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This study aims to examine Braille usage among consumers with visual impairments, investigating motivations and addressing inherent challenges.

Drawing insights from 16 semistructured interviews with individuals experiencing blindness, this study reveals nuanced aspects of Braille utilization.

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.

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.

The education of deaf and hard of hearing (d/DHH) students is largely dependent on the preferred mode of communication. Historically, the mode of communication for d/DHH students was determined by society rather than by students and families. This resulted in divisiveness between the Deaf culture and proponents of oral communication. The adoption of IDEA allowed family participation in the decision-making process. Advances in technology increased student access to sound, resulting in more educational placement options. Despite the positive changes, the complex nature of hearing loss and the wide variety in cultural considerations have made it difficult to determine the best approach to deaf education. Thus, educators and providers are left in a conundrum of which version of “traditional” deaf education is best for students.

This chapter sought to answer the following questions: (a) what does special education means for students with intellectual disability?, (b) what is being done, and (c) how do we maintain tradition? The answers, while complicated, suggest special education for students with intellectual disability historically and currently involves attention to what, how, and where, with the how being the key elements of special education for students with intellectual disability. This chapter discussed the what, how, and where for students with intellectual disability in a historical and current framework while also providing evidence-based practices for students with intellectual disability to implement to maintain the tradition of high-quality services.

It has become increasingly apparent that one's perception of issues depends largely on his or her personal history. Human beings, professionals, and stakeholders vary in their perspectives, strategies, and solutions. Rather than arbitrarily selecting issues or seeking consensus among interdisciplinary but disparate groups, it is critical to examine the broader array of values and issues that impact learners with exceptionalities and the future of special education. In addition, it is important to conceptualize effective techniques to reverse traditional problems or difficulties while considering the “cycles” of change in general and special education. These cycles are based on the view that educational perspectives have their time since they come and go. When they are innovative, they become the status quo and become finally obsolete as the next group of methods, beliefs, and educational initiatives takes hold. In special education, we have fundamental values that must be respected and followed to deliver services to learners with exceptionalities. These values are sometimes not valued by ill prepared and unprepared professionals, especially since good professionals believe in change. This chapter focuses on how these values can be respected to protect and advance special education and education as a whole.

This paper illuminates our journey as accounting educators by exploring accounting as a technical, social and moral practice towards decolonising ourselves. It lays the foundations for decolonising the higher education curriculum and the consequences for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This paper focuses on the potential to foster a space for praxis by adopting dialogism-in-action to understand our transformative learning through Jindaola [pronounced Jinda-o-la], a university-based Aboriginal knowledge program. A dialogic pedagogy provided the opportunity to create a meaningful space between us as academics, the Aboriginal Knowledge holder and mentor, the other groups in Jindaola and, ultimately, our accounting students. Since Jindaola privileged ‘our way’ as the pedagogical learning process, we adopt autoethnography to share and reflect on our experiences. Making creative artefacts formed the basis for building relationships, reciprocity and respect and represents our shared journey and collective account.

We reveal our journey of “holding to account” by analysing five aspects of our lives as critical accounting academics – the overarching conceptual framework, teaching, research, governance and our physical landscape. In doing so, we found that Aboriginal perspectives provide a radical positioning to the colonial legacies of accounting practice.

Our journey through Jindaola contemplates how connecting with Country and engaging with Aboriginal ways of knowing can assist educators in meaningfully addressing the SDGs. While not providing a panacea or prescription for what to do, we use ‘our way’ as a story of our commitment to transformative change.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to identify various factors that may influence the adoption of online education by students in higher education institutions (HEIs) and contribute to the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) post-COVID-19.

Need for the Study: The study addresses the need to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, as emphasised by SDG4. It focuses on lifelong learning opportunities and aims to understand the impact of online education on students in HEIs. By identifying the factors that influence adoption, the study aims to contribute to the development of effective strategies for promoting online education.

Methodology: The study utilises a framework incorporating the use of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software. The framework allows for the analysis of the collected data’s reliability, validity and adequacy.

Findings: The study’s findings indicate that providing students with affordable online higher education can facilitate skill enhancement and create job opportunities. These findings highlight the potential of online education in contributing to the achievement of SDGs, particularly SDG4.

