Hasil untuk "Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities"

Monica Pinilla-Roncancio, María Antonella Pereira

People with disabilities worldwide encounter barriers to accessing care and support systems. Existing care frameworks often focus on supporting caregivers, operating under the assumption that people with disabilities are largely dependant. However, under a human rights framework it is fundamental to recognise the role that people play, both providing and receiving care, and if care needs are adequately met. This study collects and analyses data from 1001 individuals with disabilities in Bogotá, Colombia, to assess the extent of unsatisfied care needs among this group. We identified individual and household characteristics that are associated with unsatisfied care needs using a multinomial probit and a probit model. The result revealed that 58.7% of participants received an insufficient amount of care, and 7.6% did not receive care at all despite needing it. In total, 66.3% of respondents had unsatisfied care needs. Adults with disabilities experiencing unsatisfied care needs were more likely to be older, male, experiencing functional limitations in daily activities, unemployed, or having lower educational attainment. Notably, 35.7% of respondents also provided care to household members—including children, older adults, individuals with disabilities, and those who were ill or injured. Findings highlight the need for Bogotá’s care system to recognise people with disabilities as both care recipients and caregivers, and to tailor support mechanisms to meet their diverse needs.

Jonathan Leuenberger, Anamika Rajendran, Augusto Penzo Jara et al.

People experiencing migration endure many transitions across borders, technologies, and social systems. While HCI research often emphasizes this community's adoption of technology, less attention has been paid to practices of technological non-use. This paper investigates how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are intentionally and unintentionally avoided, withheld, or not used during migration. Drawing on interviews with 32 people experiencing migration in the border city of El Paso, Texas, USA between February and May 2025, we identify a range of non-use experiences, including device, informational, and protective non-use. We extend the concept of non-use by situating it within the three phases of transitions: understanding, negotiating, and resolving. We show how ICT non-use shifts with time, risk, and institutional demands. Our analysis demonstrates that non-use functions both as a protective strategy and as a response to systemic exclusion, and concludes with design principles that anticipate non-use as both intentional and unintentional design conditions rather than as punitive failure.

Vahid Rashedi, Mostafa Yazdani, Vahidreza Borhaninejad

Objectives: The theory of gerotranscendence offers a framework for understanding the profound psychological shift that often accompanies aging, characterized by a movement away from materialistic and pragmatic worldviews towards a more cosmic, transcendent perspective. This transition is characterized by shifts in values, attitudes, and behaviors, emphasizing spiritual fulfillment, introspection, and deeper acceptance of life’s mysteries. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between gerotranscendence and life satisfaction among Iranian older adults, offering insights into the potential role of this perspective in promoting well-being in later life.  Methods: This study employed a population-based, cross-sectional analytical-descriptive design to investigate key psychosocial variables among older adults. A total of 183 individuals aged >60 years and residing in Kerman City, Iran, were recruited through cluster sampling to ensure representative coverage across the region. Data collection involved the administration of two psychometrically validated instruments, the gerotranscendence scale (GS-S) and the life satisfaction index-Z (LSIZ), along with a structured socio-demographic questionnaire to capture participants’ background characteristics. Results: Of the participants, 127(69.4%) were married, and 99(54.1%) were female, with a mean age of 66.7±7.14. The findings indicate a statistically significant positive correlation between overall gerotranscendence scores and life satisfaction (P<0.01, r=0.357), with each dimension of gerotranscendence contributing uniquely to this association. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that gerotranscendence explained 20.3% of the variance in life satisfaction scores, underscoring its potential as a predictor of well-being in older adults.  Discussion: This study underscores the significance of cultivating a gerotranscendent perspective to enhance life satisfaction among older adults. Policymakers and practitioners should consider integrating gerotranscendence principles into health promotion initiatives, intervention programs, and care planning strategies for older adults. Such an approach may not only enhance individual well-being but also support holistic and culturally sensitive aging policies.

