Estimating the impact of residents with disabilities on the evacuation in a high-rise building: A simulation study

In this paper, we study how seriously residents with disabilities affect the evacuation of other residents in a 24-story high-rise building environment through an agent-based simulation model. In particular, we analyze the trends of the evacuation times in two population scenarios, homogeneous (i.e., only residents without disabilities) and heterogeneous residents (i.e., residents with and without disabilities), while we vary the size of populations and the compositions of disability types of residents. According to our experimental results, residents with disabilities significantly delay the evacuation process by causing congestion and blocking phenomenon. Our experimental results also indicate that the differences in the evacuation time of the homogenous and the heterogeneous population scenarios become more significant as the population size increases because of serious congestion from the increased population size and blocking from the increased proportion of the handicapped. Finally, we present regression models and controlled evacuation strategies that help evacuation administrators ensure the safe evacuation of all the residents by controlling the number of residents and evacuate residents with disabilities efficiently.     

Developments in IT training for people with disabilities

This paper looks at three models of IT training for people with disabilities. These have been called the workshop, educational and systemic vocational rehabilitation models. A number of evaluations of facilities are reviewed, and good practice in each model is identified. The paper then goes on to discuss ways in which these aspects of good practice can be combined into a more comprehensive approach that caters for both IT training and work adjustment needs, is orientated towards real work, does not exclude provision of a service to those in greatest need, and offers help when people move from training into employment. The paper ends with a call for people from different backgrounds to continue to learn from each other, and argues that there is an urgent need for further research and development.     

Developments in IT training for people with disabilities

Abstract

This paper looks at three models of IT training for people with disabilities. These have been called the workshop, educational and systemic vocational rehabilitation models. A number of evaluations of facilities are reviewed, and good practice in each model is identified. The paper then goes on to discuss ways in which these aspects of good practice can be combined into a more comprehensive approach that caters for both IT training and work adjustment needs, is orientated towards real work, does not exclude provision of a service to those in greatest need, and offers help when people move from training into employment. The paper ends with a call for people from different backgrounds to continue to learn from each other, and argues that there is an urgent need for further research and development.     

Federal Web site accessibility for people with disabilities

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires organizations to provide physical access to people with disabilities. With the advent of the Web, federal legislation may extend into cyberspace. (The "Federal Support" sidebar highlights some relevant legislation.) How courts will apply ADA is still uncertain. Federal cases in which ADA has been applied to cyberspace are still under review at various court levels. On the state level, however, the New York State attorney general recently required Priceline and Ramada Inn to make their Web sites accessible and subject to independent accessibility audits. Other research has examined the accessibility of college and university, corporate, and retail Web sites relative to the ADA. The authors conducted a study on the accessibility of the Web sites of US government agencies and branches of the US government and their contractors, which, like university sites, are mandated to be accessible. They also attempt to determine the types of accessibility barriers that occur most frequently on these sites. Because the study is preliminary, findings are basic estimates of accessibility; you should not construe them as statistically representative of all sites offered. However, our findings on accessibility barriers can serve as a guideline to Web designers seeking to create sites that effectively communicate their contents to people with disabilities.     

An autonomous vehicle for people with motor disabilities

The authors describe the creation of the VAHM prototype, including the hardware and software functionalities and other aspects of this “smart” wheelchair     

Head mouse control system for people with disabilities

In this paper, a human–machine interface for disabled people with spinal cord injuries is proposed. The designed human–machine interface is an assistive system that uses head movements and blinking for mouse control. In the proposed system, by moving one's head, the user moves the mouse pointer to the required coordinates and then blinks to send commands. The considered head mouse control is based on image processing including facial recognition, in particular, the recognition of the eyes, mouth, and nose. The proposed recognition system is based on the convolutional neural network, which uses the low-quality images that are captured by a computer's camera. The convolutional neural network (CNN) includes convolutional layers, a pooling layer, and a fully connected network. The CNN transforms the head movements to the actual coordinates of the mouse. The designed system allows people with disabilities to control a mouse pointer with head movements and to control mouse buttons with blinks. The results of the experiments demonstrate that this system is robust and accurate. This invention allows people with disabilities to freely control mouse cursors and mouse buttons without wearing any equipment.     

Accessible presentation of information for people with visual disabilities

Personal computers, palm top computers, media players and cell phones provide instant access to information from around the world. There are a wide variety of options available to make that information available to people with visual disabilities, so many that choosing one for use in any given context can often feel daunting to someone new to the field of accessibility. This paper reviews tools and techniques for the presentation of textual, graphic, mathematic and web documents through audio and haptic modalities to people with visual disabilities.     

Usability evaluation of navigation tasks by people with intellectual disabilities: a Google and SAPO comparative study regarding different interaction modalities

Universal Access in the Information Society - This paper presents a case study regarding the usability evaluation of navigation tasks by people with intellectual disabilities. The aim was to...     

Design of evacuation strategies with crowd density feedback

Feature coding is one of the most important procedures in the bag-of-features model for image classification. In this paper, we propose a novel feature coding method called nonnegative correlation coding. In order to obtain a discriminative image representation, our method employs two correlations: the correlation between features and visual words, and the correlation between the obtained codes. The first correlation reflects the locality of codes, i.e., the visual words close to the local feature are activated more easily than the ones distant. The second correlation characterizes the similarity of codes, and it means that similar local features are likely to have similar codes. Both correlations are modeled under the nonnegative constraint. Based on the Nesterov’s gradient projection algorithm, we develop an effective numerical solver to optimize the nonnegative correlation coding problem with guaranteed quadratic convergence. Comprehensive experimental results on publicly available datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.     

