Disability in the Digital Age: Reconfiguring Access, Inclusion and Equality

There is an abundance of research that examines disability and technology in the context of computers and the Internet, however few have examined disability and mobile devices. Also largely absent from existing literature are the voices of disabled people themselves. This dissertation draws upon science and technology studies (STS) and disability studies to address these gaps by conducting in-depth qualitative research that examines disabled people’s experiences using smartphones and tablets. At its core, this dissertation aims to provide insight on the following: 1) an understanding of how disability is perceived in the digital age and the subjective meanings of access, inclusion and equality; 2) the ways in which mobile devices impact the lived experience of disability; and 3) how perspectives in disability studies and STS can be applied to understand the relationship between the body, disability and technology. The empirical contribution of this research draws from participant diaries and interviews with disabled people, as well as from open-ended questionnaires completed by mobile app developers. The concept of ‘subjectivities of disability’ is introduced to refer to the uniquely personal and individual experience of disability. Findings reveal that mobile device use amongst disabled people redefines their subjectivities of disability through socio-technical interactions whereby disabled people use their devices in ways that are integrated into their everyday lives and positively shapes how they view themselves in relation to their experience of disability. The responses from app developers reveal that there is a place for disability in the mobile market and that disabled people play a key role in making apps accessible. The data suggests that mobile devices facilitate access, inclusion and equality by integrating the body in ways that recognize and accommodate diversity. The results furthermore make it clear that the interaction between disabled people and mobile devices takes on an embodied and social characteristic. This research concludes that both on an individual level and collectively, disabled people are engaging with digital artifacts in ways that promote agency and independence as well as reshaping how disability is experienced and perceived in the digital age.

Utilizing ICT to prevent loneliness and social isolation of the elderly. A literature review

Ageing of the population is a worldwide phenomenon. Numerous ICT-based solutions have been developed for elderly care but mainly connected to the physiological and nursing aspects in services for the elderly. Social work is a profession that should pay attention to the comprehensive wellbeing and social needs of the elderly. Many people experience loneliness and depression in their old age, either as a result of living alone or due to a lack of close family ties and reduced connections with their culture of origin, which results in an inability to participate actively in community activities (Singh & Misra, 2009). Participation in society would enhance the quality of life. With the development of information technology, the use of technology in social work practice has risen dramatically. The aim of this literature review is to map out the state of the art of knowledge about the usage of ICT in elderly care and to figure out research-based knowledge about the usability of ICT for the prevention of loneliness and social isolation of elderly people. The data for the current research comes from the core collection of the Web of Science and the data searching was performed using Boolean? The searching resulted in 216 published English articles. After going through the topics and abstracts, 34 articles were selected for the data analysis that is based on a multi approach framework. The analysis of the research approach is categorized according to some aspects of using ICT by older adults from the adoption of ICT to the impact of usage, and the social services for them. This literature review focused on the function of communication by excluding the applications that mainly relate to physical nursing. The results show that the so-called ‘digital divide’ still exists, but the older adults have the willingness to learn and utilise ICT in daily life, especially for communication. The data shows that the usage of ICT can prevent the loneliness and social isolation of older adults, and they are eager for technical support in using ICT. The results of data analysis on theoretical frames and concepts show that this research field applies different theoretical frames from various scientific fields, while a social work approach is lacking. However, a synergic frame of applied theories will be suggested from the perspective of social work.

Preservação digital: o estado da arte

CUNHA, Jacqueline; GALINDO, Marcos. Preservação digital: o estado da arte. In:ENCONTRO NACIONAL DE PESQUISA EM CIÊNCIA DA INFORMAÇÃO, 8., Savador, 2007. Anais... Salvador: ANCIB, 2007. Disponível em:

Digital collaborations and entrepreneurship – the role of shareconomy and crowdsourcing in the era of smart city

