Ctr. Advanced Communications Policy

Although policymakers are beginning to recognize that the use of ICTs can be used to help create reasonable workplace accommodation for people with disabilities, focused, comprehensive programs targeted at advancing these applications of ICT have yet to be developed. This paper provides an overview and a philosophical comparison of both the U.S. and European policies on telework for people with disabilities.

Work-related disability issues have been central in many of the U.S. public policy debates since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although there is a robust business, legal, and public policy literature dealing with such issues philosophical analyses are not common. Accordingly, the paper examines, from a broadly philosophical perspective, some of the issues associated with restricted workplace employment opportunities due to the presence of one or more real or perceived disabilities. Following a review of the concept of disability, the paper examines disabilities and impairments using the concepts of functionings and capabilities developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The paper then connects the capabilities approach to disabilities with the concepts of negative and positive freedom developed by Isaiah Berlin. The paper concludes by suggesting how to address employment and workplace discriminations of disabled people.

In a representational democracy, the process of selecting people to represent the electorate is critical. To accomplish this goal, it is crucial that elections be fair and accurate reflections of the decisions of the voters. However, a significant and relatively unacknowledged constituency, people with disabilities, faces a variety of barriers to full participation in the U.S. electoral democracy. Recent research has provided evidence that how people with disabilities vote is just as important as the physical barriers they face when casting their votes. This article presents an overview of the literature addressing issues that affect how people with disabilities vote, with an especial focus on the role of election officials as both facilitators and inhibitors of voting by people with disabilities.

The diffusion and use of digitally based information and communication technologies (ICTs) offers the opportunity to redefine and reconceptualize 'community' both in terms of delineating the boundaries of community, as well as the modes of communication used between members. The creation of an electronic infrastructure, the Internet, permits the possibility of widespread public communication that is inexpensive and relatively easy to access. A second consequence builds on the rst; the emergence of (virtual) communities based on geographically distributed sources of information production and exchange rather than the geographic proximity of community members to one another.

Kelly E. Clark, and Paul M.A. Baker. Municipal Advanced Telecommunication Infrastructure Project (MuniTIP) examined the role of municipal involvement in advanced information infrastructure development. A schematic process model for considering the factors influencing infrastructure development was created to allow municipalities, their stakeholders and policy makers to consider the factors which most influence infrastructure development. Six policy options offer a range of strategies to assist municipalities when deciding how to proceed with these complex issues ranging from ownership of the infrastructure to doing nothing.

Research brief summarizes findings from focus groups which explored accessibility, social appropriateness, and cultural acceptability issues of wireless technology related use among individuals with disabilities. The research was conducted for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Wireless Inclusive Technologies (Wireless RERC). A total of 41 individuals with disabilities who use smartphones, wearables, and "smart home" devices participated in the study.

Research brief summarizes findings from focus groups which explored accessibility, social appropriateness, and cultural acceptability issues of wireless technology related use among individuals with disabilities. The research was conducted for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Wireless Inclusive Technologies (Wireless RERC). A total of 41 individuals with disabilities who use smartphones, wearables, and "smart home" devices participated in the study.

The expanding market for wearable computing devices, driven by the confluence of information and communication technology and public acceptance of a design aesthetic, suggests nearly limitless potential for consumer uses. However, designers, technologists, and policymakers often operate independently, leading to products that are out of sync, lack interoperability, or are hindered by well-meaning (but obstructive) policy. Here, a collaborative policy design framework is proposed that will enhance developing wearable devices and guide interdisciplinary collaborators as they explore the various implications and effects of device design in social, technological, and regulatory contexts.

The domain of education, like many institutions in contemporary society, faces significant challenges to the completion of its mission. This is especially true of higher education, which in many countries faces increasing expectations that it serves as a driver facilitating social and cultural advancement. New modes of inclusive delivery need to be tested with real students, new curriculum approaches need to be validated, new platforms need applications and content to succeed, and analytical tools need broadly based data to be truly useful. These also include new ways of collaborating and presenting domain specific subject matter. It is increasingly likely that the University of the future will not look like present-day institutional arrangements.

