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1 – 10 of 65This paper examines the extent to which 3D printed children's prostheses function as enabling technology. The focus lies on the experiences of children with upper limb body…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the extent to which 3D printed children's prostheses function as enabling technology. The focus lies on the experiences of children with upper limb body differences using 3D printed prostheses in the context of (posthuman) cyborg theories.
Design/methodology/approach
This article is based on several years of field research applying a grounded theory approach. (Health) technology and the body are examined with special regard to the vulnerability of the technology user who is, also, the technology designer. Taking these children's particular vulnerability and sensitivity into account, the method of “cultural probes” was further developed applying distributed socio-(bio-)technical probes, which conceive soma design as the matter of a socio-material world.
Findings
It was shown that the e-NABLE device is not only a socially enabling somatechnic but can itself be limiting, vulnerable and painful for children due to its materiality. The somatechnical construction of children's bodies and identities are presented as heroic figures, which, in part, produces and experiences a corporeal being that is based on and identifies with these heroes and heroines – but may not always be in the interests of children with disabilities. In order to meet these children's needs, the author argues in line with crip technoscience that 3D printed prostheses should be co-developed with (and specifically for) them.
Originality/value
This paper is the first of its kind to consider the daily lives of children with 3D printed prostheses and their experiences as knowers and makers of such. This paper adds to the body of knowledge in the field of crip technoscience and enabling technologies.
Peer review
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon 10.1108/JET-02-2022-0017
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The literature review explores how multidisciplinary approaches based on critical pedagogy and participatory research can provide frameworks for equitable partnerships and genuine…
Abstract
Purpose
The literature review explores how multidisciplinary approaches based on critical pedagogy and participatory research can provide frameworks for equitable partnerships and genuine participation in educational design and research practices. Additionally, the essay aims to expand understandings of equitable engagement within educational research and design based on principles from critical pedagogy.
Design/methodology/approach
The essay draws from diverse literature in the learning sciences, health informatics, industrial design, disability studies, ethnic studies, rehabilitation science, and to a lesser extent HCI research to understand how critical pedagogy and participatory research methods can provide useful frameworks for disabled peoples' equitable engagement and genuine participation in educational research and design. The literature reviewed in the paper concern topics such as participatory approaches to community development with disabled adults, the implementation of university-initiated community partnerships, participatory research with students and disabled people, and the importance of culturally-responsive research practices. The design literature in this review explores various arenas such as the co-design of assistive technologies with disabled children and adults and the design of curricula for students with and without disabilities. This review focuses on research practices that engender disabled peoples' participation in educational research and design, with focus on developing multidisciplinary frameworks for such research.
Findings
The literature review concludes that participatory research methods and critical pedagogy provide useful frameworks for disabled peoples’ participation in educational design and research practices. Critical pedagogy and participatory design allow for the genuine participation of disabled people in the research process.
Social implications
Emphases on collaboration and collective knowledge-building in social transformation are present in scholarship concerning critical pedagogy, participatory research, and disability studies. However, these connections have been routinely underexplored in the literature. This paper aims to underscore these integral connections as a means to build solidarity between disabled and other marginalized people.
Originality/value
The connections between participatory research methods, critical pedagogy, and disability studies have been previously underexplored. The literature review proposes a combined approach, which has the potential to radically transform multiple realms of research beyond the learning and information sciences.
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This study aims to examine Braille usage among consumers with visual impairments, investigating motivations and addressing inherent challenges.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine Braille usage among consumers with visual impairments, investigating motivations and addressing inherent challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing insights from 16 semistructured interviews with individuals experiencing blindness, this study reveals nuanced aspects of Braille utilization.
Findings
Three key motivations for Braille usage are identified: as a coping mechanism for functional needs and to combat stigma; as an embodied experience contributing to pleasure; and as a heritage embodying a culture of visual impairment. Obstacles include cultural and financial barriers to learning, incomplete retail transcriptions limiting practicality and spatial congestion issues.