The thesis begins with the classical cooperation and transfers it to the digital world. This work gives a detailed overview of the young fields of research smart city, shareconomy and crowdsourcing and links these fields with entrepreneurship. The core research aim is the finding of connections between the research fields smart city, shareconomy and crowdsourcing and entrepreneurial activities and the specific fields of application, success factors and conditions for entrepreneurs. The thesis consists of seven peer-reviewed publications. Based on primary and secondary data, the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities in the fields of smart city, shareconomy and crowdsourcing could be confirmed. The first part (publications 1-3) of the thesis are literature reviews to secure the fundamental base for further research. This part consists of newly created definitions and an extreme sharpening of the research fields for the near future. In the second part of the thesis (publications 4-7), empirical field work (in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs) and quantitative analyses (fuzzy set/qualitative comparative analysis and binary logistic regression analysis) contribute to the field of research with additional new insights. Summarizing, the insights are multi-layered: theoretical (e.g. new definitions, sharpening of the research field), methodical (e.g. first time application of the fuzzy set/qualitative comparative analysis in the field of crowdfunding) and qualitative (first time application of in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs in the fields of smart city and shareconomy). The global research question could be answered: the link between entrepreneurship and smart city, shareconomy and crowdfunding could be confirmed, concrete fields of application could be identified and further developments could be touched upon. This work strongly contributes to the young fields of research through much-needed basic work, new qualitative approaches, innovative methods and new insights and offers opportunities for discussion, criticism and support for further research.

Assisting digital forensic analysis via exploratory information visualisation

Background: Digital forensics is a rapidly expanding field, due to the continuing advances in computer technology and increases in data stage capabilities of devices. However, the tools supporting digital forensics investigations have not kept pace with this evolution, often leaving the investigator to analyse large volumes of textual data and rely heavily on their own intuition and experience. Aim: This research proposes that given the ability of information visualisation to provide an end user with an intuitive way to rapidly analyse large volumes of complex data, such approached could be applied to digital forensics datasets. Such methods will be investigated; supported by a review of literature regarding the use of such techniques in other fields. The hypothesis of this research body is that by utilising exploratory information visualisation techniques in the form of a tool to support digital forensic investigations, gains in investigative effectiveness can be realised. Method:To test the hypothesis, this research examines three different case studies which look at different forms of information visualisation and their implementation with a digital forensic dataset. Two of these case studies take the form of prototype tools developed by the researcher, and one case study utilises a tool created by a third party research group. A pilot study by the researcher is conducted on these cases, with the strengths and weaknesses of each being drawn into the next case study. The culmination of these case studies is a prototype tool which was developed to resemble a timeline visualisation of the user behaviour on a device. This tool was subjected to an experiment involving a class of university digital forensics students who were given a number of questions about a synthetic digital forensic dataset. Approximately half were given the prototype tool, named Insight, to use, and the others given a common open-source tool. The assessed metrics included: how long the participants took to complete all tasks, how accurate their answers to the tasks were, and how easy the participants found the tasks to complete. They were also asked for their feedback at multiple points throughout the task. Results:The results showed that there was a statistically significant increase in accuracy for one of the six tasks for the participants using the Insight prototype tool. Participants also found completing two of the six tasks significantly easier when using the prototype tool. There were no statistically significant different difference between the completion times of both participant groups. There were no statistically significant differences in the accuracy of participant answers for five of the six tasks. Conclusions: The results from this body of research show that there is evidence to suggest that there is the potential for gains in investigative effectiveness when information visualisation techniques are applied to a digital forensic dataset. Specifically, in some scenarios, the investigator can draw conclusions which are more accurate than those drawn when using primarily textual tools. There is also evidence so suggest that the investigators found these conclusions to be reached significantly more easily when using a tool with a visual format. None of the scenarios led to the investigators being at a significant disadvantage in terms of accuracy or usability when using the prototype visual tool over the textual tool. It is noted that this research did not show that the use of information visualisation techniques leads to any statistically significant difference in the time taken to complete a digital forensics investigation.