Maroesjka Van Nieuwenhuijzen, Sanna Koet, Marcia Lever

Support of parents with intellectual disabilities should be long-term and start as early as possible. They, however, often come only into view late. The aim of the present study was to examine the barriers and facilitators in reaching and supporting parents with intellectual disabilities and young children in the Netherlands. Fourteen professionals, three volunteers, and three mothers with intellectual disabilities participated in four focus groups. Results revealed four themes: (1) improve professional development, (2) mutual professional/parent distrust, (3) strengthen support network systems, and (4) improve child welfare system responses. Professionals and policymakers lack knowledge of parents with intellectual disabilities and skills to build trust and support them adequately. Professional development is warranted. The informal network and involvement of fathers is limited and, thus, could be increased. Finally, the way the system is organized impedes adequate support. Long-term involvement and, thus, a different use of resources is needed. Reaching parents with intellectual disabilities as early as possible is important but challenging due to multiple interacting factors. Integral actions at multiple levels are essential to improve preventive care for these parents.

Mohamed A. Abd Elgawad, Atef F. Hashem, Ahmed W. Shawki

People with disabilities worldwide suffer from limited access to healthcare services, which may increase the severity of disability or cause other disabilities. This study sheds light on the main reasons for the occurrence of disability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), in addition to studying data on the availability of health services for people with disabilities. This was done by analyzing the availability of hospitals to provide the service, in addition to studying the data on obtaining various services over time and administrative regions. Based on data available on the Ministry of Health (MOH) website and the 2023 Disability Survey issued by the General Authority for Statistics, the adequacy of service availability was assessed in relation to disability rates in each region. The study followed the descriptive analytical approach by applying several statistical tests, where spatial analysis of health services was used in addition to studying the differences in the number of beneficiaries of those services using the Kruskal–Wallis test, in addition to Spearman’s correlation analysis to study the relationship between the number of hospitals and disability rates in each region. The analysis showed that 39.2% of people with disabilities have a disease as the cause of their disability. It also revealed a disparity in the distribution of health services in the Kingdom, as well as regional disparities in their availability, with health service coverage higher in areas such as Riyadh and Makkah compared to areas such as Al-Baha and Najran. It also revealed statistically significant differences ( P value < 0.05) in the use of some services, such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and prosthetics. Furthermore, the number of beneficiaries of health services increased by 70% between 2020 and 2023, while there were no significant differences in services such as speech and swallowing therapy. This indicates the need for a set of policies and initiatives to increase access and ensure fair distribution and efficiency of health services.

Zihan Gao, Justin Cranshaw, Jacob Thebault-Spieker

As digital platforms increasingly mediate interactions tied to place, ensuring genuine local participation is essential for maintaining trust and credibility in location-based services, community-driven platforms, and civic engagement systems. However, localness is a social and relational identity shaped by knowledge, participation, and community recognition. Drawing on the German philosopher Heidegger's concept of dwelling -- which extends beyond physical presence to encompass meaningful connection to place -- we investigate how people conceptualize and evaluate localness in both human and artificial agents. Using a chat-based interaction paradigm inspired by Turing's Imitation Game and Von Ahn's Games With A Purpose, we engaged 230 participants in conversations designed to examine the cues people rely on to assess local presence. Our findings reveal a multi-dimensional framework of localness, highlighting differences in how locals and nonlocals emphasize various aspects of local identity. We show that people are significantly more accurate in recognizing locals than nonlocals, suggesting that localness is an affirmative status requiring active demonstration rather than merely the absence of nonlocal traits. Additionally, we identify conditions under which artificial agents are perceived as local and analyze participants' sensemaking strategies in evaluating localness. Through predictive modeling, we determine key factors that drive accurate localness judgments. By bridging theoretical perspectives on human-place relationships with practical challenges in digital environments, our work informs the design of location-based services that foster meaningful local engagement. Our findings contribute to a broader understanding of localness as a dynamic and relational construct, reinforcing the importance of dwelling as a process of belonging, recognition, and engagement with place.

