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Visually impaired people usually struggle with doing daily tasks due to a lack of visual cues. For image captioning assistive applications, most applications require an Internet connection for the image captioning generation function to work properly. In this study, we developed MyUEVision, an application that assists visually impaired people by generating image captions that can work with and without the Internet. This work also involves reviewing some image captioning models for this application.

The author has selected and experimented with three image captioning models for online models and two image captioning models for offline models. The user experience (UX) design was designed based on the problems faced by visually impaired users when using mobile applications. The application is developed for the Android platform, and the offline model is integrated into the application for the image captioning generation function to work offline.

After conducting experiments for selecting online and offline models, ExpansionNet V2 is chosen for the online model and VGG16 + long short-term memory (LSTM) is chosen for the offline model. The application is then developed and assessed, and the results show that the application can generate image captions with or without the Internet, providing the best result when having an Internet connection, and the image is captured in good lighting with a few objects.

MyUEVision stands out for its both online and offline functionality. This approach ensures the image captioning generator works with or without the Internet, setting it apart as a unique solution to address the needs of visually impaired individuals.

Images and caption descriptions serve as important visual stimuli that influence consumer preferences; therefore, the current study focuses on property images and captions illustrated on the home pages of accommodation-sharing platforms. Specifically, this study investigates the relative importance of hue, brightness and saturation of a property image and caption description styles on potential consumers’ preferences.

A mixed-method approach was used, and a total of 293 valid responses were collected through a discrete choice experiment approach. Interviews were conducted for additional analyses to explore the detailed explanations.

The utility model demonstrated that the image’s saturation was the most critical attribute perceived by the respondents, followed by caption description style, hue and brightness.

This is one of the first studies to investigate the display of attributes on a digital accommodation platform by exploring potential customers’ stated preferences. This study focuses explicitly on images and captions illustrated on the home page of an accommodation booking platform. Detailed image investigation is also a new research area in sharing economy-related research.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and demonstrate the advancements achieved in the field of chest X-ray image captioning through the utilization of dynamic convolutional encoder–decoder networks (DyCNN). Typical convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are unable to capture both local and global contextual information effectively and apply a uniform operation to all pixels in an image. To address this, we propose an innovative approach that integrates a dynamic convolution operation at the encoder stage, improving image encoding quality and disease detection. In addition, a decoder based on the gated recurrent unit (GRU) is used for language modeling, and an attention network is incorporated to enhance consistency. This novel combination allows for improved feature extraction, mimicking the expertise of radiologists by selectively focusing on important areas and producing coherent captions with valuable clinical information.

In this study, we have presented a new report generation approach that utilizes dynamic convolution applied Resnet-101 (DyCNN) as an encoder (Verelst and Tuytelaars, 2019) and GRU as a decoder (Dey and Salemt, 2017; Pan et al., 2020), along with an attention network (see Figure 1). This integration innovatively extends the capabilities of image encoding and sequential caption generation, representing a shift from conventional CNN architectures. With its ability to dynamically adapt receptive fields, the DyCNN excels at capturing features of varying scales within the CXR images. This dynamic adaptability significantly enhances the granularity of feature extraction, enabling precise representation of localized abnormalities and structural intricacies. By incorporating this flexibility into the encoding process, our model can distil meaningful and contextually rich features from the radiographic data. While the attention mechanism enables the model to selectively focus on different regions of the image during caption generation. The attention mechanism enhances the report generation process by allowing the model to assign different importance weights to different regions of the image, mimicking human perception. In parallel, the GRU-based decoder adds a critical dimension to the process by ensuring a smooth, sequential generation of captions.

The findings of this study highlight the significant advancements achieved in chest X-ray image captioning through the utilization of dynamic convolutional encoder–decoder networks (DyCNN). Experiments conducted using the IU-Chest X-ray datasets showed that the proposed model outperformed other state-of-the-art approaches. The model achieved notable scores, including a BLEU_1 score of 0.591, a BLEU_2 score of 0.347, a BLEU_3 score of 0.277 and a BLEU_4 score of 0.155. These results highlight the efficiency and efficacy of the model in producing precise radiology reports, enhancing image interpretation and clinical decision-making.