Ulnar artery aneurysm: case report and review of the literature

Aim. We report a case of ulnar and palmar arch artery aneurysm in a 77 years old man without history of any occupational or recreational trauma, vasculitis, infections or congenital anatomic abnormalities. We also performed a computed search of literature in PUBMED using the keywords “ulnar artery aneurysm” and “palmar arch aneurysm”. Case report. A 77 years old male patient was admitted to hospital with a pulsing mass at distal right ulnar artery and deep palmar arch; at ultrasound and CT examination a saccular aneurysm of 35 millimeters at right ulnar artery and a 15 millimeters dilatation at deep palmar arch were detected. He was asymptomatic for distal embolization and pain. In local anesthesia ulnar artery and deep palmar arch dilatations were resected. Reconstruction of vessels was performed through an end-to-end microvascular repair. Histological examination confirmed the absence of vasculitis and collagenopaties. In postoperative period there were no clinical signs of peripheral ischemia, Allen’s test and ultrasound examination were normal. At follow-up of six months, the patient was still asymptomatic with a normal Allen test, no signs of distal digital ischemia and patency of treated vessel with normal flow at duplex ultrasound. Conclusion. True spontaneous aneurysms of ulnar artery and palmar arch are rare and can be successfully treated with resection and microvascular reconstruction.

Preservação digital: o estado da arte

CUNHA, Jacqueline; GALINDO, Marcos. Preservação digital: o estado da arte. In:ENCONTRO NACIONAL DE PESQUISA EM CIÊNCIA DA INFORMAÇÃO, 8., Savador, 2007. Anais... Salvador: ANCIB, 2007. Disponível em:

Security through Obscurity: Layout Obfuscation of Digital Integrated Circuits using Don't Care Conditions

Contemporary integrated circuits are designed and manufactured in a globalized environment leading to concerns of piracy, overproduction and counterfeiting. One class of techniques to combat these threats is circuit obfuscation which seeks to modify the gate-level (or structural) description of a circuit without affecting its functionality in order to increase the complexity and cost of reverse engineering. Most of the existing circuit obfuscation methods are based on the insertion of additional logic (called “key gates”) or camouflaging existing gates in order to make it difficult for a malicious user to get the complete layout information without extensive computations to determine key-gate values. However, when the netlist or the circuit layout, although camouflaged, is available to the attacker, he/she can use advanced logic analysis and circuit simulation tools and Boolean SAT solvers to reveal the unknown gate-level information without exhaustively trying all the input vectors, thus bringing down the complexity of reverse engineering. To counter this problem, some ‘provably secure’ logic encryption algorithms that emphasize methodical selection of camouflaged gates have been proposed previously in literature [1,2,3]. The contribution of this paper is the creation and simulation of a new layout obfuscation method that uses don't care conditions. We also present proof-of-concept of a new functional or logic obfuscation technique that not only conceals, but modifies the circuit functionality in addition to the gate-level description, and can be implemented automatically during the design process. Our layout obfuscation technique utilizes don’t care conditions (namely, Observability and Satisfiability Don’t Cares) inherent in the circuit to camouflage selected gates and modify sub-circuit functionality while meeting the overall circuit specification. Here, camouflaging or obfuscating a gate means replacing the candidate gate by a 4X1 Multiplexer which can be configured to perform all possible 2-input/ 1-output functions as proposed by Bao et al. [4]. It is important to emphasize that our approach not only obfuscates but alters sub-circuit level functionality in an attempt to make IP piracy difficult. The choice of gates to obfuscate determines the effort required to reverse engineer or brute force the design. As such, we propose a method of camouflaged gate selection based on the intersection of output logic cones. By choosing these candidate gates methodically, the complexity of reverse engineering can be made exponential, thus making it computationally very expensive to determine the true circuit functionality. We propose several heuristic algorithms to maximize the RE complexity based on don’t care based obfuscation and methodical gate selection. Thus, the goal of protecting the design IP from malicious end-users is achieved. It also makes it significantly harder for rogue elements in the supply chain to use, copy or replicate the same design with a different logic. We analyze the reverse engineering complexity by applying our obfuscation algorithm on ISCAS-85 benchmarks. Our experimental results indicate that significant reverse engineering complexity can be achieved at minimal design overhead (average area overhead for the proposed layout obfuscation methods is 5.51% and average delay overhead is about 7.732%). We discuss the strengths and limitations of our approach and suggest directions that may lead to improved logic encryption algorithms in the future. References: [1] R. Chakraborty and S. Bhunia, “HARPOON: An Obfuscation-Based SoC Design Methodology for Hardware Protection,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 1493–1502, 2009. [2] J. A. Roy, F. Koushanfar, and I. L. Markov, “EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits,” in 2008 Design, Automation and Test in Europe, 2008, pp. 1069–1074. [3] J. Rajendran, M. Sam, O. Sinanoglu, and R. Karri, “Security Analysis of Integrated Circuit Camouflaging,” ACM Conference on Computer Communications and Security, 2013. [4] Bao Liu, Wang, B., "Embedded reconfigurable logic for ASIC design obfuscation against supply chain attacks,"Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE), 2014 , vol., no., pp.1,6, 24-28 March 2014.