Originality/value
This study underscores Braille’s dual function as both coping mechanism and cultural heritage. By highlighting obstacles, it sheds light on challenges faced by consumers with visual impairments, facilitating advocacy and promoting inclusive retail practices. Originality lies in recognizing diverse motivations and experiences among Braille users, offering insights for enhancing tactile engagement in the marketplace.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the views of women with disability about their working lives in a company in the Barcelona metropolitan area which is unusual in that it…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the views of women with disability about their working lives in a company in the Barcelona metropolitan area which is unusual in that it employs more than twice the percentage of people with disabilities as the legally established quota (2 percent). The paper specifically addresses concealment of disability in a context provided by organizational inclusion policies.
Design/methodology/approach
Narratives from women with disabilities were developed within the case study of the firm to give voice to them and bring forward their perspectives on their own working experience in the organizational context.
Findings
The author found that in an arguably inclusive organizational context, unlike their experiences in other contexts, women could choose whether or not to conceal their disability. The organizational context allowed women to forget their disability, yet disability was vindicated in different ways. Emotions were varied and nuanced around feelings of pride, happiness, a wish for independence, pain and relief.
Research limitations/implications
The research was done in a specific organization with an unusually high percentage of employees with disability. While results cannot be generalized to other companies, this research can aid understanding of what the processes of inclusion may involve for employees, and for those organizations that choose to engage in inclusive practices.
Practical implications
The results of this research are relevant for managers and policy makers in order to obtain insights about how inclusive policies may be perceived by those to whom they are addressed.
Social implications
Disability inclusion in organizations is part of disability inclusion in societies. Disability affects 15 percent of the world population. Addressing inclusion processes of people with disability is socially relevant and needed.
Originality/value
In contrast to previous research, disability inclusion processes are examined though the voices of the women with disabilities working in the company.
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Sudhir Ambekar, Dipayan Roy, Amit Hiray, Anand Prakash and Vishal Singh Patyal
This study attempts to identify and analyse the barriers to implementing a reverse logistics (RL) system in Indian Construction, Real estate, Infrastructure and Project (CRIP…
Abstract
Purpose
This study attempts to identify and analyse the barriers to implementing a reverse logistics (RL) system in Indian Construction, Real estate, Infrastructure and Project (CRIP) sectors and present a structured model to identify interdependencies among them.
Design/methodology/approach
The barriers to implementing RL in CRIP sectors in India were identified using a Delphi study. The interdependencies were identified using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). Further, using the Matriced' Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) analysis, the barriers were classified on the basis of their driving power and interdependencies.
Findings
The study has identified ten barriers that can hamper the application of an RL system in CRIP sectors. The finding of the ISM model shows that macro level barriers such as lack of awareness of reverse logistics, insufficient government policies and unavailability of standard codes stimulate each other and also drive all other barriers. The organization-specific barriers operating at the strategic/tactical level, namely, company's rigid mechanism, lack of awareness of economic profits, inadequate company’s organizational policies and lack of training, reluctance from stakeholders, scarcity of resources and finance from company are found at the intermediate level of hierarchy and they can be influenced by the barriers at the lower level and influence the barriers on the and higher levels. The operational level barrier namely “Inadequate Information Technology system” is at the top of the hierarchy and can be driven by all the barriers at the lower level.
Research limitations/implications
The present findings are based on the opinions of experts only from Indian CRIP sectors so the results may require to be validated in other contexts.
Practical implications
The structural model presenting the interdependencies will be a guide for the CRIP supply chain professionals in understanding and ranking the barriers they may face while implementing the RL system.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the existing literature by providing a set of barriers and their interdependencies faced during the implementation of an RL system implementation in CRIP sectors. It is one of the first studies which identifies barriers applicable to the CRIP firms in India and models their inter-dependencies. Additionally Consequently, these firms can make a move forward towards a circular economy by overcoming these interlinked barriers.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on Cameron and Matthews’ paper “More than pictures: developing an accessible resource”.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on Cameron and Matthews’ paper “More than pictures: developing an accessible resource”.
Design/methodology/approach
It reflects on how much people with learning disabilities are involved in research and resource development and how the attitudes of caregivers impact on how people learn about sexuality.
Findings
Most published research is written by people who do not have learning disabilities but people with learning disabilities are taking part in research and they are making changes to the way things happen. Parents, educators and caregivers are often reluctant to discuss sexuality with people with learning disabilities and this affects how much people can understand about it.
