Browsing by Subject "Accessibility"
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Item Open Access Elderly-friendly inclusive urban environments: learning from Ankara(Open House International Association, 2013-03) Afacan, YaseminThe aging population and their expectations have become a growing concern in Turkey as in other countries. This study aims to investigate interactions/relationships between the needs, demands and expectations of Turkish elderly and inclusive urban design principles. It tries to answer the research question: how the inclusive urban life could improve elderly life and contribute to achieve an active aging process. An exploratory study was conducted with a total of 100 randomly selected elderly between the ages 65-95 (45 female and 55 male) from the City Centre of Ankara. A survey instrument based on the streets for life' concept (Burton & Mitchell 2006) was developed to gather data. The participants were asked to identify how important inclusive urban design features were in understanding, using and navigating within an urban environment. The findings of the study suggest that an inclusive open environment allows elderly people to feel safer, and thus encourage more regular use of urban space. Overall the results highlight two important insights, first that accessibility is inevitable for increasing the chance of the aging population to participate in the mainstream of community life and second, plain and simple signage is necessary to achieve more liveable urban environments. The study concludes the most important physical requirements and social requirements for elderly people.Item Open Access Ergonomics and universal design in interior architecture education(METU, 2009) Olguntürk, Nilgün; Demirkan, HalimeThe focus of this article is on the application of Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) principles on design process. Designers begin acquiring HFE principles and data during their university education. Universal Design (UD) approaches HFE as incorporating the whole of the population rather than a certain percent. This study explores the effectiveness of a specially designed course on UD in an interior architecture undergraduate program. After completion of the course, students were asked to evaluate their learning process. It was observed that learning UD principles is a process and requires some time, rather than being book information. The majority found the course helpful in increasing their awareness of UD issues. They also found the course helpful for improving their design work. The research suggests UD to be integrated into the interior design curriculum both as a separate course on its own and within the context of the design studios.Item Open Access Extending the importance–performance analysis (IPA) approach to Turkish elderly people’s self-rated home accessibility(Springer, 2019) Afacan, YaseminDesigners are still struggling to make good and fair home designs for elderly people. Although there are a lot of studies on accessibility in homes, there are few methodologies to rate the importance of accessible home attributes, or address the relationships between the most important and most satisfactory attributes (in terms of creating a good fit between the elderly and their homes). This study suggests using the importance–performance analysis (IPA) approach to set accessibility priorities and identify the critical performance factors that determine the elderly’s satisfaction with accessible homes. A self-assessment questionnaire instrument was developed based on housing accessibility literature and conducted with 342 Turkish elderly people chosen through stratified sampling among neighborhood clusters in Ankara, Turkey. The descriptive results and factor analysis of the study are significant in that they indicate significant differences among dwelling types. There were differences in importance and performance priority levels of home accessibility factors associated with each dwelling type. Moreover, the study found that safety and ease of use are the key indicators of home accessibility. According to the results, the IPA could be an effective tool to overcome the messy character of evaluating home accessibility for the elderly. By extending the accessibility attributes with the IPA analysis, it is possible to identify specific accessibility attributes, establish highest and lower priorities for intervention and decide which attributes should be maintained and/or ignored. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on aging by being the first study to explore the applicability of the IPA technique while eliciting elderly people’s accessibility requirements for healthy aging.Item Open Access An interdisciplinary heuristic evaluation method for universal building design(Elsevier, 2009) Afacan, Yasemin; Erbug, C.This study highlights how heuristic evaluation as a usability evaluation method can feed into Current building design practice to conform to universal design principles. It provides a definition of universal usability that is applicable to an architectural design context. It takes the seven universal design principles as a set of heuristics and applies an iterative sequence of heuristic evaluation in a shopping mall, aiming to achieve a cost-effective evaluation process. The evaluation was composed of three consecutive sessions. First, five evaluators from different professions were interviewed regarding the construction drawings in terms of universal design principles. Then, each evaluator was asked to perform the predefined task scenarios. In subsequent interviews, the evaluators were asked to reanalyze the construction drawings. The results showed that heuristic evaluation could successfully integrate universal usability into Current building design practice in two ways: (i) it promoted an iterative evaluation process combined with multi-sessions rather than relying on one evaluator and on one evaluation session to find the maximum number of usability problems, and (ii) it highlighted the necessity of an interdisciplinary ad hoc committee regarding the heuristic abilities of each profession. A multi-session and interdisciplinary heuristic evaluation method can save both the project budget and the required time, while ensuring a reduced error rate for the universal usage of the built environments. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Item Open Access Political connection, bank credits and growth: evidence from Turkey(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2011) Onder, Z.; Ozyildirim, S.The pervasive existence of government-owned banks in emerging economies is often justified by their provision of access to credit in remote and underdeveloped regions that are ignored by private banks. This paper analyses whether credits provided by government-owned and private banks have a significant role in regional growth and whether this role changes in politically connected areas in Turkey. Our findings imply that private banks significantly improve the economic well-being in all Turkish provinces regardless of their development level or their political connection with the ruling party. However, credits by government-owned banks are found to be positively related to the per capita growth rate only in the less developed provinces that are advocates of the ruling political party and also developed but not politically connected provinces. These results suggest that government-owned bank credits, as implied by the political view, are used for funding politically