Academic literature on the topic 'Illiterates'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether isolated illiteracy generates a barrier to knowledge about the Brazilian Federal Government’s Single Registry for social programs. Design/methodology/approach Based on information contained in the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios – PNAD) 2014, the propensity score matching method was combined with the algorithm proposed by Imbens (2015). The analyzed sample consists of two groups of illiterate individuals: isolated illiterates (IILs) (treatment group), which consists of only illiterate individuals who live with other illiterates; and proximate illiterates (PILs) (control group), which consists of illiterates who live with someone who is literate in the household. Findings Evidence indicates that IIL individuals are, on average, less likely to know about the single registry than PIL people. Research limitations/implications The main limitation relates to the database since the only information available in the PNAD on the access to the single registry is for the year 2014. Practical implications The evidence found in the study reinforces the need to invest in the fight against illiteracy in Brazil. Social implications Results show that a portion of the possible beneficiaries of social programs are still “invisible” to the government’s social protection networks, and this highlights the existence of possible errors of exclusion. Originality/value The paper compares two groups of illiterate people, a group that lives in an isolated illiteracy situation and the other that does not. It also assesses the effect of literacy externalities on the access to the Brazilian Single Registry.

Cognitive evaluation in developing countries is a difficult undertaking due to low levels of schooling and particularly the illiteracy still frequent in the elderly. This study was part of the epidemiologic evaluation of dementia in Catanduva, Brazil, and had the objective of comparing the performance of illiterate and literate nondemented elderly individuals in 2 tests of long-term memory—the delayed recall of a word list from the CERAD and the delayed recall of common objects presented as simple drawings from the Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB). Fifty-one elderly subjects (23 illiterates) were evaluated, and the performance of the illiterates and literates differed in the CERAD memory test, but not in the BCSB memory test. This test may be more suitable for the assessment of long-term memory in populations with a high frequency of illiterates, and therefore might prove to be a useful screening tool for the diagnosis of dementia. (JINS, 2004,10, 634–638.)

The hypothesis that awareness of phonemic segments influences the way in which speech is perceived was examined. Illiterate adults, who generally lack awareness of segments, were compared with literates, who are aware of the segmental structure of speech, on the recognition of words presented dichotically. A group of people who learned to read and write but who do it only occasionally was also tested. The results indicated much better performance in literates than in illiterates or semiliterates. In addition, literates made proportionally more single-segment errors, especially those limited to the first consonant, and fewer global errors, i.e. on all the segments of a syllable, than illiterates. On the other hand, phonetic feature blendings were as frequent in illiterates as in literates. It is suggested that awareness of segments allows attention to be focused on the phonemic constituents of speech and thus contributes to better recognition in difficult listening conditions. However, awareness of segments does not influence the preattentive extraction of phonetic information.

An Improved Readability Form (IRF) of the MMPI was orally administered to 100 literate and 119 illiterate patients, and 140 literate patients were given the full MMPI with standard instructions. Profile comparisons of the MMPI with the IRF given to literates or extracted from the full MMPI yielded only small differences. The much larger differences in the IRF profiles of the illiterates were removed by controlling statistically for sex, race, age, and education. The IRF, when given to literate patients, was a good substitute for the full MMPI in predicting Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale scores. For the illiterates, the two most salient relationships with scores on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale were preserved, but several weaker associations were qualitatively altered. When the IRF is administered to illiterate patients, the pattern of clinical correlates may differ from those obtained with literate patients given the IRF or MMPI.

Diagnosis of dementia is a challenge in populations with heterogeneous educational background. OBJECTIVE: To compare the accuracies of two delayed recall tests for the diagnosis of dementia in a community with high proportion of illiterates. METHOD: The delayed recall of a word list from the CERAD battery (DR-CERAD) was compared with the delayed recall of objects presented as line drawings from the Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (DR-BCSB) using ROC curves. Illiterate (23 controls and 17 patients with dementia) and literate individuals (28 controls and 17 patients with dementia) were evaluated in a community-dwelling Brazilian population. RESULTS: The DR-BCSB showed higher accuracy than the DR-CERAD in the illiterate (p=0.029), similar accuracy in the literate individuals (p=0.527), and a trend for higher accuracy in the entire population (p=0.084). CONCLUSION: the DR-BCSB could be an alternative for the diagnosis of dementia in populations with high proportion of illiterates.