Originality/value
This paper argues for greater involvement of people with learning disabilities in research processes.
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Often, researchers view silence as antagonistic to equity-aimed projects. Because verbal, written, and textually agentive communications are presumed to be the most valid…
Abstract
Purpose
Often, researchers view silence as antagonistic to equity-aimed projects. Because verbal, written, and textually agentive communications are presumed to be the most valid qualitative-research data, moments of silence are under-analyzed. Yet, we argue that silence holds meaning as data and that it is a valid, rich form of communication.
Design/methodology/approach
Through this reflective analysis of silence, we invite readers to reconceptualize silence in research from a critical disability-research perspective with emphasis on crip willfulness. We introduce silence as an interpretive, agentive and relational gesture.
Findings
We attend to silence as necessary in all research because it helps researchers excavate able-bodied expectations about communication in qualitative-data-collection practices.
Originality/value
We demonstrate that silences in research can be an interpretive, relational, and agentive gesture that can teach us about taken-for-granted assumptions about research practices. Revisiting our research encounters with this framing of silence informed by critical disability studies allows us to question how traditional social science research methods value some modalities of expression over others. Rather than viewing silence in research as moments when nothing happens, we show that silence indicates something happening and is valid data.
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Tom Bieling, Melike Şahinol, Robert Stock and Anna–Lena Wiechern
This contribution shows perspectives of experts from different disciplines and professional backgrounds in order to elaborate on maker approaches such as do-it-yourself…
Abstract
Purpose
This contribution shows perspectives of experts from different disciplines and professional backgrounds in order to elaborate on maker approaches such as do-it-yourself prosthetics and collaborative tools. As a result, aspects of open source practices related to medical and assistive technologies will be critically reflected upon. In addition, implications of heterogeneous interests, economic implications and everyday achievements of social material assemblages produced through participatory design research are discussed.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to address an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective on the relationships between body (differences) and technology, it is necessary to bring together studies from both Science and Technology Studies (STS) and crip technoscience as well as approaches from participatory design research and practice. This challenge was addressed by a roundtable organized as part of the third network meeting of the Dis/Ability and Digital Media Research Network on 16 September 2020.
Findings
Against the backdrop of “crip technoscience” DIY and collaborative open source practices are not only understood as valuable alternatives to standardized medical prosthetics and assistive devices. These bottom-up approaches which draw from the expert knowledge of disabled users (Hamraie and Fritsch, 2019) also facilitate devices that defy categories such as “prosthetic” or “medical aid” not only aesthetically but semantically, too.
Originality/value
The Network Dis/Abilities and Digital Media intends to integrate media and technology studies with disability studies on a theoretical level. This round table discussion delivers proof of how – on the practical level – technology and dis/ability need to be thought of as relational and co-constitutive (Mills and Sterne, 2017).
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Jerry H. Ratcliffe, Amber Perenzin and Evan T. Sorg
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the violence-reduction effects following an FBI-led gang takedown in South Central Los Angeles.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the violence-reduction effects following an FBI-led gang takedown in South Central Los Angeles.
Design/methodology/approach
The time series impact of the intervention was estimated using a Bayesian diffusion-regression state-space model designed to infer a causal effect of an intervention using data from a similar (non-targeted) gang area as a control.
Findings
A statistically significant 22 percent reduction in violent crime was observed, a reduction that lasted at least nine months after the interdiction.
Research limitations/implications
The research method does make assumptions about the equivalency of the control area, though statistical checks are employed to confirm the control area crime rate trended similarly to the target area prior to the intervention.
Practical implications
The paper demonstrates a minimum nine-month benefit to a gang takedown in the target area, suggesting that relatively long-term benefits from focused law enforcement activity are possible.
Social implications
Longer-term crime reduction beyond just the day of the intervention can aid communities struggling with high crime and rampant gang activity.
Originality/value
Few FBI-led gang task force interventions have been studied for their crime reduction benefit at the neighborhood level. This study adds to that limited literature. It also introduces a methodology that can incorporate crime rates from a control area into the analysis, and overcome some limitations imposed by ARIMA modeling.
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