Stylianos Loukas Vasileiou, Antonio Rago, Maria Vanina Martinez et al.

Understanding how humans revise their beliefs in light of new information is crucial for developing AI systems which can effectively model, and thus align with, human reasoning. While theoretical belief revision frameworks rely on a set of principles that establish how these operations are performed, empirical evidence from cognitive psychology suggests that people may follow different patterns when presented with conflicting information. In this paper, we present three comprehensive user studies showing that people consistently prefer explanation-based revisions, i.e., those which are guided by explanations, that result in changes to their belief systems that are not necessarily captured by classical belief change theory. Our experiments systematically investigate how people revise their beliefs with explanations for inconsistencies, whether they are provided with them or left to formulate them themselves, demonstrating a robust preference for what may seem non-minimal revisions across different types of scenarios. These findings have implications for AI systems designed to model human reasoning or interact with humans, suggesting that such systems should accommodate explanation-based, potentially non-minimal belief revision operators to better align with human cognitive processes.

Alyssa M. Smith, Allison Caudill

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face challenges, such as decreased access to physical, environmental, and social health-related services that can negatively impact their overall quality of life (QoL). Additionally, people living in rural communities may experience geographic distancing and other factors, like decreased transportation and available housing, that contribute to increased isolation and decreased health outcomes, overall. It is important to consider the QoL of people with IDD living in these communities given the additional intersectional constraints of rurality and having an intellectual disability or other co-occurring conditions. A secondary data analysis reviewed closed and open-ended survey data of respondents with IDD and care partners of people with IDD (n = 140). Results indicated that urban and rural-dwelling people with IDD and care partners had similar experiences. Some themes from the data included experiences of social isolation, the need for improved transportation and housing, and accessible healthcare and community resources. This data suggests comparable reported resource needs for people with IDD in both rural and urban sectors of rural states and demonstrates the need for continued study into resource disparities for this population. Future investigation should prioritize resource development related to the QoL of individuals with IDD and their care partners in both rural and urban geographic settings.

Mohamed A. Moustafa, Ibrahim A. Elshaer, Meqbel M. Aliedan et al.

This research explores the risk perception of mental health disorders among disabled students and its implications on their quality of life (QOL), with a specific focus on the influence of support provided by university disability services. Students with disabilities often face unique challenges in their academic and personal lives, which can significantly impact their mental health and overall well-being. To evaluate the proposed research model, we employed a quantitative methodology, utilizing a cross-sectional data collection approach and applying the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) data analysis technique using SmartPLS software version 4. We collected primary data from a sample of 640 disabled students enrolled in multiple universities across Saudi Arabia. The research unveiled adverse associations between depression, anxiety, stress (as indicators of risk perception of mental health disorders), and QOL. Moreover, it was revealed that university disability support services (UDSS) had a positive impact on QOL. Importantly, the study emphasized that UDSS effectively mitigated and alleviated the adverse effects of depression, anxiety, and stress on the QOL of students with disabilities. The findings may offer insights for universities, policymakers, and disability service providers to enhance support structures, thereby improving the overall well-being of disabled students and reducing the risk of mental health disorders.

Claire S. Lee, Noelle Lim, Michael Guerzhoy

We present a novel task that can elucidate the connection between anxiety and ADHD; use Transformers to make progress toward solving a task that is not solvable by keyword-based classifiers; and discuss a method for visualization of our classifier illuminating the connection between anxiety and ADHD presentations. Up to approximately 50% of adults with ADHD may also have an anxiety disorder and approximately 30\% of adults with anxiety may also have ADHD. Patients presenting with anxiety may be treated for anxiety without ADHD ever being considered, possibly affecting treatment. We show how data that bears on ADHD that is comorbid with anxiety can be obtained from social media data, and show that Transformers can be used to detect a proxy for possible comorbid ADHD in people with anxiety symptoms. We collected data from anxiety and ADHD online forums (subreddits). We identified posters who first started posting in the Anxiety subreddit and later started posting in the ADHD subreddit as well. We use this subset of the posters as a proxy for people who presented with anxiety symptoms and then became aware that they might have ADHD. We fine-tune a Transformer architecture-based classifier to classify people who started posting in the Anxiety subreddit and then started posting in the ADHD subreddit vs. people who posted in the Anxiety subreddit without later posting in the ADHD subreddit. We show that a Transformer architecture is capable of achieving reasonable results (76% correct for RoBERTa vs. under 60% correct for the best keyword-based model, both with 50% base rate).