Abstract. In Germany, 7.5 Million individuals between 18 and 64 years are considered to be functionally illiterate (Grotlüschen & Riekmann, 2012). Functional illiterates have only rudimentary literacy skills despite attending school for several years. Although they can use written language to a very limited extent, only few functional illiterates attend literacy courses for adults. In addition, most adult literacy courses primarily aim at promoting basic reading and writing skills. Offers specific to workplace literacy are scarce. This review gives an overview of the definition of functional illiteracy. Afterwards, a specific literacy program (AlphaPlus) and its effectiveness will be presented. The reviewed studies indicate that learning to read in adulthood is associated with structural and functional brain changes.

It is estimated that 759 million individuals worldwide are illiterate, i.e. they cannot read or write properly. With 95%, the majority of the illiterate population lives in developing countries. In most cases, these individuals did not attend school and, therefore, did not have the chance to acquire any skills in reading and writing. They are referred to as primary illiterates. However, illiteracy is not restricted to developing countries: In developed countries there are individuals who have great difficulties with reading and writing despite attending school for several years; they are termed as functional illiterates. For most individuals, the ability to read and write is crucial for being employed and socially accepted. Thus, education is an essential prerequisite for personal growth and satisfaction with life. The present research presents an innovative approach to overcome deficits in reading and writing in adults. The effectiveness of the program was investigated in two courses, each comprising 18 German functionally illiterate adults. Results show that participation in the program was accompanied by improved literacy skills and neuronal changes measured with fMRI. Key words: adulthood, fMRI, evaluation, functional illiteracy, reading and writing, training program.

Submitted by Aelson Maciera (aelsoncm@terra.com.br) on 2017-09-06T18:51:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissMAF.pdf: 890318 bytes, checksum: db8d31a4a8b322924c03f6f0c0b7c9d7 (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-09-25T14:08:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissMAF.pdf: 890318 bytes, checksum: db8d31a4a8b322924c03f6f0c0b7c9d7 (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-09-25T14:08:11Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissMAF.pdf: 890318 bytes, checksum: db8d31a4a8b322924c03f6f0c0b7c9d7 (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-25T14:11:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissMAF.pdf: 890318 bytes, checksum: db8d31a4a8b322924c03f6f0c0b7c9d7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-15
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
Self-regulation refers to thoughts, feelings and actions that are planned and cyclically adapted so as to make the individual reach their goals. Within the self-regulation is the metacognitive monitoring, the ability with which the individual follows and evaluates their own cognition. The present study was divided into two studies, both aimed to investigate the metacognitive monitoring of illiterate adults using the metacognitive judgement, a measure of the metacognitive monitoring, in cognitive tasks that evaluate the general factor of intelligence, processing speed and short-term memory. The relation between the real performance and the estimated performance was also investigated, including in which cognitive task the real performance related more to the estimated performance. In addition, we investigated which type of judgment model – the only difference between the two studies – was the most accurate. The participants of Study (1) included 34 functional or fully illiterate adults, from both genders, and age between 40 and 60 years old; and participants of Study (2) included 15 functional or fully illiterate adults, from both genders, and age between 20 and 74 years old. The instruments utilized were: Initial Interview, R-1 Test and subtests Digit Symbol-Coding, Symbol Search and Digit Span from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III (WAIS III), Judgment Register from 0 to 10, Judgement Register from 0 to 100 and Judgement Register with the use of a metric object. Results indicated that the real performance of the subjects, in both studies, were lower when compared to subjects with a greater level of education, and, according to the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, there was a significant correlation between the real performance and the estimated performance in the subtest Digit Symbol-Coding in Study 1, and significant correlation between real and estimated performance in the subtests Digit Symbol-Coding, Digit Span and Symbol Search in Study 2. In addition, results indicated that the judgment made with a metric object presented he most accurate measures.
A autorregulação refere-se aos pensamentos, sentimentos e ações que são planejados e ciclicamente adaptados para o alcance dos objetivos traçados pelo indivíduo. Dentro dessa totalidade, encontra-se o monitoramento metacognitivo, que é a habilidade pela qual o sujeito “acompanha” e avalia sua própria cognição. Foram realizados dois estudos, ambos com o objetivo investigar o monitoramento de adultos analfabetos, por meio do julgamento, entendido como uma medida do monitoramento metacognitivo, sobre o desempenho em tarefas cognitivas que avaliam o fator geral de inteligência, a velocidade de processamento e a memória de curto prazo. Também foi investigada a existência de diferenças nas relações entre desempenhos reais e estimados e em quais tarefas cognitivas o desempenho real mais se relaciona ao desempenho estimado. Além disso, investigou-se qual o modelo de registro de julgamento foi o mais acurado, sendo o tipo de modelo utilizado a única diferença entre os estudos. Participaram do Estudo (1) 34 analfabetos funcionais ou absolutos, de ambos os gêneros e com idade entre 40 e 60 anos, e, no Estudo (2), 15 analfabetos funcionais ou absolutos, de ambos os gêneros e com idade entre 20 e 74 anos. Os materiais utilizados para a coleta de dados foram: Entrevista Inicial (EI), Teste R-1 e os subtestes Código, Procurar Símbolos e Dígitos da Escala Wechsler de Inteligência para Adultos III (WAIS III), Registro de Julgamentos de 0 a 10, Registro de Julgamentos de 0 a 100 e Registro de Julgamentos a partir de um objeto de medida. Os resultados indicaram que, em ambos os estudos, os escores reais dos participantes foram mais baixos quando comparados com sujeitos de maior escolaridade das amostras normativas dos instrumentos. A partir das correlações de Pearson, observou-se no Estudo 1 uma correlação significativa entre o desempenho real e o julgamento do desempenho no subteste Códigos; e, no Estudo 2, correlações significativas entre o desempenho real e o julgamento de desempenho nos subtestes Códigos, Dígitos e Procurar Símbolos. Ainda, os resultados indicaram que o julgamento de desempenho a partir de um objeto de medida foi o que apresentou as medidas mais acuradas.

