Access To Web-based Information Research Articles

Digital inclusion: Lived experiences of students with visual impairment accessibility to web-based information in higher education institutions of Ethiopia

This study sought to explore the web-based information accessibility experiences of students with visual impairment (SVIs) enrolled in two senior universities in Ethiopia. To achieve this, the study used a descriptive phenomenological design. A total of 11 undergraduate fourth-year SVIs, 5 from Haramaya University and 6 from Addis Ababa University, were purposively chosen for the study. Using semi-structured interviews and Colaizzi’s method of data analysis, four overarching themes were generated inductively: web capability experience, social connection, venue of academic achievement, and disabling web environment. Accordingly, the study came with variations in the capability to access web-based information among SVIs observed due to differences in foreknowledge on basic computers and exposure to web interfaces. Routine use of social media, technical, and material support, and follow-up improves the SVIs’ website browsing ability, resulting in a sense of academic agency, social competence, and persistent ingenuity to academic success. However, complex web designs, incompatible assistive technologies (ATs), inaccessible document formats, poor infrastructure, and undifferentiated information flux on the website create a disabling web environment for SVIs, promoting inequality in web-based information access and hence academic achievement. Thus, findings from this inquiry necessitate universities to work to make web designs accessible and compatible with ATs, provide technical and material support to SVIs based on the severity of their impairment, improve infrastructure, and encourage them to regularly practice website use for academic purposes.

Analyzing and Optimizing the Usability of Website Access

The world wide web (WWW) plays a significant role in information sharing and distribution. In web-based information access, the speed of information retrieval plays a critical role in shaping the web usability and determining the user satisfaction in accessing webpages. To deal with this problem, web caching is used. The problem with the present web caching system is that it is very hard to recognize webpages that are to be accessed and then to be cached. This is forced by the fact that there are broad categories of users and each one having their own preferences. Hence, it is decided to propose a novel approach for web access pattern generation by analyzing the web log file present in the proxy server. Further, it tries to propose a novel hybrid policy called popularity-aware modified least frequently used (PMLFU) that best suits for the current proxy-based web caching environment. It combines features such as frequency, recency, popularity, and user page count in decision-making policy. The performance of the proposed system is observed using real-time datasets, empirically using IRCACHE datasets.

An agent for versatile intelligence analysis system

Users presented with a system equipped with many advanced features and vast collections of searchable documents often have problems getting to the information they seek. Our studies with intelligence analysts using the Rosetta Web-based information access system revealed inefficiencies in the way t hey used the tool. Motivated by that observation, we implemented a prototype of an intelligent software agent that monitors the behavior of users with a goal of generating real-time suggestions to improve their performance. To evaluate the agent's ability to predict the changes in the analysts' performance, we compared it to the judgment of human domain experts. The results revealed evidence of substantial disagreement among human judges. We found the level of agreement among the judges and the agent to be much higher. The agent's predictions were similar to those of an average judge.

Computational interface for web-based access to dynamic contents

Most information systems depend on a Database Management System (DBMS) to organise information. Access to such an information system is based on use of a database query language on the part of the user. This poses a skill level problem for medical staff at a hospital. As a result medical staff tend to depend on the database specialists, and programmers for access to information. To eliminate the complexities of a query language and to make a ubiquitous access a web-based information access system has been proposed for the end users. The test prototype is based on the notion of query-by-object. It allows a logical step-wise approach to access information resources. The proposed system allows a medical personnel pose queries at the same level as a trained database query language programmer.

Clinical Pharmacology of Topiramate versus Lamotrigine versus Phenobarbital: Comparison of Efficacy and Side Effects Using Odds Ratios

Clinical pharmacologists, neurologists, internists, and all health care givers must consider the efficacy, safety, and side effect profile of a given antiepileptic drug (AED) when determining which drug is best for a given patient. The first purpose of this paper is to address whether the "new" AEDs have advantages over the "old" drugs. The second purpose is to teach those interested in clinical pharmacology about the use of Web-based information access to answer a neurology/clinical pharmacology problem: to compare the efficacy and side effects of topiramate versus lamotrigine versus phenobarbital using odds ratios. Cost of all three AEDs was also compared. A number of new AEDs, including topiramate and lamotrigine, have been developed for chronic focal and secondarily generalized epileptic seizures. Efficacy of these drugs as anticonvulsants does not seem to be superior to that of traditional anticonvulsants such as phenobarbital. However, the advantage of the new drugs is a different spectrum of possible adverse events. Newer AEDs may or may not induce sedation and may minimize noncompliance by reducing side effects of lethargy and cognitive impairment. The difficulty in achieving therapeutic dosage because of side effects makes one consider whether these agents are "better" than the oldest and most side effect-prone AED, phenobarbital. The new AEDs have less frequent interactions, leading to improved tolerability with comedication. This exercise compares two "new" AEDs, topiramate and lamotrigine, with phenobarbital by evaluating efficacies and side effects using relative odds ratios, a method commonly used in drug development research. Development of new algorithms and/or new knowledge will bring beneficial tools to all clinical pharmacologists.

Reasoning about Textual Similarity in a Web-Based Information Access System

The degree to which information sources are pre-processed by Web-based information systems varies greatly. In search engines like Altavista, little pre-processing is done, while in “knowledge integration” systems, complex site-specific “wrappers” are used to integrate different information sources into a common database representation. In this paper we describe an intermediate point between these two models. In our system, information sources are converted into a highly structured collection of small fragments of text. Database-like queries to this structured collection of text fragments are approximated using a novel logic called WHIRL, which combines inference in the style of deductive databases with ranked retrieval methods from information retrieval (IR). WHIRL allows queries that integrate information from multiple Web sites, without requiring the extraction and normalization of object identifiers that can be used as keys; instead, operations that in conventional databases require equality tests on keys are approximated using IR similarity metrics for text. This leads to a reduction in the amount of human engineering required to field a knowledge integration system. Experimental evidence is given showing that many information sources can be easily modeled with WHIRL, and that inferences in the logic are both accurate and efficient.