Although the web accessibility of universities around the world is well documented, much remains unknown about this aspect of higher education institutions in the UK. Using three automated web accessibility tools (TAW, WAVE and EIII Page Checker), this study explores the accessibility of the homepages of 66 research-intensive universities with…

Background/Context: Parents are important consumers of educational information, especially with stipulations in ESSA. Yet, research on parental information needs is limited. It is important to understand how the information is displayed for parents in accessible and understandable ways. This study uses a theoretical perspective of parental…

This study seeks to evaluate the basic Priority 1 web accessibility of all college and university websites in the US (n = 3141). Utilizing web scraping and automated content analysis, the study establishes that even in the case of high-priority, simple-to-address accessibility requirements, colleges and universities generally fail to make their…

The need for social inclusion, informed choice and the facilitation of independent living for people with learning disabilities (LD) is being emphasised ever more by government, professionals, academics and, indeed, by people with LD themselves, particularly in self-advocacy groups. Achieving goals around inclusion and autonomy requires access to…

With funding from an Institute of Museum and Library Services demonstration grant, librarians of the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign partnered with students in computer science courses to design and build student-centered mobile apps. The grant work called for demonstration of student collaboration…

In engineering education, assessment instruments are often developed to evaluate programs and projects. Unfortunately, these innovations are not always adopted by intended audiences. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (DI) Theory provides a framework to analyze characteristics of an innovation that will affect adoption. The Appraisal System for…

Today, there is a real challenge to enable personalized access to information. Several systems have been proposed to address this challenge including Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHSs). However, the specification of adaptation strategies remains a difficult task for creators of such systems. In this paper, we consider the problem of the definition…

Concern about young families' ability to cope with rising food prices resulted in creating Spend Smart. Eat Smart (SSES), a website focused on budget-friendly nutrition information for limited resource audiences (LRA). SSES was redesigned using LRAs needs and preferences to increase use by LRAs. SSES usage increased after it was revised to…

Learning objects (LOs) are digital or non-digital entities used for learning, education or training commonly stored in repositories searchable by their associated metadata. Unfortunately, based on the current standards, such metadata is often missing or incorrectly entered making search difficult or impossible. In this paper, we investigate…

As part of the research carried out at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS), the Paper Authentication and Integrity Research (PAIR) project was launched. We began by investigating how one recent technology affected student learning outcomes. One aspect of this research was to study the…

Many current (online) help systems fail because users refuse to use them or, even if they do so, they do not perceive them as helpful. There is an obvious gap between the intentions of the help content authors and the achievement of objectives concerning the perceived usefulness by help users. Problems may be divided into psychological and…

Considers the problem of improving the performance of Web access by proposing a reconstruction of the internal link structure of a Web site to match quality of the pages with popularity of the pages. Provides a set of simple algorithms for local reorganization of a Web site, which results in improving users' access to quality pages in an easy and…

A study was conducted that used transaction logs to identify the characteristics of the most complex or problematic user queries. Enhancements are recommended in the design of online catalogs that use search trees to control system responses and to determine appropriate subject-searching terminology and technique. Contains 21 references and 12…

The SALOMON project automatically summarizes Belgian criminal cases to improve access to existing and future court decisions. This article gives background information about the texts of the cases and describes the output, design models, and architecture of the SALOMON system. Evaluation of 700 criminal cases demonstrates that the algorithms have…

Suggests that a faceted thesaurus should be used as the basis for organizing a small-scale institutional Web site. Contends that a faceted approach to knowledge organization can make the process of organization less random and more manageable. Reports on an informal survey of three Web sites, underscoring the problems of organization that can…