Neuropsychological tests are standardized tasks used to measure psychological functioning that is associated with a particular brain structure. These tests often are used in diagnosing a cognitive deficiency resulting from brain injuries. Currently, there are a limited number of studies that have focused on standardization of neuropsychological tests in Latin America. Therefore, the vast majority of cognitive tests used in the evaluation of patients with brain damage have no normative parameters adjusted to the cultural characteristics of Latinos and Latinas. As a result, neuropsychological diagnoses among this population may be inadequate, and evaluation of rehabilitation program effectiveness limited. The importance of culturally appropriate indices of neurological tests cannot be overstated; of all the problems presented by individuals with brain injuries, cognitive disorders are the leading source of disability for adequate work, family, and social reintegration among this group. There is an urgent need to standardize neuropsychological tests in Latin America, among Latinos in the US and any other regions where neuropsychological test have not been standardized. An important population subgroup in Latin America severely lacking in norms for many neuropsychological tests are those deemed illiterate or unable to read or write. Developing normative data for individuals who are illiterate will allow neuropsychologists to have a more accurate comparison when attempting to diagnose cognitive deficits among this group in Latin America. This dissertation is unique, as no other studies have looked at the normative data and standardization of neuropsychological tests within this population in Latin America.

Submitted by Delma Barros Filho (delmab@gmail.com) on 2015-11-16T22:53:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Delma Barros_Dissertação.pdf: 9789741 bytes, checksum: 7553c5c82a7277e7b0aef79dd79424bf (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by Oliveira Santos Dilzaná (dilznana@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-01-27T13:35:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Delma Barros_Dissertação.pdf: 9789741 bytes, checksum: 7553c5c82a7277e7b0aef79dd79424bf (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2016-01-27T13:35:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Delma Barros_Dissertação.pdf: 9789741 bytes, checksum: 7553c5c82a7277e7b0aef79dd79424bf (MD5)
CNPq
Este trabalho tem o objetivo de compreender a maneira como adultos iletrados pertencentes a sociedades letradas manejam conceitos no que diz respeito a diferentes níveis de abstração. No campo de estudos sobre o desenvolvimento cognitivo de adultos, os autores que se dedicam a investigar o funcionamento cognitivo de pessoas em diferentes contextos têm concordado quanto à ideia de que o processo de escolarização promove o treinamento sistemático em operações teóricas, aspecto que envolve a aquisição de ferramentas culturais que subsidiam a organização do pensamento. O tema tem sido pesquisado através da comparação da cognição de iletrados com a de pessoas formalmente escolarizadas. O interesse tem sido investigar possíveis consequências cognitivas do uso da linguagem escrita e compreender as inter-relações entre as linguagens oral e escrita. Os estudos considerados apontam que a aquisição da escrita é avaliada, por um lado, como promovendo efeitos homogêneos; por outro, como sendo caracterizada pelas práticas sociais de uso desta habilidade, não devendo ser tomada por efeitos gerais. O presente trabalho é uma proposta de estudo sobre as relações entre o pensamento não escolarizado e o escolarizado tomando como base os desenvolvimentos teóricos de Vigotski, especificamente o tópico da formação de conceitos (cotidianos ou científicos). No pensamento orientado por conceito cotidiano, palavras codificam informações com base nos atributos perceptuais dos referentes. No pensamento orientado por conceito científico a estrutura do significado de palavra é abstrata, não dependendo do reflexo imediato da realidade. Para Vigotski o objetivo principal da escolarização seria a ascensão do pensamento empírico para o teórico. Este estudo propõe levar em conta uma rota alternativa de desenvolvimento, configurada para aqueles que não foram escolarizados, permanecendo iletrados. O conceito de oralidade letrada, considerado neste estudo, aponta para o fato de que, em sociedades letradas, a ascensão ao pensamento teórico pode acontecer fora da escola, através, por exemplo, de demandas sociais do trabalho. Foram examinadas as respostas de dois grupos de participantes (iletrados: adultos que nunca frequentaram a escola ou o fizeram rudimentarmente por poucos anos, permanecendo, portanto, não-alfabetizados