Search results

This study aims to examine Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Open Journal Systems (OJS) for its overall web accessibility and compliance with the Federal Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility and Compliance Act, also known as Section 508.

Twenty-one individual web pages in the CSUN test instance of PKP’s OJS version 2.4.0 used in three back-end journal development user roles were examined using three web-accessibility tools (WAVE, Fangs, Functional Accessibility Evaluator). Errors in accessibility were then logged and mapped to specific Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) criteria.

In all, 202 accessibility errors were reported across the 21 OJS pages selected for testing. Because of this, the OJS cannot be efficiently utilized by assistive technologies and therefore does not pass the minimal level of acceptability as described in the WCAG 2.0. However, the authors found that the types of errors reported in this study could be simply and effectively remedied.

Further studies will need to corroborate, on a larger scale, the problems of accessibility found in the specific pages. Only three user roles were examined; other roles will need to be analyzed for their own problems with accessibility. Finally, although specific errors were noted, most can be easily fixed.

There is an important need for accessible software design. In the case of CSUN, one of the campus partners will be better served by improving the web accessibility of the authors’ online open access journals.

Although many studies and analyses of Section 508 compliance of front-facing web resources have been conducted, very few appear to address the back-end of such tools. This is the first to examine what problems in accessibility journal users with disabilities might encounter as OJS system administrators, journal managers or journal editors.

The purpose of this paper is to study major man‐made system disasters and to suggest a solution for filling the noted gaps in control systems interfaces and to render those vital considerations for the next‐generation disaster management control systems.

This research analyzes the nature of large‐scale disasters and observes that most man‐made system disasters are composed of many related events that interact with one another.

The findings show evidence of a common path to catastrophe. These functional failures resulted from the information gaps that eventually contribute to the development of a tragedy. Because of the intricate interconnections among related events of a developed calamity, an integrated approach to man‐made disaster detection and prevention as well as emergency management is required.

Conducting an analysis of the typical contingency control structures, the authors suggest that disaster or emergency managers adopt a pessimistic and quasi‐intelligent orientation to monitor and control critical systems.

This research presents a generic threat‐driven disaster management control system design with advanced model bases and decision support technologies to enhance conventional disaster management control systems and to supplement management responses so that the sphere and magnitude of damage can be minimized.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an expert system capable of assessing risk associated with manual lifting in construction tasks and proffer some first aid advices which are comparable with those obtainable from human experts.

The expert system, musculoskeletal disorders – risk evaluation expert system (MSDs-REES), used Microsoft.Net C# programming language to write the algorithm of the fuzzy inference system with variables load, posture and frequency of lift as inputs and risk of low back pain as the output. The algorithm of the inference engine applied sets of rules to generate the output variable in crisp value.

The result of validation, between the human experts’ calculated risk values and MSDs-REES-predicted risk values, indicated a correlation coefficient of 0.87. Between the predicted risk values generated using MSDs-REES and the existing package (MATLAB version 7.8), there was a strong positive relationship statistically with correlation coefficient of 0.97.

The study provided a very simple expert system which has the ability to provide some medical-related injury prevention advice and first aid information for injury management, giving it a unique attribute over the existing applications.

The purpose of the paper was to know and evaluate consumption, preferences and the knowledge of labelling legislation about wild and farmed seafood products.

A sample survey on Sicilian families was conducted through a direct interviews between October 2015 and October 2016 to study the attitudes of Sicilian consumers towards wild and farmed fish and seafood products. A stratified two-stage sampling design was chosen with variable probability of inclusion of the units of first stage and 1,700 subjects were interviewed.

The results obtained showed that the 69.4% of respondent ate fresh fish at least once a week and the 86% of respondents consumed aquaculture products at least once a month. Also, the 77.3% of respondents did not know the current legislation on the labelling. Multiple correspondence analysis allowed to identified three profiles of Sicilian families and binary logit model was used to examine the factors that influenced different frequency of fresh fish consumption in general and farmed seafood products in particular.

Extending the research throughout the Italian territory would have allowed further comparisons at the national level.

The research provides useful information on Sicilian consumers that could be used by policymakers and by marketing communications company.

This research, on a restricted group of European consumers (Sicilian), characterised by living in an island, reinforce the knowledge regarding seafood consumers.

This study used a probabilistic sampling design and a face-to-face questionnaire which produce results more robust in compare to surveys used more frequently such as non-probabilistic sampling design.