Practical Implications: The practical implications of the study suggest that promoting affordable online higher Education can have a positive impact on students, enabling them to acquire new skills and access job opportunities. By embracing online education, institutions can contribute to the advancement of SDGs and ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

This paper aims to concentrate on recent innovations in flexible wearable sensor technology tailored for monitoring vital signals within the contexts of wearable sensors and systems developed specifically for monitoring health and fitness metrics.

In recent decades, wearable sensors for monitoring vital signals in sports and health have advanced greatly. Vital signals include electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, electromyography, inertial data, body motions, cardiac rate and bodily fluids like blood and sweating, making them a good choice for sensing devices.

This report reviewed reputable journal articles on wearable sensors for vital signal monitoring, focusing on multimode and integrated multi-dimensional capabilities like structure, accuracy and nature of the devices, which may offer a more versatile and comprehensive solution.

The paper provides essential information on the present obstacles and challenges in this domain and provide a glimpse into the future directions of wearable sensors for the detection of these crucial signals. Importantly, it is evident that the integration of modern fabricating techniques, stretchable electronic devices, the Internet of Things and the application of artificial intelligence algorithms has significantly improved the capacity to efficiently monitor and leverage these signals for human health monitoring, including disease prediction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reintegration process of Wounded, Injured or Sick Employees (WISE) of the Dutch Military Armed Forces.

The research method is an exploratory, qualitative case study. A purposive sampling was drawn, including 10 WISE, and 6 reintegration stakeholders. A total of 16 interviews were conducted to explore the individual, organisational and socio-environmental factors that influence reintegration of WISE.

Findings show the importance of involvement and participation of members of the social environment in the reintegration process. Findings show that the complexity of the plethora of WISEs' injuries and disabilities requires a more person-centric reintegration approach with personalized-customized provisions, rather than a policy-driven approach to the reintegration, in order to enhance the reintegration experience and to arrive at beneficial individual and organisational reintegration outcomes.

This cross-sectional study on a limited sample of WISE and reintegration stakeholders does not allow for making inferences about the long-term effects of the reintegration process on reintegration outcomes of the wider population of WISE. Future longitudinal research, encompassing a larger sample, could examine the long-term career, organisational and societal implications of reintegration of WISE within and outside the Military Armed Forces.

This paper presents a “Wounded Warrior Workplace Reintegration Program”, aimed at deriving beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders involved in the reintegration trajectory.

This paper contributes to the literature by presenting a Model of Occupational Reintegration of WISE that considers the factors at an individual, social-environmental, and institutional level as determinants of successful reintegration.

This paper aims to provide a historical overview of AA, its purpose and benefits, the legal rationale for the SCOTUS ruling and what it means for colleges and the workplace regarding equitable opportunities for minority groups (which include women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other low-income populations), as they aim for the “American dream”.

SCOTUS decision and rationale, along with literature.

The race-based affirmative action (AA) precedent was recently overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in the case of Students for Fair Admission (SFFA), Inc. vs President and Fellows of Harvard College/University of North Carolina. SCOTUS ruled that race cannot be a specific basis for college admission. In other words, public and private colleges and universities will no longer be able to consider “race” as a factor in deciding which qualified applicants should be admitted to enhance the diversity of their student body.

This is an original analysis.

Practitioners and academics are starting to recognize the benefits of green IT/IS practices. Despite these benefits, this study aims to know more regarding the factors that would drive organizations to use green IT/IS practices within their IT function and across the enterprise. To further understanding in this area, this study applies a strategic cognition framework of firm responsiveness and institutional theory to determine the extent to which an organization uses green IT/IS practices in response to stakeholder concerns. This study investigates the extent to which two organizational logics – expressive and instrumental – and three institutional pressures – coercive, mimetic and normative – jointly affect an organization's use of both green IT practices and green IS practices.

This study tested the hypotheses with survey data collected from 306 organizations. Structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

Findings support four joint effects: (1) individualistic identity orientation and coercive pressure positively affect green IT practices; (2) collectivistic identity orientation and normative pressure positively influence green IS practices; (3) cost reduction orientation and mimetic pressure positively affect green IT practices; and (4) revenue expansion orientation and normative pressure positively influence green IS practices.

This study contributes to the literature by providing evidence for joint drivers of green IT and green IS practices. Green IT and IS practices represent organizations' different levels of commitment to environmental sustainability and responsiveness to stakeholders (i.e. green IT/IS practices). Organizations of different expressive and instrumental orientations are attuned to institutional pressures to various degrees, which leads to different green IT/IS practices.