ou semi-analfabetos; e letrados: estudantes universitários ou pessoas com nível superior concluído) a testes sobre formação de conceitos (com vistas a identificar a estrutura conceitual predominante) e a testes sobre medidas de habilidades cognitivas. A consideração da estrutura conceitual leva em conta a maneira como o participante organizou as respostas aos testes: os critérios subjacentes a essa organização e a forma de ligação das palavras, no conjunto formulado. Esta análise permite classificar a estrutura do seu pensamento como orientada predominantemente por conceito cotidiano ou científico. Entre os resultados da análise comparativa entre o padrão de respostas encontrado para os dois grupos de participantes, destacam-se, conforme esperado: a) o predomínio da utilização de conceitos cotidianos entre iletrados; b) o predomínio do uso de conceitos científicos entre letrados. No entanto, o fato de os participantes dos dois subgrupos terem formulado os dois tipos de conceitos permite discutir questões relacionadas com o desenvolvimento da oralidade letrada no subgrupo dos participantes iletrados. This study has the objective of understanding the way how illiterate adults belonging to literate societies handle concepts respecting to different levels of abstraction. In the field of studies about cognitive development, the authors dedicated to investigate the cognitive operation of people in different contexts have agreed on the idea that the schooling process promotes the systematic training in theoretical operations, aspect that encompass the acquisition of cultural tools that support the organization of thought. The subject has been investigated by comparison between the cognition of illiterates and of formally schooled persons. The objective has been the investigation possible cognitive consequences about the use of written language and understanding the inter-relations between oral and written languages. The studies here considered point that the acquisition of writing is evaluated, at one hand, as promoting homogeneous effects; and on the other hand, as being characterized by the social practices of this skill’s usage, should not be taken as general effects. This present work is a study proposal about the relationships between unschooled and schooled thought based on the Vygotsky’s theoretical developments, specifically the topic about word meaning structure (WMS) (the description of the system of relationships of words - the connections between symbols - that characterizes the semiotically mediated thought). There are hierarchical levels of language utilization, that is WMS. In this work we study two of these levels: everyday concept and scientific concept. In thought organized/ oriented by everyday concept, words code information based on the related sensitive’s attributes. In thought oriented by scientific concept the structure of word meaning is abstract, not depending on reality’s immediate reflex. To Vygotsky the main objective of schooling would be the ascension of empirical thought to theoretical thought. This study proposes to have in account an alternative route of development, configured the people who didn’t went through school, remaining illiterates. The concept of literate orality, considered in this study, points out to the fact that, in literate societies, the ascension to theoretical thought can happen outside the school, by means of, for example, working social demands. There have been examined the answers of two groups of participants (illiterates: adults which never attended to school or did it poorly in few years, remaining, thus, unlettered or semi-lettered; and literates: university students or persons which concluded the high school) to tests about word meaning structure (concepts formation) (intending to identify the predominant conceptual structure) and to tests about cognitive skills measurement. The consideration about the conceptual structure has in account the way how the participant organized the answers to the tests: the underlying criterions to this organization and the form of binding words, inside the formulated series. This analysis enables to classify the structure of the thought as predominantly oriented by everyday or scientific concept. Among the results of the comparative analysis between the patterns of answers found on the two groups of participants, excel out, as expected: a) the predominance of everyday concepts utilization among illiterates; b) the predominance of scientific concepts among literates. However, the fact that the participants of both subgroups formulated the two types of concepts allows the discussion of questions related with the development of literate orality inside the subgroup of illiterate participants.