A Study of The Skills Sectors’ learners’ expectations and experiences of the digital environment

A Study of The Skills Sectors’ learners’ expectations and experiences of the digital environment - A Literature review

Supporting self-management: development and evaluation of a digital resource for adults with asthma

The problem: Around 300 million people worldwide have asthma and prevalence is increasing. Support for optimal self-management can be effective in improving a range of outcomes and is cost effective, but is underutilised as a treatment strategy. Supporting optimum self-management using digital technology shows promise, but how best to do this is not clear. Aim: The purpose of this project was to explore the potential role of a digital intervention in promoting optimum self-management in adults with asthma. Methods: Following the MRC Guidance on the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions which advocates using theory, evidence, user testing and appropriate modelling and piloting, this project had 3 phases. Phase 1: Examination of the literature to inform phases 2 and 3, using systematic review methods and focussed literature searching. Phase 2: Developing the Living Well with Asthma website. A prototype (paper-based) version of the website was developed iteratively with input from a multidisciplinary expert panel, empirical evidence from the literature (from phase 1), and potential end users via focus groups (adults with asthma and practice nurses). Implementation and behaviour change theories informed this process. The paper-based designs were converted to the website through an iterative user centred process (think aloud studies with adults with asthma). Participants considered contents, layout, and navigation. Development was agile using feedback from the think aloud sessions immediately to inform design and subsequent think aloud sessions. Phase 3: A pilot randomised controlled trial over 12 weeks to evaluate the feasibility of a Phase 3 trial of Living Well with Asthma to support self-management. Primary outcomes were 1) recruitment & retention; 2) website use; 3) Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) score change from baseline; 4) Mini Asthma Quality of Life (AQLQ) score change from baseline. Secondary outcomes were patient activation, adherence, lung function, fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO), generic quality of life measure (EQ-5D), medication use, prescribing and health services contacts. Results: Phase1: Demonstrated that while digital interventions show promise, with some evidence of effectiveness in certain outcomes, participants were poorly characterised, telling us little about the reach of these interventions. The interventions themselves were poorly described making drawing definitive conclusions about what worked and what did not impossible. Phase 2: The literature indicated that important aspects to cover in any self-management intervention (digital or not) included: asthma action plans, regular health professional review, trigger avoidance, psychological functioning, self-monitoring, inhaler technique, and goal setting. The website asked users to aim to be symptom free. Key behaviours targeted to achieve this include: optimising medication use (including inhaler technique); attending primary care asthma reviews; using asthma action plans; increasing physical activity levels; and stopping smoking. The website had 11 sections, plus email reminders, which promoted these behaviours. Feedback during think aloud studies was mainly positive with most changes focussing on clarification of language, order of pages and usability issues mainly relating to navigation difficulties. Phase 3: To achieve our recruitment target 5383 potential participants were invited, leading to 51 participants randomised (25 to intervention group). Age range 16-78 years; 75% female; 28% from most deprived quintile. Nineteen (76%) of the intervention group used the website for an average of 23 minutes. Non-significant improvements in favour of the intervention group observed in the ACQ score (-0.36; 95% confidence interval: -0.96, 0.23; p=0.225), and mini-AQLQ scores (0.38; -0.13, 0.89; p=0.136). A significant improvement was observed in the activity limitation domain of the mini-AQLQ (0.60; 0.05 to 1.15; p = 0.034). Secondary outcomes showed increased patient activation and reduced reliance on reliever medication. There was no significant difference in the remaining secondary outcomes. There were no adverse events. Conclusion: Living Well with Asthma has been shown to be acceptable to potential end users, and has potential for effectiveness. This intervention merits further development, and subsequent evaluation in a Phase III full scale RCT.