desirable projects or politically connected borrowers.Item Open Access Public space formation in peripheral urban development: a comparative analysis of Batıkent and İncek districts(2023-12) Mahmudov, Elif IlgınParallel to its growing population, Ankara expanded beyond the morphological basin in which it was situated. As a result, the past four decades witnessed peripheral urban developments around the city. These developments emerged under the influence of different urbanization trends and approaches over the years. These approaches have been shaped by varying actors, origins and motivations. In this study, it is aimed to examine public space formation in peripheral urban developments through a comparative analysis of Batıkent and Incek districts. In this context, the concept of public space, its attributes and characteristics, the predicaments of its privatization and the roles of determinant actors in this process are discussed. Following this discussion, the location and topography of Batıkent and Incek districts, their historical development, the formation of public spaces in each of them are comparatively scrutinized. While Batıkent has developed through the collaboration of cooperatives, the central government and the local administration, Incek was shaped through the investments and initiatives of private companies, as a product of neoliberal urbanization. Thus, public spaces in the two districts exhibit significant differences, which are illustrative of public space formation under different modes of urban space production.Item Open Access The relationship between housing accessibility and healthy aging: the case of Turkish elderly women(IOS Press, 2018) Afacan, Yasemin; Craddock, G.; Doran, C.; McNutt, L.; Rice, D.This study proposed Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) as a tool to elicitate the requirements of elderly to age well and improve the accessibility of home environments. It aims to address the accessibility issues in a case housing environment and provide guidance and design recommendations to designers and architects, who generally have difficulty to obtain information on universally designed housing environments. First, healthy aging concept is introduced. Then, the role of housing accessibility in healthy aging is explored. Later, the methodology is presented. In the findings the importance and satisfaction ratings of 100 Turkish elderly women, which are selected from an exemplary housing environment of the most dense and busiest urban area in Ankara, are analysed. According to results, IPA could be an effective tool to decide how to meet accessibility requirements and maximize home satisfaction. Thus, this study contributes to the design literature by being a first study to explore the applicability of IPA technique in design discipline while eliciting elderly women expectations and accessibility requirements for healthy aging.Item Open Access Simulated physical ageing: a prioritized persona-based model for accessible interiors in senior housing environments(SAGE Publications, 2020) Taşoz, Şevkiye Merve; Afacan, YaseminAccessibility is a critical interior design consideration that increases performance level and allows older adults to be independent and physically active in their daily activities. This study used a case study to present a new method of combining ageing simulation with personas through importance-performance analysis (IPA) and supporting the basic activities of daily living (BADL). This study developed a prioritized persona-based (PP-B) model to create accessible interiors in senior housing environments for healthy ageing. This model was constructed based on an ontology framework. The data that was gathered through the self-assessment accessibility questionnaire by 60 older adults and it was depicted in the IPA matrix, which later translated into personas. These personas were simulated with an ageing suit by interior architecture students based on the BADL of accessible senior housing environments. This study was an initial attempt to deal with the complex nature of accessible interior design and its attributes for ageing studies, which are often considered as theoretical concepts and standards. The main innovation of this developed PP-B model was to synchronize interior design knowledge on accessibility attributes and users’ BADL performance along their accessibility importance rankings. Findings are beneficial for interior designers to make human-centred interior design decisions.Item Open Access Social networks and credit access in Indonesia(Pergamon Press, 2004) Okten, C.; Osili, U. O.In this paper, we investigate how family and community networks affect an individual's access to credit institutions using new data from the Indonesia Family Life Surveys. Our theoretical framework emphasizes the family and community's role in providing information, thus lowering the search costs of the borrower and monitoring and enforcement costs for the lender. From our empirical results, community and family networks are important in knowing a place to borrow, as well as for loan approval. Consistent with an information-based explanation of networks, family and community networks have a larger impact on credit awareness of new credit institutions with a lower impact on awareness of established credit sources. Interestingly, we find that women benefit from participating in community networks more than men. There is no evidence that the rich benefit from community networks more than the poor. Our results on the benefits from participation in the community network are robust to the inclusion of community fixed effects. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Item Open Access The use of personas in understanding healthy aging: senior housing experiences through importance performance analysis (IPA) and simulated physical aging(2020-09) Taşoz, Şevkiye MerveAccessibility is an essential interior design consideration that increases performance level and allows older people to be independent and physically active in their daily activities. Increase in performance level and a physically active later life enable healthy aging. Modelling of an accessible senior housing is a necessity of the recent design world. Accessibility of these environments should be studied from older peoples’ perspective with a focus on efficient ranking methods and empathy techniques. This thesis aims to present a new method of combining aging simulation with personas through importance-performance analysis (IPA) to support basic daily living activities (BADL). Juxta-positioning of IPA findings with aging simulation findings to use it for persona method makes this thesis unique. The proposed method helps to develop a prioritized persona-based model to create accessible senior housing for healthy aging. This model is constructed based on a semantic coding system; an ontology framework. The current thesis is an attempt to deal with the complex nature of accessible design and their attributes for aging studies, which are often considered as theoretical concepts and standards. The findings of the thesis are significant for future aging studies and mobile computing researches in terms of indicating that physical capabilities of older people are associated with different requirements of accessibility attributes, which require structured knowledge and data management to diagrammatize their association with BADL. Moreover, thesis findings are also beneficial for interior designers to make human-centered interior design decisions effectively.