The subject of this two year Master's thesis in Library and Information Science is the information practices of illiterate immigrants in everyday life. The purpose is to examine how immigrants seek, identify, understand and value information sources and information, and how the practices have changed with their arrival in Sweden. It furthermore focuses on the barriers that illiterate immigrants meet in accessing and understanding information. It moreover investigates the strategies they use to overcome them. For this purpose twelve qualitative research interviews were carried out, with illiterate immigrants as well as with service providers. The theoretical concepts of the essay is information practices, which means that the information process is within a context, and information poverty, that people in different context do not have adequate and equal access to information and information sources. Using McKenzie's model of information practices, the essay concludes that illiterate immigrants are active in their information process, especially when they interact with information. The most commonly used information practice is to seek out and ask for help in their social network. They use service providers to explain written information. In addition to actively seeking out people to help them, they use a variety of information practices. They use Internet on their smartphones. Some of them use a translator app to translate letters and communicate with others. They use Facebook and watch TV. They also use other visual sources. Their information practices function as strategies to cope with barriers connected to illiteracy. They utilize their social network that possesses writing and reading skills to help them read and explain. Other strategies are to use numbers and to learn things by heart. Although the illiterate immigrants use a variety of practices and strategies, they still do not get adequate and equal access to information and therefore can be called information poor. Their social network is a resource, but it can also be a limitation. They risk lacking information about intangible things. But they do not, opposed to Chatman's theory, keep their needs concealed. One participant differed from the others in this aspect, since he expressed an unwillingness to ask. He was also troubled by his illiteracy. He perceived himself as being more limited because of it. The interpretation of this is that he lives in a more literate world than the other participants. Therefore is he able to realize what he lacks. It is important to give illiterate immigrants adequate and equal information. This essay thus suggests that institutions seek to adapt their information services to the practices and strategies that the group acquires and uses.

Illiteracy continues to be a major problem in developing countries. Botswana as an emerging economy with consumers of different literacy levels has no escape for this problem. This study puts the spotlight on consumer illiteracy in Botswana focusing specificallyon purchasing behaviour of functionally illiterate consumers; the problems encountered in the market place and coping strategies used when purchasing food. To elicit relevant information a quantitative research design and survey techniques using a structured questionnaire was used to gather information. Potential respondents were conveniently sampled in Gaborone and surrounding areas in Botswana (N=200) and women aged between 25 and 65 years formed the sample group. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics and inferential analysis. From the discussion and the interpretation of the results of the sample of the survey it became clear that certain elements of retailers‟ marketing mix product, price, place, promotion and processes were the most important factors that influenced younger women‟s‟food purchases. Salespeople are apparently of lesser importance to influence consumers. The results indicated that functionally illiterate consumers mainly purchased food products from supermarkets and informal traders but also patronised other retail outlets occasionally. The study further revealed that consumers are vulnerable in the market place as they encountered problems during market place navigation, specifically in terms of too much information; difficulties in computing prices reduced by percentages; crowded places, and advertisements tempting them to buy. These problems seemed to negate the use of coping strategies. The study has contributed to the limited literature on the food purchasing behaviour of functionally illiterate consumers. Retailers will gain insight on how to deal with functionally illiterate consumers in the market place and find ways of making the market place more consumer friendly.
Dissertation (MConsumer Science)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
gm2014
Consumer Science
unrestricted

