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The Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind (RNZFB) currently lends talking books on audio cassette to blind and vision impaired New Zealanders. RNZFB belongs to the international consortium which has developed the DAISY digital talking book standard. Whereas analogue talking books are linear, DAISY books are structured so that the reader can navigate around the text with the facility of a sighted person looking through a printed document. DAISY books can also be multimedia productions that support more than one format. In progressing its use of digital reading technology, RNZFB will enhance the reading experience, decide how best to deliver book files, and form local and international partnerships to increase the range of reading material available to its members. The reading solutions adopted by RNZFB could become a model for the wider community of print disabled people.

New Zealand's population is aging; government agencies realise the impact of this and are factoring it into their planning for the future. There is a perception that “Seniors” are reluctant to change, but a recent Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind (RNZFB) pilot project to test an internet‐connected Digital Talking Book Player with 40 borrowers, most of whom were in their 70s and 80s, has shown the opposite. The purpose of the trial was not only to test an online talking book delivery system but also to ascertain if the RNZFB seniors, some of whom have little or no experience with computers, could cope with an internet capable Digital Talking Book Player. The purpose of this paper is to describe the RNZFB trial.

In total, 39 RNZFB library members between the ages of 60 and 93, most in their 70s and 80s and one 40 year old were selected to participate in a Digital Talking Book Trial. Each of the trialists were loaned a Digital Talking Book Player for approximately four weeks and were asked to read two books and two magazines per week.

The outcome of the trial was remarkable. The trial showed seniors do have a positive attitude to change and are not afraid of technology.

The trial showed that if the reward is greater independence and a better service, and seniors are given appropriate support they will embrace new technology and make it work for them. By moving ahead and using new innovative technology the library service will be able to provide a greater variety of titles and better access to information and recreational reading.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between brand attachment and consumers’ positive and negative behaviours. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating effects of attachment styles on these relationships.

The study is based on a survey of 432 respondents, and the data are analysed using the structural equation modelling approach.

This study empirically supports that brand attachment and attachment styles (i.e. anxiety attachment and avoidance attachment) are distinct. Brand attachment influences consumers’ not only positive behaviour (i.e. brand loyalty) but also negative behaviours, such as trash-talking, schadenfreude and anti-brand actions. The findings of the study suggest that only avoidance attachment style moderates the relationships between brand attachment and these consumer behaviours. The link between brand attachment and brand loyalty is attenuated for high-attachment-avoidance consumers. In contrast, the links between brand attachment and trash-talking, schadenfreude and anti-brand actions are strengthened.

This study assists marketing managers in understanding that a strong brand attachment may result in negative behaviours that can harm a company’s brand image. Thus, building a strong relationship with consumers will not always be beneficial. Companies should be aware of the consequences of building relationships with consumers who have a high level of attachment anxiety and/or avoidance.

This paper highlights that brand attachment not only influences brand loyalty behaviour but also three negative behaviours: trash-talking, schadenfreude and anti-brand actions. Moreover, the links between brand attachment and negative behaviours are strengthened when consumers have a high level of attachment avoidance.

The purpose of the paper is to show how professional tools trigger workplace learning. The daily mundane work of Swedish police officers has been studied to investigate how the use of police tools triggers learning through discussions in police practice.

Data were collected through a field study consisting of extensive observations and interviews. The interviews mainly took place in the actual practice of the officers. Situated learning and communities of practice served as an analytical lens.

The study revealed how the use of specific police tools resulted in conversations among the officers. Theses conversations are claimed to be vital parts of the community, and thus the learning of the community of police practice. The paper shows how tools make the ways of working, i.e. police practice, available for discussion and collective reflection.

The paper is an in‐depth investigation of a relatively closed sector of society. The paper can inspire researchers to embark on similar studies of other practices. The paper provides novel ways of thinking about how learning takes place in everyday work, not planned and organized by management, but rather as a necessity driven by new tools, and how tools are involved in work.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of developing an accessible communication resource which enables people with a learning disability to reflect on their lives and raise issues of concern.

The process of making the resource and the facets that contribute to making it accessible are explored, e.g. design specification, the relationship between pictures and meaning, the order in which concepts are presented. The paper goes on to describe how the resource is put into practice using the format of a “Talking Mat”.® Talking Mats is a communication framework which has a strong evidence base that shows it improves the quality and quantity of information a person with a learning disability gives in a conversation. It provides practitioners with a consistent framework to support implementation. The impact of using the resource is explored through feedback from practitioners trained to use it and the stories that resulted.

