed, combining it with mesoscopic-level DTA simulation. Model demonstrations and applications on real and large-sized study areas reveal that different levels of connectivity and accessibility have substantial impacts on system-wide traffic---as connectivity levels reduce, traffic and congestion metrics show a gradually increasing trend. As regards emissions, incorporation of dynamic features leads to more realistic emissions inventory generation compared to default databases and modules, owing to consideration of the added dynamic features of system traffic and region-specific conditions. Inter-dependencies among these sustainability planning questions through the common linkage of traffic dynamics are also highlighted. In summary, the modeling frameworks, analyses and findings in the thesis contribute to some ongoing debates in planning studies and practice regarding ideal urban designs, provisions of sustainability and complete streets. Furthermore, the integrated emissions modeling framework, in addition to sustainability-related contributions, provides important tools to aid MPOs and state agencies in preparation of state implementation plans for demonstrating conformity to national ambient air-quality standards in their regions and counties. This is a critical condition for them to receive federal transportation funding. / text

In the age of the risk society, when several actors at an international, national, and local level converge in order to find solutions that help mitigate the global effects of natural disasters, there is a need to study the patterns for communicating and interacting with the public that eventually feel the impact of crises. In the richer parts of the world ICTs have facilitated a framework for having instant information regarding threats that make crisis management a discipline that is centered more in preparing and planning, rather than mitigating actual crises.  In developing countries, the contextual idiosyncrasies of each nation provide a fragmented array of settings that prevents a rapid flow of information in the event of natural disasters. The phenomenal growth of mobile telephony use and its rapid diffusion in developing countries offers a game changing scenario where crisis managers could benefit from new applications and functionalities of mobile devices. In a confluence of multidisciplinary nature, this study aims to explore the role of mobile technology and internet in crisis management, as well as the state of accessibility of mobile technology when addressing the general public in Ghana. This study follows a three-pronged approach with the aim of answering its research questions. First, a qualitative study of the communication processes between crisis managers and the public and the role of mobile technologies during those processes. Second, a quantitative study of the uses of mobile internet and the current mobile internet infrastructure. Finally, a study on the accessibility level of Ghana’s national crisis management organization’s website. Several conclusions can be drawn from this study. Mobile technologies have an important role in the communication process of crisis managers and the public, however the use of internet still has no part in the flows of communication due to deficits in infrastructure and socio-economic factors, leading to a disconnection between international risk policy requirements and local needs. The lack of resources is seen as the biggest challenge for crisis managers; a challenge that leads to issues of trust in the public and non-compliance. Finally, while there have been improvements in accessibility efforts, there is still a wide gap between international web accessibility best practices and the one provided by authorities in Ghana.

The home should represent safety and security for the person who lives there, and this is an important factor for independence and autonomy in very old age. With aging populations, the needs for long-term care increase, care provided by spouses and/or from the growing home care sector. Injuries among these groups are common. In this study, an ergonomics perspective was applied in the analysis of some basic daily activities performed by old persons and by home care workers, assisting. The postures and movements of home care staff assisting at toilet visits, and transferring persons from wheelchair to toilet, were measured and analysed. Some daily activities related to making food and washing clothes, performed by a group of persons between the age of 75 and 100, were measured and analysed. The task of getting up from the floor – on your own and with the help of a walker equipped with a lifting device – was analysed with the help of older persons and nursing staff. The design was built on the knowledge gained from analysing how older people get up from floor. Requirements for access with a four-wheeled walker in the local built environment were investigated. Observations were made with the help of video recording. Postures were recorded with the CUELA measurement system. The VIDAR ergonomics evaluation instrument was used to register the participants’ experiences of discomfort and pain during getting up from the floor with or without the walker with a lifting device. Structured interviews were used to find out about older peoples’ experience of using the four-wheel walker. It is concluded that ageing at home requires improved architectural and technical bathroom design and improved access in the local built environment. / <p>QC 20140124</p>