The objective and motivation behind this research is to provide applications with easy-to-use interfaces to communities of deaf and functionally illiterate users, which enables them to work without any human assistance. Although recent years have witnessed technological advancements, the availability of technology does not ensure accessibility to information and communication technologies (ICT). Extensive use of text from menus to document contents means that deaf or functionally illiterate can not access services implemented on most computer software. Consequently, most existing computer applications pose an accessibility barrier to those who are unable to read fluently. Online technologies intended for such groups should be developed in continuous partnership with primary users and include a thorough investigation into their limitations, requirements and usability barriers. In this research, I investigated existing tools in voice, web and other multimedia technologies to identify learning gaps and explored ways to enhance the information literacy for deaf and functionally illiterate users. I worked on the development of user-centered interfaces to increase the capabilities of deaf and low literacy users by enhancing lexical resources and by evaluating several multimedia interfaces for them. The interface of the platform-independent Italian Sign Language (LIS) Dictionary has been developed to enhance the lexical resources for deaf users. The Sign Language Dictionary accepts Italian lemmas as input and provides their representation in the Italian Sign Language as output. The Sign Language dictionary has 3082 signs as set of Avatar animations in which each sign is linked to a corresponding Italian lemma. I integrated the LIS lexical resources with MultiWordNet (MWN) database to form the first LIS MultiWordNet(LMWN). LMWN contains information about lexical relations between words, semantic relations between lexical concepts (synsets), correspondences between Italian and sign language lexical concepts and semantic fields (domains). The approach enhances the deaf users’ understanding of written Italian language and shows that a relatively small set of lexicon can cover a significant portion of MWN. Integration of LIS signs with MWN made it useful tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing. The rule-based translation process from written Italian text to LIS has been transformed into service-oriented system. The translation process is composed of various modules including parser, semantic interpreter, generator, and spatial allocation planner. This translation procedure has been implemented in the Java Application Building Center (jABC), which is a framework for extreme model driven design (XMDD). The XMDD approach focuses on bringing software development closer to conceptual design, so that the functionality of a software solution could be understood by someone who is unfamiliar with programming concepts. The transformation addresses the heterogeneity challenge and enhances the re-usability of the system. For enhancing the e-participation of functionally illiterate users, two detailed studies were conducted in the Republic of Rwanda. In the first study, the traditional (textual) interface was compared with the virtual character-based interactive interface. The study helped to identify usability barriers and users evaluated these interfaces according to three fundamental areas of usability, i.e. effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. In another study, we developed four different interfaces to analyze the usability and effects of online assistance (consistent help) for functionally illiterate users and compared different help modes including textual, vocal and virtual character on the performance of semi-literate users. In our newly designed interfaces the instructions were automatically translated in Swahili language. All the interfaces were evaluated on the basis of task accomplishment, time consumption, System Usability Scale (SUS) rating and number of times the help was acquired. The results show that the performance of semi-literate users improved significantly when using the online assistance. The dissertation thus introduces a new development approach in which virtual characters are used as additional support for barely literate or naturally challenged users. Such components enhanced the application utility by offering a variety of services like translating contents in local language, providing additional vocal information, and performing automatic translation from text to sign language. Obviously, there is no such thing as one design solution that fits for all in the underlying domain. Context sensitivity, literacy and mental abilities are key factors on which I concentrated and the results emphasize that computer interfaces must be based on a thoughtful definition of target groups, purposes and objectives.
Das Ziel und die Motivation hinter dieser Forschungsarbeit ist es, Anwendungen mit benutzerfreundlichen Schnittstellen für Gehörlose und Analphabeten bereitzustellen, welche es ihnen ermöglichen ohne jede menschliche Unterstützung zu arbeiten. Obwohl es in den letzten Jahren technologische Fortschritte gab, garantiert allein die Verfügbarkeit von Technik nicht automatisch die Zugänglichkeit zu Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT). Umfangreiche Verwendung von Texten in Menüs bis hin zu Dokumenten führen dazu, dass Gehörlose und funktionale Analphabeten auf diese Dienste, die auf Computersystemen existieren, nicht zugreifen können. Folglich stellen die meisten bestehenden EDV-Anwendungen für diejenigen eine Hürde dar, die nicht fließend lesen können. Onlinetechnologien für solche Art von Gruppen sollten in kontinuierlichem Austausch mit den Hauptnutzern entwickelt werden und gründliche Untersuchung ihrer Einschränkungen, Anforderungen und Nutzungsbarrieren beinhalten. In dieser Forschungsarbeit untersuche ich vorhandene Tools im Bereich von Sprach-, Web- und anderen Multimedia-Technologien, um Lernlücken zu identifizieren und Wege zu erforschen, welche die Informationsalphabetisierung für Gehörlose und Analphabeten erweitert. Ich arbeitete an der Entwicklung einer nutzerzentrierten Schnittstelle, um die Fähigkeiten von Gehörlosen und Nutzern mit schlechter Alphabetisierung durch Verbesserung der lexikalischen Ressourcen und durch Auswertung mehrerer Multimediaschnittstellen zu erhöhen. Die Schnittstelle des plattformunabhängigen, italienischen Gebärdensprachen (LIS) Wörterbuches wurde entwickelt, um die lexikalischen