Two Perspectives on the Language of Special Needs Computing: towards a shared view

This paper reviews and examines the language used in literature that describes the educational and therapeutic use of microcomputers with people who have special needs. In the language of special needs computing two perspectives are identified. One perspective focuses on the microcomputer technology while the other focuses on the microcomputer user. While the language of both perspectives acknowledges the value of microcomputers, each perspective moves towards an acknowledgement that microcomputer use needs to be placed in an environmental context. This move in both language sets reflects an increasing focus on the potential barriers to microcomputer use.     

A network ridesharing experiment with sequential choice of transportation mode

Within the last decade, there has been a dramatic bloom in ridesharing businesses along with the emergence of new enabling technologies. A central issue in ridesharing, which is also important in the general domain of cost-sharing in economics and computer science, is that the sharing of cost implies positive externalities and hence coordination problems for the network users. We investigate these problems experimentally in the present study. In particular, we focus on how sequential observability of transportation mode choices can be a powerful facilitator of coordination in ridesharing. Our study abstracts the essential issues of coordination in ridesharing into a directed network game with experimentally testable predictions. In line with the theoretical analysis, our experimental evidence shows that even a limited extent of sequential choice observability might lead to efficient coordination. However, convergence to efficiency is slower with more limited observability, resulting in a significant increase in travel cost.     

Concepts of access for people with learning difficulties: towards a shared understanding

This article explores both the process and outcomes of a seminar series on the concept of access for people with learning difficulties. The seminar topics chosen to foster dialogue across professional and disciplinary boundaries included access to information, education, employment, the law, health, leisure, community, past histories and future plans. The seminars brought together people with learning difficulties and their support workers, researchers and professionals, to examine the expert knowledge of people with learning difficulties in negotiating access, the role of practitioners in mediating access and the contribution of research to understanding access. The aim was to develop a rich, shared understanding of the concept of access for people with learning difficulties. However, a huge amount of ‘access work’ had to be done to achieve this. The article discusses that access work and proposes a multidimensional model of access and ways of promoting it.     

Tacit Coordination in Choice Between Certain Outcomes in Endogenously Determined Lotteries

Tacit coordination is studied in a class of games in which each of n = 20 players is required to choose between two courses of actions. The first action offers each player a fixed outcome whereas the second presents her the opportunity of participating in a lottery with probabilities that are determined endogenously. Across multiple iterations of the game and trial-to-trial changes in the composition of the lottery, we observe a remarkably good coordination on the aggregate but not individual level. We further observe systematic deviations from the Nash equilibrium solution that are accounted for quite well by a simple adaptive learning model.     

Strategies for supporting the online publishing activities of adults with learning difficulties

This paper reports on a study that explored the online publishing activities of adults with learning difficulties, the strategies that carers and professionals have used to support these activities and the implications these strategies may have for empowerment and self-advocacy. Content analysis of 15 home pages revealed that despite having a certain degree of information and communication technology literacy, many of the authors were being supported in their online publishing activities. For, the majority, their family provided this support. The supportive strategies that were used involved including the home page as part of a bigger family web site and taking sole or joint responsibility for writing the narrative of the home page. These strategies raise interesting questions about the validity of online publishing activities as vehicles for self-advocacy and the power relationships that such activities expose.     

Negotiating a third space for participatory research with people with learning disabilities: an examination of boundaries and spatial practices

The focus of this article is participatory research with and by people with learning disabilities. Drawing on discussions that took place across a series of seminars, we use the concepts of space and boundaries to examine the development of a shared new spatial practice through creative responses to a number of challenges. We examine the boundaries that exist between participatory and non-participatory research; the boundaries that exist between different stakeholders of participatory research; and the boundaries that exist between participatory research with people with learning disabilities and participatory research with other groups. With a particular focus on participatory data analysis and participatory research with people with high support needs, we identify a number of ways in boundaries are being crossed. We argue that the pushing of new boundaries opens up both new and messy spaces and that both are important for the development of participatory research methods.     

The importance of involving midwives before and during the implementation of an antenatal pertussis vaccination program in New South Wales,Australia

Problem

Typically there is limited opportunity for stakeholder engagement to determine service delivery gaps when implementing an outbreak or supplementary vaccination program.