Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Walking the Talk: Bridging Policy and Reality in Urban Walkability(University College London, 2024-09) Fatany, Sarah Waddah; Cavoli, ClemenceThis study explores the policy-reality gaps in improving walkability in the cities of Freetown and Maputo, with a focus on informal settlement communities. The study employs a qualitative approach in analysing policy documents and interview transcripts with residents and other stakeholders to try shape the understanding of the lived experience with walking. The findings reveal a huge contrast between policy intentions and the lived realities in informal settlements. The extent of acknowledging walking as a legitimate mode of transport is frustratingly low, despite walking being the most used form of mobility. The little attention given to walkability in both cities also fail to translate into tangible improvements in overall safety, accessibility, and pleasurability experiences of pedestrians. While policies acknowledge the lack of safety and access for pedestrians, they fail to acknowledge the comfort and ease of walking for pedestrians. The study highlights the marginalization of the urban poor communities that rely on walking as a mode to access services, jobs, and other opportunities. Calling for a shift in policymaking to prioritize pedestrian needs first. Which acts as an equalizing mode, contributing to reducing inequalities.13 0Item Restricted Equity in Health: Analysing the Accessibility of Australia's Tertiary Public and Private Healthcare(The University of Western Australia, 2026-01-01) azeem, Mazen Ba; Kruger, Estie; Tennant, MarcThis thesis undertakes an exhaustive analysis of tertiary healthcare accessibility in Australia, juxtaposing public and private sector distribution against the backdrop of the socio-economic landscape. It critically assesses healthcare services availability, particularly during the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employs geospatial analysis and GIS mapping to evaluate the socioeconomic status of the population residing near the facilities, location and accessibility of Emergency Departments (EDs) in tertiary public and private healthcare facilities across the country and explore their readiness in the face of potential pandemics. The socio-economic variables within different buffer zones are scrutinised to reveal the impact on healthcare access during the health crisis. By integrating Australian experiences during COVID-19, the research highlights the variances in healthcare accessibility, accentuating the strains on hospitals with EDs and the innovative implementation of field centres in high-density regions to counteract service gaps. The thesis also discusses the socioeconomic determinants that exacerbate disparities in healthcare provision, offering insights into the stratification of health equity. The findings suggest that, despite Australia's robust healthcare system, critical areas require strategic enhancement to ensure preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations include the need to address healthcare inequalities and improve service accessibility in Australia’s urban, rural and remote areas, as well as the establishment of temporary healthcare facilities in strategically identified locations to bolster the resilience of healthcare infrastructure. The conclusions drawn herein provide a pathway for policymakers to fortify healthcare systems against the backdrop of socio-economic disparities, aiming for an equitable distribution of healthcare resources.37 0Item Restricted Automated Repair of Accessibility Issues in Mobile Applications(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-11-29) Alotaibi, Ali; Halfond, William GJMobile accessibility is more critical than ever due to the significant increase in mobile app usage, particularly among people with disabilities who rely on mobile devices to access essential information and services. People with vision and motor disabilities often use assistive technologies to interact with mobile applications. However, recent studies show that a significant percentage of mobile apps remain inaccessible due to layout accessibility issues, making them challenging to use for older adults and people with disabilities. Unfortunately, existing techniques are limited in helping developers debug these issues; they can only detect issues but not repair them. Therefore, the repair of layout accessibility issues remains a manual, labor-intensive, and error-prone process. Automated repair of layout accessibility issues is complicated by several challenges. First, a repair must account for multiple issues holistically in order to preserve the relative consistency of the original app design. Second, due to the complex relationship between UI components, there is no straightforward way of identifying the set of elements and properties that need to be modified for a given issue. Third, assuming the relevant views and properties could be identified, the number of possible changes that need to be considered grows exponentially as more elements and properties need to be considered. Finally, a change in one element can create cascading changes that lead to new problems in other areas of the UI. Together, these challenges make a seemingly simple repair difficult to achieve. In this dissertation, I introduce a repair framework that builds and analyzes models of the User Interface (UI) and leverages multi-objective genetic search algorithms to repair layout accessibility issues. To evaluate the effectiveness of the framework, I instantiated it to repair the different known types of layout accessibility issues in mobile apps. The empirical evaluation of these instantiations on real-world mobile apps demonstrated their effectiveness in repairing these issues. In addition, I conducted user studies to assess the impact of the repairs on the UI quality and aesthetics. The results demonstrated that the repaired UIs were not only more accessible but also did not distort or significantly change their original design. Overall, these results are positive and indicate that my repair framework can be highly effective in automatically repairing layout accessibility issues in mobile applications. Overall, my results confirm my dissertation's hypothesis that a repair framework employing a multi-objective genetic search-based approach can be highly effective in automatically repairing layout accessibility issues in mobile applications.36 0