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Purpose – The purpose of this article is to develop a quantitative building accessibility assessment model for the construction industry. Design/methodology/approach – The building accessibility assessment criteria are incorporated in a hierarchy structure based on the relevant building regulations and British standards. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is employed to determine the priority of the accessibility criteria. A review of the application of AHP is included in the paper. Finally, a case scenario is used to illustrate the method. Findings – This paper provides a methodology to prioritize the building accessibility criteria and to indicate how well a building design meets accessibility requirements quantitatively. Practical limitations/implications – A model is advocated for use by accessibility consultants and building designers to establish a quantitative assessment for building accessibility. It can also be used in the development of accessibility assessment software. Originality/value – This paper presents a novel quantitative building accessibility assessment model.

According to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) report of heritage at risk for 2011–2013, Cairo is facing serious conservation challenges after the revolution of 2011, witnessing aggressive cultural heritage vandalism. A marginalized inaccessible heritage site is considered one of the most vulnerable cultural assets. Existing studies focused on safeguarding accessible historical centers while insufficient attention is given to marginalized inaccessible heritage sites. The paper questions: how far the reaccess is preventive conservation action acting against possible encroachments? And if accessibility could stand as the key player promoting networks of marginal heritage landscapes, facilitating documentation and rehabilitation programs.

The research adopts both analytical and experimental approaches. The former departs from cartographic studies and systematic contextual surveys carried out in March 2017 and was updated in July 2019 concerning the delimitation of historic Cairo. It concludes by mapping marginal heritage besides classifying their value significance, urban risks and causes of inaccessibility. The latter phase structures a framework guiding accessibility interventions of marginal heritage and examines its applicability through a cross-case comparison between four sites while proposing accessibility interventions strategies.

Finally, the study offers a comprehensive assessment model for the new interventions measuring the contextual, economic, social and administrative influences of accessibility.

The framework is considered a decision-making tool defining marginalized heritage areas with the highest priorities of enactments. The study aims to facilitate the mission of governors, policymakers and experts in conserving problematic urban heritage through soft transformations.

Both the framework and the assessment model are based on social empowerment and involvement within different phases of design, management and monitoring plans.

It aims to perform new urban codification representing the contemporary identity of marginal heritage landscape in developing countries challenging heritage vandalism. It enables reconfiguring the delimitation of historic Cairo through proposing new parameters and guidelines.

The purpose of this paper is to create a building rating system (BRS) with its bottom-up design model that can be carried out manually and in the future automatically.

The BRS is built on the basis of the structure of spatial representation framework for indoor navigation by people with visual impairment, which was validated with visually impaired people, and incorporated with building design standards and regulations from around the world. The BRS was afterwards validated by three groups of five experts in the related fields such as research and development, accessibility, and building and interior designs. Finally, the user evaluation was carried out by three focus groups of three experts in risk assessment to verify the usability of the system.

This paper provides the design and methodology of the BRS used for classifying the accessibility in buildings into four levels of classification for people with visual impairment navigating around the buildings. This system is evaluated with system usability scales (SUS), which is found to be in a “Good” level on average (72.2 SUS scores).

Success criteria used in the space classification are mainly created for people with visual impairment at this stage; other disabilities requirements must be taken into account for the next stage of the development.

The system can be carried out in the future automatically in the form of standalone software or plugins that can be integrated in buildings and interior design software to seek recommendations toward a creation of inclusive built environment.

This paper presents a design architecture of BRS with its details, description and success criteria used in the space classification.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe research undertaken for the European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) project. It aims to demonstrate how, using a task‐based approach, statistical measures can be applied to an initial assessment of a web site's accessibility, which could then be applied to further assessments to provide an evolving picture of the ongoing accessibility of a web site. Design/methodology/approach – Task‐based assessments were used to assess the accessibility of web sites, using quantitative and qualitative analysis. The findings from this approach were mapped onto a probabilistic model, developed to assess the probability of an accessibility barrier relating to a specific feature or features of a web site. Findings – The paper finds that providing participants with a task instead of allowing them to randomly explore and evaluate a web site yielded more comparable results. For the EIAO project team, the benefit of the task‐based approach was that it allowed them to compare the user testing results with the results of the automated testing tool developed by the project. From the aggregation models included in the analysis, the most appropriate model and parameters were selected, and adjustments were made according to the comparison outcome. Research limitations/implications – Due to resource limitations and efficiency requirements, the assessments undertaken were limited to automatic evaluation, which could also be tested by the users. Therefore not all accessibility barriers in a web site could be identified. Despite this, it is felt that the outcome of the automatic analysis can be utilised as indicator for the overall accessibility of the web site. Originality/value – This paper provides a framework for web designers, commissioners, and policy makers to undertake a user focussed assessment of the accessibility of their web sites, which could be used in conjunction with other assessment methods.

The purpose of this study is to propose a sustainable quality assessment approach (model) for the e-learning systems keeping software perspective under consideration. E-learning is becoming mainstream due to its accessibility, state-of-the-art learning, training ease and cost effectiveness. However, the poor quality of e-learning systems is one of the major causes of several failures reported. Moreover, this arena lacks well-defined quality assessment measures. Hence, it is quite difficult to measure the overall quality of an e-learning system effectively.