This work is the first of its kind, which employs DyCNN as an encoder to extract features from CXR images. In addition, GRU as the decoder for language modeling was utilized and the attention mechanisms into the model architecture were incorporated.

In this study, I use currere to examine excessive entitlement in my own high school education. By “excessive entitlement,” I emphasize teachers' actions and systemic conditions related to an excessive educational mindset justifying (and manifesting) self-infallibility. Teachers displaying excessive entitlement might take for granted, for example, the correctness of their actions, closing self-awareness, and more equitable relations with others (especially students). On a structural level, it includes, for example, societal norms, school policies, educational traditions, and often laws. Specifically, I present findings examining three levels of curriculum – the formal or explicit, the implicit or hidden, and the null or present/absent. I offer my own story as a case study of how schools and teachers may silence and erase student identity and culture as well as how more inclusive and dialogic teaching approaches (and methods of inquiry) can counteract and offer alternatives to such oppressive forces. My framework includes professional ethics, moral ethics, and social justice ethics. Looking back at my history as a gay high school student, I discovered that my school's explicit curriculum provided teachers with a safe haven for bigotry and hostility toward LGBTQ students (as well as female students and students of color), and its hidden curriculum projected messages that privileged such a curriculum (and denigrated epistemologies more on the margin). It was only in the null curriculum that I began to experience a sense of liberation and inclusion and an awareness of the multiplicity of epistemology and ontology.

This study aims to investigate and propose guidelines to enhance the accessibility of virtual reality (VR) interfaces for all users within professional learning environments. Motivated by a lack of comprehensive accessibility guidelines for VR learning, the study delves into a case study of Edstutia’s VR campus.

This case study examines the intersection of VR platform development and learning experience design through the lens of accessibility in human-computer interaction. It elaborates on how user experience feedback from differently-abled learners who were unable to fully participate in the VR experience due to disability shaped the 2.0 version development of a VR platform.

The outcomes of this case study are (1) a description of an inclusive and empathetic design application to increase multi-learner VR platform accessibility, (2) a sample actionable path from a design/development perspective in ensuring the accessibility design of a VR learning platform, and recommendations to facilitate the design process.

This case is a foundation for further research on improving accessibility in VR. In future work on VR campuses, we recommend scholars undertake research with an inclusive approach that actively involves users with different abilities in shaping guidelines, particularly on how individuals with different abilities should be approached for their input during the design and development process in a sensitive manner.

The authors summarize the steps taken to enhance the accessible interplay between the end users and the interface of VR technology in the emergence of VR accessibility standards. Central to this case’s exploration is the integration of accessibility as a pivotal element into an academic VR campus, i.e. multilearner education platform.

Increasing access to VR has strong social implications in a world where 17% of people report a disability.

This case contributes to the limited research available on increasing access to VR on campuses.

This study investigates how communication is used by a Swedish public authority to legitimate the responsibilization of preparedness, i.e. how the state encourages individual citizens to take more responsibility for their security.

A multimodal discursive approach drawing on multimodal narrative analysis of video clips and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) is used to examine how the responsibilization of preparedness is legitimated in video material published on Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency's (MSB’s) YouTube channel.

The study finds that the responsibilization of preparedness is legitimated through an ongoing but evolving normalization of threat. The findings also show how responsibilization is legitimated in moralizing terms of individual contribution to society, which may indicate a return from neo-liberal values to more traditional Swedish collectivist values.

The study shows how communication around preparedness and responsibilization is discursively constructed and legitimated through multimodal features, while previous research has mainly focused on verbal or written communication.

The “Picture This, Picture Me” research project enabled young people who have experience of a parent in prison to challenge the narrow narrative of “prisoners’ children” by sharing their wider sense of identities and their needs. This paper aims to show the value of specialised voluntary sector support groups for children with a parent in prison as well as demonstrate that parental imprisonment, whilst significant, is only one part of their story.

Children’s experiences are explored through expressive and creative research methods informed by photovoice research, including taking and responding to photos and caption writing, short conversational interviews and curation of artefacts.