Stephen James Krol, Maria Teresa Llano, Matthew Butler et al.

Music has been identified as a promising medium to enhance the accessibility and experience of visual art for people who are blind or have low vision (BLV). However, composing music and designing soundscapes for visual art is a time-consuming, resource intensive process - limiting its scalability for large exhibitions. In this paper, we investigate the use of automated soundscapes to increase the accessibility of visual art. We built a prototype system and ran a qualitative study to evaluate the aesthetic experience provided by the automated soundscapes with 10 BLV participants. From the study, we identified a set of design considerations that reveal requirements from BLV people for the development of automated soundscape systems, setting new directions in which creative systems could enrich the aesthetic experience conveyed by these.

T. K. M. Lee, H. W. Chan, K. H. Leo et al.

Time series data are collected in temporal order and are widely used to train systems for prediction, modeling and classification to name a few. These systems require large amounts of data to improve generalization and prevent over-fitting. However there is a comparative lack of time series data due to operational constraints. This situation is alleviated by synthesizing data which have a suitable spread of features yet retain the distinctive features of the original data. These would be its basic statistical properties and overall shape which are important for short time series such as in rehabilitative applications or in quickly changing portions of lengthy data. In our earlier work synthesized surrogate time series were used to augment rehabilitative data. This gave good results in classification but the resulting waveforms did not preserve the original signal shape. To remedy this, we use singular spectrum analysis (SSA) to separate a signal into trends and cycles to describe the shape of the signal and low level components. In a novel way we subject the low level component to randomizing processes then recombine this with the original trend and cycle components to form a synthetic time series. We compare our approach with other methods, using statistical and shape measures and demonstrate its effectiveness in classification.

Timothée Schmude, Laura Koesten, Torsten Möller et al.

Every AI system that makes decisions about people has a group of stakeholders that are personally affected by these decisions. However, explanations of AI systems rarely address the information needs of this stakeholder group, who often are AI novices. This creates a gap between conveyed information and information that matters to those who are impacted by the system's decisions, such as domain experts and decision subjects. To address this, we present the "XAI Novice Question Bank," an extension of the XAI Question Bank containing a catalog of information needs from AI novices in two use cases: employment prediction and health monitoring. The catalog covers the categories of data, system context, system usage, and system specifications. We gathered information needs through task-based interviews where participants asked questions about two AI systems to decide on their adoption and received verbal explanations in response. Our analysis showed that participants' confidence increased after receiving explanations but that their understanding faced challenges. These included difficulties in locating information and in assessing their own understanding, as well as attempts to outsource understanding. Additionally, participants' prior perceptions of the systems' risks and benefits influenced their information needs. Participants who perceived high risks sought explanations about the intentions behind a system's deployment, while those who perceived low risks rather asked about the system's operation. Our work aims to support the inclusion of AI novices in explainability efforts by highlighting their information needs, aims, and challenges. We summarize our findings as five key implications that can inform the design of future explanations for lay stakeholder audiences.

Kiran Khushnood, Nasir Sultan, Malik Muhammad Ali Awan et al.

