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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.

The purpose of this paper is to validate a framework for spatial representation, aka the spatial representation framework (SRF), to define spaces and building information required by people with visual impairment as a foundation of indoor maps for indoor navigation systems.

The SRF was first created with seven main components by a review of the relevant literature and state-of-the-art technologies shown in the preliminary study. This research comprised of two tasks: investigating problems and behaviors while accessing spaces and buildings by visually impaired people (VIP) and validating the SRF where 45 participants were recruited (30 VIP and 15 experts).

The findings revealed a list of problems and challenges were used to validate and redefine the spatial representation, which was validated by both VIP and experts. The framework subsequently consisted of 11 components categorized into five layers, each layer of which is responsible for a different function.

This framework provides essential components required for building standard indoor maps as a foundation for indoor navigations systems for people with visual impairment.

This framework lays the foundation for a range of indoor-based applications by using this SRF to represent indoor spaces. Example applications include: indoor navigation by people with disabilities, robots and autonomous systems, security and surveillance, and context and spatial awareness.

This paper presents the validated spatial representation for indoor navigation by people with visual impairment with its details and description, methodology, results and findings of the validation of the SRF.

Lectures can be digitally recorded and replayed to provide multimedia revision material for students who attended the class and a substitute learning experience for students unable to attend. Deaf and hard of hearing people can find it difficult to follow speech through hearing alone or to take notes while they are lip‐reading or watching a sign‐language interpreter. Notetakers can only summarise what is being said while qualified sign language interpreters with a good understanding of the relevant higher education subject content are in very scarce supply. Synchronising the speech with text captions can ensure deaf students are not disadvantaged and assist all learners to search for relevant specific parts of the multimedia recording by means of the synchronised text. Real time stenography transcription is not normally available in UK higher education because of the shortage of stenographers wishing to work in universities. Captions are time consuming and expensive to create by hand and while Automatic Speech Recognition can be used to provide real time captioning directly from lecturers’ speech in classrooms it has proved difficult to obtain accuracy comparable to stenography. This paper describes the development of a system that enables editors to correct errors in the captions as they are created by Automatic Speech Recognition.

There is a need for more in‐depth exploration of the e‐learning experiences of disabled learners in higher education, taking into account the complex relationship between learners (skills, knowledge and beliefs), their assistive technologies and the e‐learning contexts in which learners are required to operate. Participatory methods appear to have great potential in enabling the voice of disabled learners to be a more central focus of e‐learning studies. This paper will describe and evaluate a two‐year research project called LExDis, which aims to use participatory methods to explore the e‐learning experiences of disabled learners in one higher education institution. The experience of conducting phase one of the LExDis project will be discussed with regards to three main challenges to using participatory methods: informed participation; valued participation; and empowered participation.

A number of participatory research methodologies can be used to assist with developing assistive technologies. These methods vary in the amount that users lead and contribute to the work. Selecting the correct method can be important to ensure the overall success of the project and the engagement of users. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors that can impact on the degree of user participation.

The paper considers whether criteria, that might influence assistive technology (AT) selection made during an assessment of need, review or purchasing process, could also be used to clarify the appropriate strategies for user involvement when developing assistive technologies. It outlines how this approach has been applied to two research and development projects which aimed to improve AT provision within niche markets.

The paper demonstrates that it is possible to apply a decision making process to selecting the best participatory research method, based on factors affecting AT need. It reports on the outcomes of the user participation in the two research and development projects and discusses how this design approach has been applied to a third project.

By examining a possible framework for identifying appropriate user-participation approaches, this paper will aid those designing research and development AT projects, whilst encouraging user participation within similar projects.

For Colombia, cocaine is a product that is sold for profit in the United States. Mainstream political economy, let alone the other social sciences, has little to say about the process of extraction of surplus value in the production and distribution of cocaine, in other words, how cocaine is exploited for profit. The paper argues that the conventional framework, which locates profits generated from the cocaine trade in an economic model of crime shields a much deeper reality than simply ‘money laundering’ as a ‘legal problem.’ The central argument is that the cocaine trade in general, and the cocaine economy in particular, are a vital aspect of U.S. imperialism in the Colombian economic system. The paper tackles a critical problem: the place of cocaine in the re-colonization of Colombia – defined as ‘narcocolonialism’ – and the implications of the cocaine trade generally for U.S. imperialism in this context. The paper evaluates selected literature on the Colombian cocaine trade and offers an alternative framework underpinned by a political economy analysis drawn from Marx and Lenin showing that cocaine functions as an ‘imperial commodity’ – a commodity for which there exists a lucrative market and profit-making opportunity. It is also a means of capital accumulation by what could be termed, Colombia's comprador ‘narcobourgeoisie;’ dependent on U.S. imperialism. It is hoped that by analyzing cocaine with a Marxist interpretation and political economy approach, then future developments in understanding drugs in Colombia's complex political economy may be anticipated.

The purpose of this paper is to link the fields of research on strategic decision (SD) making and integrated reporting (IR) and advances knowledge of the concept of integrated thinking by describing how financial information and non-financial environmental, social and governance (ESG) information are used in different phases of the strategic decision-making process (SDMP).

In total, 15 senior executives from twelve different industries were asked about the importance of different types of information within SDMPs. The data were analyzed by means of content analysis.

The authors derive a four-phase model and explicate the utilization of financial information and non-financial ESG information within each phase. The findings show that both types of information affect SDMPs, but the importance of each type differs among the phases.

This study offers practitioners a yardstick against which to compare how they use different types of information throughout the SDMP.

This paper provides a conceptual model of integrated thinking in SD making by connecting two separate fields of research. This connection will permit deeper study of the field of information and its implications for SD making. The present investigation shows that IR can promote integrated thinking in companies, as the broader range of information at hand allows companies to form a holistic picture of internal management questions and incorporate information that has not been previously prepared or associated with existing information.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association of managerial incentives and political costs with hospital financial distress, recovery or closure. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has stated that hospital closures are important for evaluating the distribution of cost, quality and access to healthcare throughout the US. Using Logistic regression, we demonstrate that hospital closure is associated with low occupancy, return on investment, asset turnover, and lack of affiliation with a multihospital system. It is also significantly associated with urban location, teaching programs, high Medicare and Medicaid patient populations, and high debt. Essential access nonprofit hospitals are less likely to close, while this does not affect governmental and for-profit hospitals. Our research hypotheses are supported by these results.

This paper highlights that extant project management (PM) bodies of knowledge have not fully addressed organisational transformation enabled by information systems projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine the transformation context in the PM disciplines. The authors argue that the execution-oriented PM bodies of knowledge are limited, as they place too much emphasis on the delivery outputs by the supplier rather than the achievement of beneficial outcomes by the project owner.

As a conceptual paper, this paper reviews extant PM bodies of knowledge, life cycle models, the context of organisational transformation and benefits realisation, and the distinction between a project owner’s and the project supplier’s capabilities.

A new PM knowledge framework is provided as an advanced research frame for future works by enhancing Peter Morris’ Management of Projects framework by employing the conceptual lens of Winch’s Three Domains of Project Organising model.

The advanced model emphasises the necessity of distinguishing a project owner’s and a supplier’s PM capability and knowledge to achieve successful IS-enabled organisational transformation. Through this effort to resolve the fragmentation and specialisation problems in PM disciplines, the model can be used as a theoretical groundwork for the advancement of PM research.