Event-driven modeling of elevator assisted evacuation in ultra high-rise buildings

In the past few decades, numerous ultra high-rise buildings have been erected in the metropolitan areas of many cities around the world. For the related building designers, building occupants and the governments, fire safety problem is certainly a major concern, especially after the collapse of World Trade Center in the 9/11 event. That disaster makes people reconsider ultra high-rise building evacuation strategies. Of the current strategies, using elevators in ultra high-rise buildings to assist evacuation seems to be promising in improving evacuation efficiency. To quantitatively evaluate elevator assisted evacuation process, an event-driven agent-based modeling approach is proposed in the present paper. This modeling approach could capture not only the movement characteristics of stair-using occupants but also the detailed elevator motion features. The combined effects of occupants’ and elevators’ parameters on the evacuation efficiency have been investigated. Results indicated that the model is helpful to reveal the dynamics of elevator assisted evacuation, and sometime, using elevators to move all occupants to ground safety point may not be an optimal solution.     

Vocational training in the use of new technologies for people with disabilities

Following a brief review of the literature, details are given of an in-depth evaluation of a computer training centre called Microjob. This facility set out to integrate computer training, vocational guidance, functional assessment, placement in employment and post-placement support into a single service delivery package. In this paper the facility's outcome record is examined in relation to targets set for it, consideration is given to the special needs of home-based trainees, and specific difficulties faced by the project (including an inefficient management structure, inadequate staff training and a poor level of awareness of clients' special needs) are discussed.     

A comparative study of different local search application strategies in hybrid metaheuristics

This paper presents results of a comparative study with the objective to identify the most effective and efficient way of applying a local search method embedded in a hybrid algorithm. The hybrid metaheuristic employed in this study is called “DE–HS–HJ” because it is comprised of two cooperative metaheusitic algorithms, i.e., differential evolution (DE) and harmony search (HS), and one local search (LS) method, i.e., Hooke and Jeeves (HJ) direct search. Eighteen different ways of using HJ local search were implemented and all of them were evaluated with 19 problems, in terms of six performance indices, covering both accuracy and efficiency. Statistic analyses were conducted accordingly to determine the significance in performance differences. The test results show that overall the best three LS application strategies are applying local search to every generated solution with a specified probability and also to each newly updated solution (NUS + ESP), applying local search to every generated solution with a specified probability (ESP), and applying local search to every generated solution with probability and also to the updated current global best solution (EUGbest + ESP). ESP is found to be the best local search application strategy in terms of success rate. Integrating it with NUS further improve the overall performance. EUGbest + ESP is the most efficient and it is also able to achieve high level of accuracy (the fourth place in terms of success rate with an average above 0.9).     

An overview of the Internet of Things for people with disabilities

Currently, over a billion people including children (or about 15% of the world's population) are estimated to be living with disability. The lack of support services can make handicapped people overly dependent on their families, which prevents them from being economically active and socially included. The Internet of Things can offer people with disabilities the assistance and support they need to achieve a good quality of life and allows them to participate in the social and economic life. In this paper, an overview of the Internet of Things for people with disabilities is provided. For this purpose, the proposed architecture of the Internet of Things is introduced. Different application scenarios are considered in order to illustrate the interaction of the components of the Internet of Things. Critical challenges have been identified and addressed.     

Boccia game simulator: Serious game adapted for people with disabilities

Integration in the world of sport is one way for individuals with disabilities or motor disorders to feel more socially integrated, independent, and confident. Boccia is a Paralympic sport, which is increasingly getting more attention around the world. These facts have contributed to the objectives of this work. Including it in the serious games category enables to develop and rehabilitate the cognitive capabilities. The main focus was BC3 classification athletes (users with limited motor characteristics that require the use of an assistive device—a ramp, in this case). This paper describes a realistic Boccia game simulator adapted for people with disabilities that integrates a set of features that includes real physics and social features. These features can be used to enhance the interest of nonpractitioners of the sport and to improve the training conditions. The official Boccia regulation was added to the design of the simulator. The usability and approximation to the reality of the simulator were tested and validated based on the tests performed and data collected via a survey of users with no motor or psychological disorders. Realism and usability rating was almost excellent, and good results were achieved at the assessment of the game experience.     

In-car usage-based insurance feedback strategies. A comparative driving simulator study

Usage-Based Insurances (UBI) enable policyholders to actively reduce the impact of vehicle insurance costs by adopting a safer and more eco-friendly driving style. UBI is especially relevant for younger drivers, who are a high-risk population. The effectiveness of UBI should be enhanced by providing in-car feedback optimised for individual drivers. Thirty young novice drivers were therefore invited to complete six experimental drives with an in-car interface that provided real-time information on rewards gained, their driving behaviour and the speed limit. Reward size was either displayed directly in euro, indirectly as a relatively large amount of credits, or as a percentage of the maximum available bonus. Also, interfaces were investigated that provided partial information to reduce the potential for driver distraction. Compared to a control no-UBI condition, behaviour improved similarly across interfaces, suggesting that interface personalisation after an initial familiarisation period could be feasible without compromising feedback effectiveness.

Practitioner Summary: User experiences and effects on driving behaviour of six in-car interfaces were compared. The interface provided information on driving behaviour and rewards in a UBI setting. Results suggest that some personalisation of interfaces may be an option after an initial familiarisation period as driving behaviour improved similarly across interfaces.     

面向大型场馆疏散的改进多蚁群算法

针对大型场馆应急疏散的路径优化问题,提出了一种基于遗传算法交叉变异算子的多蚁群算法.该算法通过引入多蚁群信息素组的概念,将遗传算法交叉和变异的思想应用到信息素更新模型中,解决了传统蚁群算法易陷入局部最优的问题.最后,将此模型应用在武汉体育馆及其周边路网集成环境中.实验结果表明,该算法能够为大型场馆中大规模人群提供一个有效可行的疏散方案.