Visual eye disease simulator

Visually impaired people have a very different view of the world such that seemingly simple environments as viewed by a ‘normally’ sighted people can be difficult for people with visual impairments to access and move around. This is a problem that can be hard to fully comprehend by people with ‘normal vision’ even when guidelines for inclusive design are available. This paper investigates ways in which image processing techniques can be used to simulate the characteristics of a number of common visual impairments in order to provide, planners, designers and architects, with a visual representation of how people with visual impairments view their environment, thereby promoting greater understanding of the issues, the creation of more accessible buildings and public spaces and increased accessibility for visually impaired people in everyday situations.

The role of necessity in international humanitarian and human rights law

The nature of armed conflict has changed dramatically in recent decades. In particular, it is increasingly the case that hostilities now occur alongside ‘everyday’ situations. This has led to a pressing need to determine when a ‘conduct of hostilities’ model (governed by international humanitarian law—IHL) applies and when a ‘law enforcement’ model (governed by international human rights law—IHRL) applies. This in turn raises the question of whether these two legal regimes are incompatible or whether they might be applied in parallel. It is on this question that the current paper focuses, examining it at the level of principle. Whilst most accounts of the principles underlying these two areas of law focus on humanitarian considerations, few have compared the role played by necessity in each. This paper seeks to address this omission. It demonstrates that considerations of necessity play a prominent role in both IHL and IHRL, albeit with differing consequences. It then applies this necessity-based analysis to suggest a principled basis for rationalising the relationship between IHL and IHRL, demonstrating how this approach would operate in practice. It is shown that, by emphasising the role of necessity in IHL and IHRL, an approach can be adopted that reconciles the two in a manner that is sympathetic to their object and purpose.

Diversity and difference in the everyday lives of Ugandan street children: The significance of age and gender for understanding the use of space

Childhood is characterised by diversity and difference across and within societies. Street children have a unique relationship to the urban environment evident through their use of the city. The everyday geographies that street children produce are diversified through the spaces they frequent and the activities they engage in. Drawing on a range of children-centred qualitative methods, this article focuses on street children's use of urban space in Kampala, Uganda. The article demonstrates the importance of considering variables such as gender and age in the analysis of street children's socio-spatial experiences, which, to date, have rarely been considered in other accounts of street children's lives. In addition the article highlights the need for also including street children's individuality and agency into understanding their use of space. The article concludes by arguing for policies to be sensitive to the diversity that characterises street children's lives and calls for a more nuanced approach where policies are designed to accommodate street children's age and gender differences, and their individual needs, interests and abilities.

Imagining migration: Placing children's understanding of 'moving house' in Malawi and Lesotho

Research pertaining to children's geographies has mainly focused on children's physical experiences of space, with their 'imagined geographies' receiving far less attention. The few studies of children's imagined geographies that exist tend to focus on children's national identities and their understanding of distant places. However, children's lives are not necessarily static and they often move between places. Research has not so far considered children's images of these transitional spaces or how such images are constructed. Through an examination of over 800 thematic drawings and stories, regarding 'moving house, produced by children aged 10-17 years in urban and rural communities of Lesotho and Malawi, this paper explores southern African children's representations of migration. The research considers how ideas of migration are culturally-constructed based on notions of family, home and kinship, particularly in relation to the fluid family structure characteristic of most southern African societies. The results suggest that most children imagine migration as a household rather than an individual process.. rarely including micro -migrations between extended family households in their drawings. Further, children's images of migration are place-rooted in everyday life experiences. Their representations concentrate on the reasons for migration, both negative and positive, which are specifically related to their local social and environmental situations and whether house moves take place locally or over longer distances. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these conceptualisations of moving house for children's contemporary migration experiences, particularly in light of changing family structures due to the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandernic. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Diversity and difference in the everyday lives of Ugandan street children: The significance of age and gender for understanding the use of space

Childhood is characterised by diversity and difference across and within societies. Street children have a unique relationship to the urban environment evident through their use of the city. The everyday geographies that street children produce are diversified through the spaces they frequent and the activities they engage in. Drawing on a range of children-centred qualitative methods, this article focuses on street children's use of urban space in Kampala, Uganda. The article demonstrates the importance of considering variables such as gender and age in the analysis of street children's socio-spatial experiences, which, to date, have rarely been considered in other accounts of street children's lives. In addition the article highlights the need for also including street children's individuality and agency into understanding their use of space. The article concludes by arguing for policies to be sensitive to the diversity that characterises street children's lives and calls for a more nuanced approach where policies are designed to accommodate street children's age and gender differences, and their individual needs, interests and abilities.