El rápido desarrollo de Sistemas de Gestión de Aprendizaje (Learning Management Systems, LMS) está cambiando el carácter de las relaciones de aprendizaje en las universidades. La tendencia a implantar LMS como sistemas “adjuntos” a los sistemas tradicionales de enseñanza ha sido objeto de escasa investigación desde el punto de vista de los educadores, por lo que la principal contribución de este artículo es el proponer un marco de análisis que integra las propuestas de diversas teorías que se han revelado como insuficientes en el análisis de los factores determinantes de un uso efectivo de los LMS.

Attaching a particular date or event to the beginning of a future; or perhaps as Winston Churchill might have it, the end of the beginning, is always fraught. In 1996 IBM's Big Blue supercomputer defeated the reigning chess master, Gary Kasparovpresumably by learning and

Inclusive connected futures: Editorial introduction to special section on "Envisioning [ 2 4 _ T D $ D I F F ] Inclusive Futures" 1. Introduction For many, the future is one where life is bigger, brighter, and full of exciting possibilities. This optimistic worldview, however, is not automatically universal as not all individuals have the opportunity to participate fully in societal activities. Global definitions and measures of disability are not fully comparative, but the World Health Organization has made reasonable estimates. (WHO 2011). For example, in the United States, more than 57 million people have been identified as having a disability, constituting nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population. Globally, people with disabilities are estimated to be between 15 and 19% of the population, or between 785 and 975 million, [ 2 5 _ T D $ D I F F ] the most recent estimate based on 2010 global population. For these individuals, their functional limitations mean that the future is not always brighter. And, as people age, many of the abilities (e.g. cognition, perception, mobility) that help them accomplish everyday activities also change in ways that result in functional limitations. Historically, technology has offered new options to mitigate barriers and facilitate participation for these individuals, all too frequently excluded because of their characteristics or capabilities. But technology per se, and the application of technology are context dependentif the view of the context is limited, technological solutions will be similarly limited. The application of futures based thinking, therefore represents a valuable approach toward exploring potential solutions to technological and social barriers to full inclusion by envisioning both wider ranges of possibilities as well as new applications of technology. A variety of technological solutions exist to facilitate the ability of people with disabilities to engage in life activities. The potential of many of these technologies, particularly those based on wireless connectivity and communications technologies are rapidly expanding, most recently within the Internet of Things (IOT) framework. Due to the pace of these changes, regulatory, policy and other social decisions are in a permanent condition of lagging behind the results of research, development and technology transfer to the market. In particular, this is true of the field of wireless technologies. The extraordinary growth in the popularity of smartphones and [ 2 6 _ T D $ D I F F ] wireless devices, and their acceptance as mainstream computing technology is only the latest manifestation of technological developments. In the business and commercial world other examples might be the emergence of cloud computing, wearable [ 2 7 _ T D $ D I F F ] technologies, the Internet of Things, [ 2 8 _ T D $ D I F F ] the rapid ascent of new businesses in mobile telephony, or the equally rapid decline of former household technologies such as the landline and dialup modems. In order to conceptualize the liberating value of these technologies, the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC,[ 2 9 _ T D $ D I F F ] 2016) hosted a State of Technology (SoT) Summit: Envisioning Inclusive FUTURES, designed using a "Futures Thinking" approach as a departure from the traditional assessment of the state of the science and associated presentation of findings common in the field. This "thinking" gravitated toward possible systems of accessibility, rather than on aspects of the individual user, the technology, the context, or a single design factor. The Summit, held in May 2015, brought together forty-five subject matter experts with a variety of backgrounds: disability advocacy, wireless technology, communications policy, emergency management, sensory access, aging and disability, [ 3 0 _ T D $ D I F F ] and wearable computing in order to engage in a deliberative exercise to imagine possible futures where accessible wireless technologies was a foregone conclusion. The Summit was grounded in research carried out in 2014 by the Wireless RERC, as well as in earlier studies, and focused on: 1) key social, economic, political and technological forces at play in the migration from legacy, analog technologies to mobile, digital technologies, and 2) exploration of the consequential futures for people with disabilities. The "dialogic meeting" approach, as implemented for the Summit, was a dynamic process open to conversations, comments and clarifications. The philosophical basis of the futures studies approach was that many ideas