Quellen für gehörlose Anwender zu verbessern. Ich integriere die LIS-lexikalischen Ressourcen mit der MultiWordNet (MWN)-Datenbank, um das erste LIS MultiWordNet (LMWN) zu bilden. LMWN enthält Informationen über lexikalische Beziehungen zwischen Wörtern, semantische Beziehungen zwischen lexikalischen Konzepten (Synsets), Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen italienischer und Gebärdensprache-lexikalischen Konzepten und semantischen Feldern (Domänen). Der Ansatz erhöht das Verständnis der tauben Nutzer geschriebene, italienischen Sprache zu verstehen und zeigt, dass ein relativ kleiner Satz an Lexika den wesentlichen Teil der MWN abdecken kann. Die Integration von LIS-Zeichen mit MWN machte es zu einem nützlichen Werkzeug für Linguistik und Sprachverarbeitung. Der regelbasierte Übersetzungsprozess von geschriebenem, italienischem Text zu LIS wurde in ein Service-orientiertes System überführt. Der Übersetzungsprozess besteht aus verschiedenen Modulen, einschließlich einem Parser, einem semantischen Interpreter, einem Generator und einem räumlichen Zuordnungs-Planer. Diese Übersetzungsprozedur wurde im Java Application Building Center (jABC) implementiert, welches ein Framework für das eXtrem Model Driven Design (XMDD) ist. Der XMDD-Ansatz konzentriert sich darauf die Softwareentwicklung näher zum konzeptionellen Design zu bringen, sodass die Funktionalität einer Softwarelösung von jemandem verstanden werden kann, der mit Programmierkonzepten unvertraut ist. Die Transformation richtet sich an die heterogene Herausforderung und verbessert die Wiederverwendbarkeit des Systems. Zur Verbesserung der E-Partizipation der funktionalen Analphabeten wurden zwei detaillierte Studien in der Republik Ruanda durchgeführt. In der ersten Studie wurde die traditionelle, textuelle Schnittstelle mit der virtuellen, charakterbasierten, interaktiven Schnittstelle verglichen. Diese Studie hat dazu beigetragen Barrieren der Benutzerfreundlichkeit zu identifizieren. Anwender evaluierten die Schnittstellen bezüglich drei grundlegender Bereiche der Benutzerfreundlichkeit: Effektivität, Effizienz und Zufriedenstellung bei der Problemlösung. In einer anderen Studie entwickelten wir vier verschiedene Schnittstellen, um die Benutzerfreundlichkeit und die Effekte der Online-Hilfe (konsequente Hilfe) für funktionale Analphabeten zu analysieren und verglichen verschiedene Hilfsmodi (einschließlich zusätzlicher Textinformationen, Audio-Unterstützung und mit Hilfe eines virtuellen Charakters) bezüglich der Verbesserung der Leistungsfähigkeit von teilweisen Analphabeten, um ihre Zielstellung zu erreichen. In unseren neu gestalteten Schnittstellen wurden Anweisungen automatisch in die Swahili Sprache übersetzt. Alle Schnittstellen wurden auf der Grundlage der Aufgabenbewältigung, des Zeitaufwands, der System Usability Scale (SUS) Rate und der Anzahl der Hilfegesuche bewertet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Leistungsfähigkeit der teilweisen Analphabeten bei Nutzung der Online-Hilfe signifikant verbessert wurde. Diese Dissertation stellt somit einen neuen Entwicklungsansatz dar, bei welchem virtuelle Charaktere als zusätzliche Unterstützung genutzt werden, um Nutzer, die kaum lesen können oder sonstig eingeschränkt sind, zu unterstützen. Solche Komponenten erweitern die Anwendungsnutzbarkeit indem sie eine Vielzahl von Diensten wie das Übersetzen von Inhalten in eine Landessprache, das Bereitstellen von zusätzlichen akustisch, gesprochenen Informationen und die Durchführung einer automatischen Übersetzung von Text in Gebärdensprache bereitstellen. Offensichtlich gibt ist keine One Design-Lösung, die für alle zugrundeliegenden Domänen passt. Kontextsensitivität, Alphabetisierung und geistigen Fähigkeiten sind Schlüsselfaktoren, auf welche ich mich konzentriere. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen, dass Computerschnittstellen auf einer exakten Definition der Zielgruppen, dem Zweck und den Zielen basieren müssen.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW)
Primary Caregiver’s ability to provide a healthy, nurturing and stimulating environment is critical, but Caregivers in South Africa, especially those living in rural communities, are facing many challenges, including a combination of poverty, lack of education and skills, as well as social isolation, which directly and indirectly affect their ability to care for their children in a way to ensure their optimal developmental outcomes. Residents in far rural communities, such as in the Eastern Cape, have had less opportunities to go to school, due to various reasons and Caregivers therefore face multiple burdens. For the purposes of this study, it is important to clarify with reference the term “Caregiver”. The South African Children’s Act (Act 38 of 2005) differentiates between biological parents, guardians and caregivers. According to the Act (Children’s 2005), parents may be a biological father or biological father, a guardian being an honorary parent to the child and a caregiver is any family member rather than the biological parent or guardian who is concerned with care, welfare and development of the child. Although there is such differentiation, caregiving remains central to the holistic care required of any adult responsible for the nurturing of children. This will include biological father, mother, grandparents, extended family members, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles as well as any person who is concerned with the care, welfare and development of the child and has been, after application to court of law, granted permission to exercise parental responsibilities over the child. The population for this study encompassed caregivers who are least educated and or never attended school in the Ku-Jonga rural settlement in Coffee bay and research participants were purposively selected from the populations. Data was collected by means of focus groups with the aid of an interview guide. The interviews were conducted in Xhosa and later translated into English. A Thematic system was used according to the Tesch’s eight steps and ethical considerations such as voluntary participation, informed consent and confidentiality were adhered to. The community has most citizens who identified with the target population. This is based on historical factors. The participants freely expressed themselves and contributed to the findings and thereby assisting the researcher reach the conclusions about experiences illiterate caregivers experience to support their children’s education.