A pragmatic mixed-model philosophy was adopted for this study. A systematic literature review was performed to identify existing e-learning quality models and frameworks. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with e-learning experts following empirical investigations to identify the crucial quality characteristics of e-learning systems. Various statistical tests like principal component analysis, logistic regression, chi-square and analysis of means were applied to analyze the empirical data. These led to an adequate set of quality indicators that can be used by higher education institutions to assure the quality of e-learning systems.

A sustainable quality assessment model for the information delivery in e-learning systems in software perspective has been proposed by exploring the state-of-the-art quality assessment/evaluation models and frameworks proposed for the e-learning systems. The proposed model can be used to assess and improve the process of information discovery and delivery of e-learning.

The results obtained led to conclude that very limited attention is given to the quality of e-learning tools despite the importance of quality and its effect on e-learning system adoption and promotion. Moreover, the identified models and frameworks do not adequately address quality of e-learning systems from a software perspective.

The study aims to devise a comprehensive evaluation model (CEM) for evaluating spatial equity in the layout of elderly service facilities (ESFs) to address the inequity in the layout of ESFs within city center communities characterized by limited land resources and a dense elderly population.

The CEM incorporates a suite of analytical tools, including accessibility assessment, Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient evaluations and spatial autocorrelation analysis. Utilizing this model, the study scrutinized the distributional equity of three distinct categories of ESFs in the city center of Xi’an and proposed targeted optimization strategies.

The findings reveal that (1) there are disparities in ESFs’ accessibility among different categories and communities, manifesting a distinct center (high) and periphery (low) distribution pattern; (2) there exists inequality in ESFs distribution, with nearly 50% of older adults accessing only 18% of elderly services, and these inequalities are more pronounced in urban areas with lower accessibility, and (3) approximately 14.7% of communities experience a supply-demand disequilibrium, with demand surpassing supply as a predominant issue in the ongoing development of ESFs.

The CEM formulated in this study offers policymakers, urban planners and service providers a scientific foundation and guidance for decision-making or policy amendment by promptly assessing and pinpointing areas of spatial inequity in ESFs and identifying deficiencies in their development.

An accessible or inclusive building design does not disable any user; it should enable the independent and equal use of a facility by all. With the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), the consideration of issues such as access and inclusive design become even more important. Space analysis is an important aspect of the current accessibility assessment. Existing space analysis techniques, such as space syntax, have tackled the local and global accessibility of a building layout using graph theory. However, there are difficulties in the automatic transfer of design information from architectural drawings into a space analysis tool. With the recent development of the building information model and Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs), it is now possible to automate the transfer process. This paper demonstrates the automation process and how it can be used in accessibility analysis.

System dynamics has several applications in the built environment, and few studies indicate that it has potential in evaluating sustainability. Sustainability in the built environment involves numerous entities and multiple trade-offs. Hence, a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method is ideal for promoting sustainability-based decision-making in the built environment. Therefore, this study integrates system dynamics with an MCDM method to enable the sustainability assessment by capturing the time-induced dynamic changes affecting long time sustainability performance of buildings.

Conventional sustainability assessment tools in the built environment lack a comprehensive evaluation that balances the needs of the society, economy and environment. This study develops a system dynamics-based framework to enable sustainability-conscious decision-making and policy analysis in the built environment.

Various material, technology and water-related policies specific to the buildings are investigated for a case study building. It is found that the effect of penetration of renewable energy technology to the tune of 80% and above in the energy mix is a much superior policy in sustainability improvement in comparison to material and water-related policies. The study also demonstrates the effect of weights assigned for the different indicators on sustainability-based decisions.

The study provides a methodological framework for a sustainability-based decision support system for the built environment that enables dynamic performance evaluation by coupling system dynamics with the MCDM. This coupling further strengthens system dynamics as a decision-making and policy analysis for sustainability evaluation in the built environment.

One of the most important categories in linked open data (LOD) quality models is “data accessibility.” The purpose of this paper is to propose some metrics and indicators for assessing data accessibility in LOD and the semantic web context.

In this paper, at first the authors consider some data quality and LOD quality models to review proposed subcategories for data accessibility dimension in related texts. Then, based on goal question metric (GQM) approach, the authors specify the project goals, main issues and some questions. Finally, the authors propose some metrics for assessing the data accessibility in the context of the semantic web.

Based on GQM approach, the authors determined three main issues for data accessibility, including data availability, data performance, and data security policy. Then the authors created four main questions related to these issues. As a conclusion, the authors proposed 27 metrics for measuring these questions.

Nowadays, one of the main challenges regarding data quality is the lack of agreement on widespread quality metrics and practical instruments for evaluating quality. Accessibility is an important aspect of data quality. However, few researches have been done to provide metrics and indicators for assessing data accessibility in the context of the semantic web. So, in this research, the authors consider the data accessibility dimension and propose a comparatively comprehensive set of metrics.