Creating and measuring customer value in digital businesses

Most economic transactions nowadays are due to the effective exchange of information in which digital resources play a huge role. New actors are coming into existence all the time, so organizations are facing difficulties in keeping their current customers and attracting new customer segments and markets. Companies are trying to find the key to their success and creating superior customer value seems to be one solution. Digital technologies can be used to deliver value to customers in ways that extend customers’ normal conscious experiences in the context of time and space. By creating customer value, companies can gain the increased loyalty of existing customers and better ways to serve new customers effectively. Based on these assumptions, the objective of this study was to design a framework to enable organizations to create customer value in digital business. The research was carried out as a literature review and an empirical study, which consisted of a web-based survey and semi-structured interviews. The data from the empirical study was analyzed as mixed research with qualitative and quantitative methods. These methods were used since the object of the study was to gain deeper understanding about an existing phenomena. Therefore, the study used statistical procedures and value creation is described as a phenomenon. The framework was designed first based on the literature and updated based on the findings from the empirical study. As a result, relationship, understanding the customer, focusing on the core product or service, the product or service quality, incremental innovations, service range, corporate identity, and networks were chosen as the top elements of customer value creation. Measures for these elements were identified. With the measures, companies can manage the elements in value creation when dealing with present and future customers and also manage the operations of the company. In conclusion, creating customer value requires understanding the customer and a lot of information sharing, which can be eased by digital resources. Understanding the customer helps to produce products and services that fulfill customers’ needs and desires. This could result in increased sales and make it easier to establish efficient processes.

Digital Transformation of Municipal Services in Finland

Digitalization has been widely adopted by private organizations of all sizes. As customers we are starting to expect a certain level of digital services from businesses and these expectations are evolving to consider the public sector services as well. Moreover, the Finnish municipalities are under pressure to cut costs and make their operation more efficient. This research aims in exploring the field of municipal digitalization in Finland with three main questions to answer: what are the motivations for municipalities for digital service transformation, what the main benefits of this transformation are and what are the challenges for the transformation. The research starts with examining the characteristics of municipal operation and reviewing some of the relevant digital service opportunities. In the empirical part of the research, 11 professionals related to the municipal field were interviewed using a semi-structured interview design. These interviewees were chosen from three important groups for the change: the service provider, municipal administration and municipal employees. The data gained from the interviews was first summarized according to the main topics chosen from the literature and then reflected on the digital services opportunities presented in the research. The motivations discovered in both the service provider and the city of Porvoo interviews were: tightening resources combined with increasing expectations, transparent structuring of information, supporting the shift into mobile and providing new channels for customers to participate. The benefits discovered in all groups were: efficiency, customer experience, transparent structuring of information, reducing manual input and responding to customer needs in service development. The challenges perceived by multiple groups were: change resistance, innovating new with no best practices and defining the scope and new operation model. The results of this research suggest that even with some challenges along the way, digitalization is a likely future for the Finnish public sector. The business case for the transformation is becoming increasingly evident on both municipal- and governmental levels.

The Literature of Disaffection: Political Dysphoria and British Modernism after 1930

This dissertation argues that “disaffection” is an overlooked but foundational posture of mid-twentieth-century British and Anglophone literature. Previously misdiagnosed as quietism or apathy, disaffection instead describes how many late modernist writers mediated between their ideological misgivings and the pressure to respond to dire political crises, from the Second World War to the creation of new postcolonial nations. Stylists of disaffection—such as Henry Green, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and V. S. Naipaul—grappled with how limiting cultural assumptions, for instance, about class and nation, seemed to inhere in particular aesthetic techniques like stream of consciousness or realism. Disaffected literature appeals to but then disrupts a given technique’s projection of these assumptions and the social totality that they imagine. This literary “bait-and-switch” creates a feeling of dysphoria whereby readers experience a text unnervingly different from what they had been led to expect. Recognizing the formative work of literary disaffection in late modernism offers an original way to conceptualize the transition between modernist and postmodernist literature in the twentieth century.