A well-constructed resource can support people with a learning disability to express their views on what matters to them at a specific time and raise concerns they may have. The individual views that have emerged from people are varied. This resource enabled them to be genuinely included in planning the steps required to bring about positive change in their lives.

There is much emphasis on the development of accessible resources in the field of learning disability but little on the actual development process and the context of how resources are introduced. This paper aims to contribute to this knowledge base.

This paper aims to detail a training program that helped to create a shift in culture, change behavior and promote a new style of leadership at Co‐operative Financial Services (CFS) call center.

The paper describes the background to the training program, the way in which it was designed and delivered, and the results it has achieved. Also examines how the program was branded within CFS.

The paper demonstrates that the program, named Talking Positive and designed in collaboration with learning specialist Academee, combines practical sessions, group discussion, question‐and‐answer sessions and ongoing action planning. There is also a separate a learning program to provide team managers with the skills and confidence to support call advisers with coaching.

The paper reveals that a benchmarking exercise showed CFS customer‐service rankings to have improved significantly since the introduction of Talking Positive.

The paper highlights how each participant has devised and signed an individual pledge – something he or she has vowed to achieve – and these are pinned up throughout the contact center.

The authors are in the process of exploring an information support robot to support daily activities of people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia. The purpose of this paper is to reveal how the robot should talk to an older woman with dementia to make her perform daily activities.

The robot asked to the participant to do some daily activities; Task A, taking medicine; Task B, measuring blood pressure; and Task C, cleaning up the room in three different ways for each task. In the talking pattern 1 (TP1), the robot simply informed what the tasks were. The talking patterns 2 and 3 (TP2 and TP3) were separated according to the process of activities in two and three steps, respectively. The participant was required to answer “Yes” if she understood what the robot talked to her, and perform the tasks.

The participant was not able to prepare water in the Task A when the robot spoke the TP1 (performance rate (PR) was 71.4 per cent). However, she could perfectly take medicine in the case when the robot spoke the processes of the task by the TP3 (PR was 100.0 per cent). The similar tendencies were observed in the Tasks B and C.

Multicenter studies would be required to apply these findings to a larger population.

The authors confirmed that it might be important to determine how the robot talked to people with dementia to properly facilitate their daily activities.

This study aims to introduce the concept of communities of social media practice where more experienced users provide guidance to female novice users, enacting a form of legitimate peripheral participation to “onboard” newcomers.

Through surveys with 968 early adolescents (average age was 13), the authors quantitatively explored sources and types of guidance for young social media users, popularity of conversation themes related to this guidance and how these conversations are associated with positive social media engagement. The authors qualitatively documented a case study of how a summer workshop of 17 students promotes positive social media use through a community of practice.

Although early adolescent girls reported that they more frequently talked to their parents about a wider range of social media topics, same-age peers and younger family members (e.g., siblings, cousins) were also frequent sources. Surprisingly, the authors also found that the source most strongly associated with positive social media use was the peer group. This case study of an intentional community of practice demonstrated how peers go from “peripheral” to “centered” in socializing each other for more positive social media use.

Unlike most prior scholarship on mediating social technology use, this study focuses on a critical developmental period (e.g. early adolescents), sources of guidance other than exclusively parents, explore the specific conversation topics that offer guidance and document an informal community of practice for girls that provides the training ground for peers and adult facilitators to codesign more positive social media spaces.

As hospitals are now being designed with an increasing number of single rooms or cubicles, the individual preference of patients with respect to social contact is of great interest. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the experience of patients in an outpatient infusion center.

A total of 29 semi-structured interviews were conducted, transcribed and analyzed by using direct content analysis.

Findings showed that patients perceived a lack of acoustic privacy and therefore tried to emotionally isolate themselves or withheld information from staff. In addition, patients complained about the sounds of infusion pumps, but they were neutral about the interior features. Patients who preferred non-talking desired enclosed private rooms and perceived negative distraction because of spatial crowding. In contrast, patients who preferred talking, or had no preference, desired shared rooms and perceived positive distraction because of spatial crowding.

In conclusion, results showed a relation between physical aspects (i.e. physical enclosure) and the social environment.

The findings allow facility managers to better understand the patients’ experiences in an outpatient infusion facility and to make better-informed decisions. Patients with different preferences desired different physical aspects. Therefore, nursing staff of outpatient infusion centers should assess the preferences of patients. Moreover, architects should integrate different types of treatment places (i.e. enclosed private rooms and shared rooms) in new outpatient infusion centers to fulfill different preferences and patients should have the opportunity to discuss issues in private with nursing staff.

This study emphasizes the importance of a mix of treatment rooms, while new hospital designs mainly include single rooms or cubicles.