This thesis discusses guidelines for developers of Augmented User Interfaces that can be used by illiterate and semi-literate users. To discover how illiterate and semi-literate users intuitively understand interaction with a computer, a series of Wizard of Oz experiments were conducted. In the first Wizard of Oz study, users were presented with a standard desktop computer, fitted with a number of input devices to determine how they assume interaction should occur. This study found that the users preferred the use of speech and gestures which mirrored findings from other researchers. The study also found that users struggled to understand the tab metaphor which is used frequently in applications. From these findings, a localised culturally-relevant tab interface was developed to determine the feasibility of localised Graphical User Interface components. A second study was undertaken to compare the localised tab interface with the traditional tabbed interface. This study collected both quantitative and qualitative data from the participants. It found that users could interact with a localised tabbed interface faster and more accurately than with the traditional counterparts. More importantly, users stated that they intuitively understood the localised interface component, whereas they did not understand the traditional tab metaphor. These user studies have shown that the use of self-explanatory animations, video feedback, localised tabbed interface metaphors and voice output have a positive impact on enabling illiterate and semi-literate users to access information.
TeX
Adobe Acrobat 9.51 Paper Capture Plug-in

This study is concerned with how illiteracy impact consumers when navigating through the market place to have their needs met.These effects are researched in the Kumasi metropolis in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The overall goal of the thesis is to investigate the problems that functionally illiterate consumers encounter when navigating through the Marketplace.The results show that functionally illiterate consumers at the Kumasi metropolis do face problems when navigating through the market place and that these problems are related to the retail marketing mix such as product, price, place, people, promotion and process.

In the study, the aim is to analyze the economic causes of the migration phenomenon that is the most important problem of today’s Turkey, and to suggest different policy proposals for the solution of the problem. Within this frame, by accepting sixteen cities that receive high rates of migration according to arithmetical average of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 periods indicated in the Address-Based Population Registration System as “center of attraction”, migration movements from eastern cities and from cities apart from eastern cities (western cities) to these sixteen cities of “center of attraction” were analyzed separately. In order to explain migration that oriented to centers of attraction, a multiple regression model that is convenient with international literature was formed. In this model, the number of enterprise that represents employment opportunity, the number of green card holders that represents poverty related to low income, the number of illiterates that represents lack of education and lastly the number of criminals that represents unrest were taken as independent variables. According to analysis results, independent variables that are used in the model explained migration process in both eastern cities and western cities as above 90%. On the other hand, when the coefficient rates of independent variables are examined, it was revealed that the most important determinant in economic migration is the employment opportunity. Consequently, making only income increasing social aids in regions where migration to other cities takes place is not sufficient; in addition to that, increasing employment opportunities is a healthier and a long-term solution.