Objectives: This study was done to find out the impact of a pre-operative physical therapy plan with inspiratory muscle training on functional capacity, kinesiophobia, and post-operative intensive care unit (ICU) stay in subjects with coronary artery disease (CAD) candidates for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods: Fifty subjects who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were recruited and randomly distributed into the intervention and control group by concealed envelop method. Participants in the experimental group were provided with inspiratory muscle training (IMT) with breathing exercises and chest clearance techniques, while the control group received breathing exercises and chest clearance techniques. Both groups received three treatment sessions before their scheduled surgery. The assessment was done at three-time intervals: At baseline, after three sessions, and after surgery. The outcome measures were oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiratory rate, Borg scale of perceived exertion (Borg PRE), Tampa scale of kinesiophobia for the heart (TSKH), and days spent at ICU after CABG. Results: Oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, functional capacity, and pulmonary endurance improved significantly among the treatment groups with a P<0.001 and a large effect size. The pulse rate showed no significant improvement; P and effect size were 0.38 and 0.60, respectively. Kinesiophobia and ICU stay also showed significant changes with a P<0.001. The effect size was large for both kinesiophobia and ICU stay.  Discussion: IMT as a component of a pre-operative physical therapy plan can improve oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, functional capacity, and pulmonary endurance in CAD patients going for CABG. IMT reduces the level of kinesiophobia and duration of ICU stay after CABG.

Tayyaba Afsar, Ahmed Waqas, Anam Nayab et al.

A genetically diverse condition, maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY), frequently develops before the age of 25. MODY is caused by disease-causing sequence variations in the PAX4 gene, which is found on chromosome 7q32.1. Additionally, it has also been observed that variants in PAX4 have also been associated with neurodevelopmental disability. Whole exome sequencing (WES) followed by Sanger sequencing was performed for all the available affected and unaffected members of the family. Data analysis revealed a novel heterozygous nonsense variant (c.61C>T; p.Gln21*) in the PAX4 gene in the affected individuals, which segregated perfectly with the disease phenotype. The present study adds to the PAX4 mutation spectrum and reports on the first case of MODY associated with neurodevelopmental disorders in humans.

Shreya Bali, Pranav Khadpe, Geoff Kaufman et al.

Initiating conversations with new people at work is often intimidating because of uncertainty about their interests. People worry others may reject their attempts to initiate conversation or that others may not enjoy the conversation. We introduce a new system, Nooks, built on Slack, that reduces fear of social evaluation by enabling individuals to initiate any conversation as a nook -- a conversation room that identifies its topic, but not its creator. Automatically convening others interested in the nook, Nooks further reduces fears of social evaluation by guaranteeing individuals in advance that others they are about to interact with are interested in the conversation. In a multi-month deployment with participants in a summer research program, Nooks provided participants with non-threatening and inclusive interaction opportunities, and ambient awareness, leading to new interactions online and offline. Our results demonstrate how intentionally designed social spaces can reduce fears of social evaluation and catalyze new workplace connections.

Ehud Shapiro

Offering an architecture for social networking in which people have agency over their personal information and social graph is an open challenge. Here we present a grassroots architecture for serverless, permissionless, peer-to-peer social networks termed Grassroots Social Networking that aims to address this challenge. The architecture is geared for people with networked smartphones -- roaming (address-changing) computing devices communicating over an unreliable network (e.g., using UDP). The architecture incorporates (i) a decentralized social graph, where each person controls, maintains and stores only their local neighborhood in the graph; (iii) personal feeds, with authors and followers who create and store the feeds; and (ii) a grassroots dissemination protocol, in which communication among people occurs only along the edges of their social graph. The architecture realizes these components using the blocklace data structure -- a partially-ordered conflict-free counterpart of the totally-ordered conflict-based blockchain. We provide two example Grassroots Social Networking protocols -- Twitter-like and WhatsApp-like -- and address their security (safety, liveness and privacy), spam/bot/deep-fake resistance, and implementation, demonstrating how server-based social networks could be supplanted by a grassroots architecture.

Faseeha Shafqat , Nasreen Rafiq Khan , Hannan Adeel et al.