Children’s perspectives are presented: what matters to them, what makes them happy, how do they perceive themselves beyond the label of “a prisoner’s child”, how do community-based support services help and what they would like people to know about children who have been impacted by parental imprisonment.

This research contributes to an emerging research area on the role of services from the community and voluntary sector and non-formal educational organisations that support children impacted by parental imprisonment at a personal and family level.

This research offers useful knowledge to professionals, including those in education, children’s services and non-formal community-based services, with an interest in holistically supporting children and families with a relative in prison.

Children’s insights are offered on the value of peer-to-peer and community-based interventions that support them holistically, including articulating their self-identity, life and educational aspirations and practical issues for families.

There is minimal research on including and hearing the voices of children who have a family member in prison and their perspectives are invaluable.

This study responds to the need in social entrepreneurship research for more empirical studies to clarify the meaning of social value. Specially, it aims to explore the meaning of social value communicated on social media (SoMe) within the local context of a social enterprise (SE).

A multimodal social semiotic approach was applied to several hundred Facebook posts of a Finnish SE providing elderly care solutions, complemented by secondary data from high-quality press sources.

Building on Young’s (2006) dimensions of social value and Hidalgo et al.’s (2021) theorisation of social capital in social entrepreneurship, the authors find that an SE draws on multiple levels of social capital on SoMe to express the meaning of the social value it creates.

Although limited to one case, this study provides a deep contextual understanding of how SEs can give meaning to social value and leverage social capital on SoMe to do so.

The authors offer a contextually embedded framework for SEs to communicate social value through media. This approach enables SEs to engage stakeholders more effectively and improve the quality of support for local initiatives.

Improvements in SEs’ ability to communicate social value will increase their legitimacy, thus enhancing their prospects to survive and create sustained social value.

The authors strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of social value by being among the first to empirically describe its connection to social capital in an SE, thereby deepening previous studies on subjective social value. Methodologically, this study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to apply social semiotics to research on SEs.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to propose a methodology to empirically investigate the longitudinal development of social media content concerning buildings characterized by iconic architecture and second, to report on the application of this methodology.

We collected and analyzed empirical data of social media content shared via Instagram between 2011 and 2019 on 16 buildings that can be considered iconic architecture projects. Using an automated pipeline, we collected and processed 264,000 posts and 140,000 images from Instagram for the selected case studies. By studying the posting activity of Instagram users through time series analysis and conducting content analysis of the social media posts by means of both image classification and topic modeling, we report on the development of users’ capturing and reception of the selected case studies on Instagram over time.

First, we identify two distinct time patterns of social media content: instantly popular buildings whose popularity fades over time and buildings that gradually gain popularity over time. Second, we distinguish differences in the content of social media posts: some buildings are primarily covered for their architectural features and others for their cultural function and facilities.

Using empirical investigation of Instagram data on iconic architectural projects, we have identified a correlation: buildings primarily posted for their architecture are generally also the ones to gain instant online popularity that subsequently faded over time. In contrast, buildings primarily posted for their function and facilities slowly gained popularity on the social media platform over time.

This paper aims to explore the adaptive experiences of first-year international graduate students at a US university. It aims to understand the challenges they encounter, strategies they adopt with social media to navigate these challenges and tensions that emerge in their social media interactions.

This study uses a qualitative multiple-case research design to collect data from 22 semistructured interviews with 11 participants. Additionally, 110 social media artifacts were collected, focusing on international students’ use of social media in everyday and academic contexts.

This paper offers empirical insights into social media’s role in helping international students address practical challenges and fulfill learning needs in academic studies, assistantships, cultural understanding and the constructions of ethnic and peer groups for emotional and social support. Additionally, it identifies tensions such as addiction, distractions, emotional distress and the creation of filter bubbles.

Given the qualitative approach of this paper, the generalizability of study findings is limited. Future studies can focus on different sites to explore context-related issues, students across different years or use a longitudinal research design to further explore international students’ experiences in relation to social media use and its role in their adaptation over time.

This paper proposes implementing social media curricula in universities to educate students on media literacy and digital competence and create peer groups to support international students beyond classrooms.

This paper adds value to informal learning literature focusing on international students.