Imagining migration: Placing children's understanding of 'moving house' in Malawi and Lesotho

Research pertaining to children's geographies has mainly focused on children's physical experiences of space, with their 'imagined geographies' receiving far less attention. The few studies of children's imagined geographies that exist tend to focus on children's national identities and their understanding of distant places. However, children's lives are not necessarily static and they often move between places. Research has not so far considered children's images of these transitional spaces or how such images are constructed. Through an examination of over 800 thematic drawings and stories, regarding 'moving house, produced by children aged 10-17 years in urban and rural communities of Lesotho and Malawi, this paper explores southern African children's representations of migration. The research considers how ideas of migration are culturally-constructed based on notions of family, home and kinship, particularly in relation to the fluid family structure characteristic of most southern African societies. The results suggest that most children imagine migration as a household rather than an individual process.. rarely including micro -migrations between extended family households in their drawings. Further, children's images of migration are place-rooted in everyday life experiences. Their representations concentrate on the reasons for migration, both negative and positive, which are specifically related to their local social and environmental situations and whether house moves take place locally or over longer distances. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these conceptualisations of moving house for children's contemporary migration experiences, particularly in light of changing family structures due to the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandernic. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Learning to talk to users in participatory design situations

In participatory design situations the competence of the facilitator will influence the opportunities for a user group to become engaged in the process of design. Based on the observation of the conversations from a series of design workshops, the performance of design facilitation expertise by an expert architect is compared with a less experienced architectural graduate. The skills that are the focus of this research are the conversational competences deployed by architects to engage users in the design of an architectural project. The difference between the conversational behaviour of a project architect and a less experienced graduate was observed to illustrate with examples the effect the performance of facilitation had on the opportunity for user engagement in design, and of learning the skill of facilitation that occurred in these situations.

Educational value of different types of exhibits in an interactive science and technology center

This study analyzes the short-term consequences of visitors' use of different types of exhibits (i.e., "exemplars of phenomena" and "analogy based") together with the factors affecting visitors' understanding of and their evaluation of the use of such exhibits. One hundred and twenty five visitors (either alone or in groups) were observed during their interaction and interviewed immediately afterwards. Findings suggest that the type of exhibit constrains the nature of the understanding achieved. The use of analogical reasoning may lead to an intended causal explanation of an exhibit that is an exemplar of a phenomenon, but visitors often express misconceptions as a consequence of using this type of exhibit. Analogy-based exhibits are often not used as intended by the designer. This may be because visitors do not access the source domain intended; are unaware of the use of analogy per se (in particular, when the exhibit is of the subtype "only showing similarities between relationships"); only acquire fragmentary knowledge about the target; or fail to use analogical reasoning of which they were capable. Furthermore, exhibits related to everyday world situations are recognized to have an immediate educative value for visitors. Suggestions for enhancing the educative value of exhibits are proposed.

The nature of exhibits about acoustics in Science and Technology centres

This is a study of the opportunities currently provided by interactive science and technology centres for visitors' engagement in the field of acoustics. E-mails, requesting a description of exhibits on acoustics (sound and hearing) in use, were sent to members of staff of interactive science and technology centres around the world as well as to companies that design and sell exhibits. Eighty-seven descriptions of distinctive interactive exhibits were received and analysed. Results show that: there are few analogy-based exhibits concerning the more complex aspects of acoustics; narratives involving visitors' everyday lives, that might provide continuity between and beyond the situations presented by exhibits, are not generally provided; science is emphasised at the expense of technology; the risks, benefits and ethical implications of relevant technological artefacts are rarely mentioned; the majority of the exhibits are concerned with the fields of fundamental acoustics, hearing, and psychoacoustics. It is suggested that interactive science and technology centres need to rethink the design of exhibits about acoustics if their mission includes some appreciation of this important branch of science and technology.

The intention-superiority effect for naturally occurring activities: the role of intention accessibility in everyday prospective remembering in young and older adults

This study examined age differences in the accessibility of a single pool of naturally occurring intentions both before and after completion. Following Maylor, Darby, and Della Sala (2000), accessibility was measured in terms of the number of activities generated in a 4-minute activity fluency task. Each participant undertook two such tasks. A prospective task in which they generated activities intended for completion during the following week and a retrospective task, I week later, in which they generated activities carried out over the previous week. In a partial replication of Maylor et al.'s findings, young, but not healthy older, adults generated more to-be-completed intentions than completed ones, demonstrating an intention-superiority effect (ISE) for everyday activities. The absence of an ISE for older adults appeared to reflect the reduced accessibility of intentions prior to completion, rather than the impaired inhibition of fulfilled intentions. Moreover, both groups showed greater inaccessibility of completed than intended activities, thus demonstrating an intentioncompletion effect for naturally occurring intentions that is preserved in healthy ageing (cf. Marsh, Hicks, & Bink, 1998). Despite showing a reduced accessibility of intended activities, older adults reported having completed a greater proportion of their intentions during the week than young adults. Moreover, there was a correlation between the ability to access intentions and the proportion of intentions completed only for young adults. These observations suggest that older adults' everyday prospective memory performance may be relatively less dependent on intention accessibility and more dependent on other factors. While there was no age difference in the reported use and effectiveness of external retrieval aids, older adults demonstrated a greater level of temporal organization in the production of their intentions in the fluency task. This is consistent with the possibility that older adults may have more structured daily lives and may be able to use information about the sequence of ongoing events to support superior everyday prospective remembering.