Implementação em FPGA de compensadores de desvios para conversor analógico digital intercalado

This work presents the modeling and FPGA implementation of digital TIADC mismatches compensation systems. The development of the whole work follows a top-down methodology. Following this methodology was developed a two channel TIADC behavior modeling and their respective offset, gain and clock skew mismatches on Simulink. In addition was developed digital mismatch compensation system behavior modeling. For clock skew mismatch compensation fractional delay filters were used, more specifically, the efficient Farrow struct. The definition of wich filter design methodology would be used, and wich Farrow structure, required the study of various design methods presented in literature. The digital compensation systems models were converted to VHDL, for FPGA implementation and validation. These system validation was carried out using the test methodology FPGA In Loop . The results obtained with TIADC mismatch compensators show the high performance gain provided by these structures. Beyond this result, these work illustrates the potential of design, implementation and FPGA test methodologies.

A critical and interpretative investigation of the ethical dimension of policies about school digital technologies

This thesis examines digital technologies policies designed for Australian schools and the ways they are understood and interpreted by students, school staff, teachers, principals and policy writers. This study explores the ways these research participant groups interpret and understand the ‘ethical dimension’ of schools’ digital technologies policies for teaching and learning. In this thesis the ethical dimension is considered to be a dynamic concept which encompasses various elements including; decisions, actions, values, issues, debates, education, discourses, and notions of right and wrong, in relation to ethics and uses of digital technologies in schools. In this study policy is taken to mean not only written texts but discursive processes, policy documents including national declarations, strategic plans and ‘acceptable use’ policies to guide the use of digital technologies in schools. The research is situated in the context of changes that have occurred in Australia and internationally over the last decade that have seen a greater focus on the access to and use of digital technologies in schools. In Australian school education, the attention placed on digital technologies in schools has seen the release of policies at the national, state, territory, education office and school levels, to guide their use. Prominent among these policies has been the Digital Education Revolution policy, launched in 2007 and concluded in 2013. This research aims to answers the question: What does an investigation reveal about understandings of the ethical dimension of digital technologies policies and their implementation in school education? The objective of this research is to examine the ethical dimension of digital technologies policies and to interpret and understand the responses of the research participants to the issues, silences, discourses and language, which characterise this dimension. In doing so, it is intended that the research can allow the participants to have a voice that, may be different to the official discourses located in digital technologies policies. The thesis takes a critical and interpretative approach to policies and examines the role of digital technologies policies as discourse. Interpretative theory is utilised as it provides a conceptual lens from which to interpret different perspectives and the implications of these in the construction of meaning in relation to schools’ digital technologies policies. Critical theory is used in tandem with interpretative theory as it represents a conceptual basis from which to critique and question underlying assumptions and discourses that are associated with the ethical dimension of schools’ digital technologies policies. The research methods used are semi-structured interviews and policy document analysis. Policies from the national, state, territory, education office and school level were analysed and contribute to understanding the way the ethical dimension of digital technologies policies is represented as a discourse. Students, school staff, teachers, principals and policy writers participated in research interviews and their views and perspectives were canvassed in relation to the ethical use of digital technologies and the policies that are designed to regulate their use. The thesis presents an argument that the ethical dimension of schools’ digital technologies policies and use is an under-researched area, and there are gaps in understanding and knowledge in the literature which remain to be addressed. It is envisaged that the thesis can make a meaningful contribution to understand the ways in which schools’ digital technologies policies are understood in school contexts. It is also envisaged that the findings from the research can inform policy development by analysing the voices and views of those in schools. The findings of the policy analysis revealed that there is little attention given to the ethical dimension in digital technologies at the national level. A discourse of compliance and control pervades digital technologies policies from the state, education office and school levels, which reduces ethical considerations to technical, legal and regulatory requirements. The discourse is largely instrumentalist and neglects the educative dimension of digital technologies which has the capacity to engender their ethical use. The findings from the interview conversations revealed that students, school staff and teachers perceive digital technologies policies to be difficult to understand, and not relevant to their situation and needs. They also expressed a desire to have greater consultation and participation in the formation and enactment of digital technologies policies, and they believe they are marginalised from these processes in their schools. Arising from the analysis of the policies and interview conversations, an argument is presented that in the light of the prominent role played by digital technologies and their potential for enhancing all aspects of school education, more research is required to provide a more holistic and richer understanding of the policies that are constructed to control and mediate their use.