Background: Urdu syntax is diverse in nature and does not relate to parameters established for English syntax in many ways. Speech-Language Pathologists’ (SLPs) assessments based on Ages of Acquisition (AoA) of spatial prepositions cannot be standardized for Pakistani Urdu speaking children until ages of emergence of these prepositions are determined in this population. Objective: to explore ages of acquisition of spatial prepositions in young Pakistani Urdu speaking children. Methodology: This cross-sectional survey explored AoA of spatial prepositions in a sample of N=370 (boys= 128, girls=242) young Urdu speaking children aged 24-48 months residing in Islamabad. Urdu prepositions checklist was given to the parents (mothers=242, fathers=32), teachers (n=63) and significant others (n=33), to fill in accordance to spontaneous speech of their children . Data were descriptively analyzed using SPSS version 21. Results: Urdu spatial prepositions اوپر /uːpər/ (Up/above/on) and نیچے /niːʧæ/ (down/below/under) were acquired in 24-26 months of age and by 42-48 months these were mastered by 89.3% and 88.6% of within age group participants respectively. Spatial prepositions acquired in 30-35 months were آگے /ɑːɡeɪ/ (in front of), پیچھے /piːʧʰæ/ (behind) and ساتھ /sɑːθ/ (beside) with percentages 67.3%, 56.4% and 72.7% respectively. Preposition درمیان /d̪rmjɒn/ (between) was acquired in 42-48 months with response percentage 52.8%. AoA of preposition بیچ میں /biːtʃ meɪ/ (in the middle of) can be considered as later than 48 months because even in highest age limit group i.e., 42-48 months only 49.3% participants acquired this preposition. Conclusion: The findings of current study indicate that acquisition of spatial prepositions follows same order in all children cross-culturally but their age of acquisition can vary according to their locality and language input provided to them.

Laura Hartmann, Alison Hamilton, Amelia van der Merwe et al.

Background: Acquiring a physical disability in adulthood necessitates a range of adjustments, with past research suggesting that some challenges encountered are unique to women. Moreover, several factors may complicate adjustment to an altered embodiment and difficulties in functioning after an accident, including insufficient rehabilitation and support services and problematic societal attitudes towards disability. In addition, women with disabilities are often excluded from health and social policy and programme development, an oversight that can result in support gaps. Objectives: This article presents the self-identified priority interventions of women with road accident-acquired physical disabilities in South Africa. Methods: We conducted interviews with 18 women with road accident-acquired physical disabilities. The participants were recruited via snowball sampling. Interviews were conducted by experienced interviewers, who were home language speakers of the participants’ preferred language of communication. The interview recordings were transcribed, translated, and coded by trained, independent researchers. Results: Study participants identified three key areas of intervention requiring consideration in supportive intervention planning: the acute post-injury environment and healthcare infrastructure, transitional services and social inclusion interventions. These were identified as overlooked areas in which they required support to successfully adapt to limitations in functioning. Conclusion: To develop inclusive, accessible, and practical policy and programming for people with disabilities, exercises like those outlined in this research – eliciting intervention ideas from lived experience – should be conducted as they highlight actionable priorities for programming.

Paula Contesse Carvacho, Pilar Pineda Herrero, Josep María Sanahuja Gavaldà

La finalización de la educación postsecundaria se asocia con un mejor acceso al empleo y es una forma importante de incrementar los índices de calidad de vida de las personas con discapacidad intelectual; y aun cuando los programa universitarios inclusivos han aumentado en todo el mundo, se sabe poco acerca de cómo estos impactan directamente en la calidad de vida de los estudiantes con DI. Objetivo: Conocer cómo la participación en un programa universitario para estudiantes con discapacidad intelectual contribuye a su calidad de vida. Método: Se aplicó la Escala Integral de CDV para personas con DI y del Desarrollo y se analizan los resultados considerando variables de curso, rol y género de los participantes. Resultados: Se observa un incremento en todas las dimensiones de la CDV y en el índice total en los cursos superiores. Los padres evalúan con mejores puntajes todas las dimensiones de la CDV que los estudiantes. Ambos grupos (estudiantes y sus padres) creen que el programa ha contribuido a la mejora de la calidad de vida y manifiestan que hacen falta mayores instancias de participación con pares sin discapacidad.