Searching in all those valuable data sets we got offered, I a found very interesting survey in U.S. Gov. Archives about US travelers visiting overseas. I always wanted to discover how US citizens face theirs travel out of their country. So my final visualization will be  a series of visualization for Americans traveling abroad.The project will contain the following sessions:

1. Number of Departures of US travelers 2000 till 2017.

2. Destinations visited globally and numbers of the travelers.

3. Trip of their purpose. Number of US travelers and their reason of trip.

4. Activity participation while in other countries

5. Transportation used in other countries

6. Information sources used for trip planning.

From a big survey that I have done trying to aggregate all those data sets I discovered a lot of interested news .The Years I tried to collect (2000-2017) reveal some very interesting highlights:

• • US Travelers have a first priority to travel Europe. It is the number one destination in comparison with all the other continents.
  • Central America visits has intensively gone up last 7 years.
  • United Kingdom is historically the number one position for US Travelers.
  • The top five overseas destination countries visited by U.S.residents between 2000-2017 were countries of the United Kingdom (3.2million), Dominican Republic (2.7million) and Italy (2.2million).
  • Their main trip purpose traveling globally are:
    1. Vacation/Holidays 55%
    2. Visiting friends and relatives 27%
    3. Business travel 8%
    4. Educational travels :7%
    5. Others: 3%
  • The top ten airports of departure for U.S. citizens were New York(JFK), Los Angeles (LAX), Miami(MIA), Atlanta (ATL),Newark(EWR),Chicago (ORD), San Francisco (SFO), Houston (IAH), Washington (IAD) and Boston(BOS).
  • The modes of inter-city transportation used by U.S. travelers between destinations overseas were airline (63%), bus (20%), and railroad (14%).
  • The top modes of intro-city transit were taxicab/limo (29%) and subway/tram/bus (21%).
  • The use of private and/or rented autos was 39% .6% traveled on cruise/river boat for overnight trips.6% took short scenic cruises or used a ferry/river taxi.
  • Top leisure activities for U.S. travelers were sightseeing, shopping, visiting small town/countryside, visiting historical locations, experiencing ‘fine dining’ (gastronomy),taking guided tours, visiting art galleries/museums, experiencing cultural/ethnic heritage sites, visiting national parks/monuments and ‘nightclubbing’.

What I tried to visualize so for was the following charts. I experienced  a lot of technical problems with Tableau versions and Installations . So hopefully I will finalize my charts the following week.

 

 

Last week, an Accessibility Conference took place at John Jay University, which I had the chance to attend. I was given the chance to socialize with the audience of various experts, such as professors, agents, developers, designers and digital accessibility fellows. Most part of the panels were focused on new methods and practices regarding web accessibility innovation for people with disabilities. What stimulated my interest was certainly all the methods and educational practices of web accessibility for students with disabilities and how those reflect on larger ethical issues.

Web Accessibility

Web accessibility has been a major topic of discussions since the beginning of the World Wide Web. Many surveys have demonstrated that a large percentage of users have abandoned, at least once, an e-learning website due to the fact that it was overly complicated and not very user friendly. Unfortunately, web accessibility is still unevenly distributed, and there is increased awareness that access to these serves needs to be improved.

Mathew Conlin, Disability Studies Adjunct Professor and Managing Editor of The Journal of Teaching, had the chance to talk about what it means for an online platform to be accessible. He shared some basic principles for web content accessibility guidelines, and mentioned that all the information that is presented in any platform has to be perceivable by all groups of users. The user interface and navigation has to be functional and usable even only by keyboard. Also, the content that is presented on any platform has to be understandable, comprehensive and consistent. Finally, he referred to the technical and functional elements that have to be properly supported in a way that can be used in multiple ways, including assistive technologies.

One of the Officers of the Faculty Development and Instructional technology Phillip Ferrigon, indicated the fact that standardized accessibility of an online project is possible, if specific technologies are being defined. “It would be useful,” he said, “if the Web Accessibility Initiative checks regularly the new standards according to their accessibility and gives regular advice for future versions of these standards”.

A significant discussion between teachers, agents, and students with disabilities took place in the conference. There are over 600 million people worldwide who live with a mental, physical, or sensory disability which limits their ability to learn, work or participate in daily activities. The Alliance for Technology Access (ATA) claims that all students or employees with disabilities are entitled to access the information and technology needed to foster independence, employment and education. Accessible e-learning platforms and other websites through assistive technology devices, strategies and implementations are needed to maximize information access for people with disabilities. They also have the right to access the information they need in order to make informed decisions according to their interests. Computer keyboards with large letters, monitors with magnified screens that help people with low vision, electric page turners, headwands, talking pens, voice-output  and recording capabilities that create books-on-tape are some of the hundreds of assistive technology devices that exist. The Kurzweil Omni 3000 reading system also assists students whose disabilities affect their reading as it can read text out loud and highlights each spoken word on the computer display. Moreover, the Center for Information Technology (CITA) is a service that influences accessible information environments, services and management practices that is operated by the General Service Administration in the USA. It’s aimed to provide assistive technology services that eliminate barriers to education and the workplace for people with disabilities.

Ethics and Definition

Web accessibility should be a top priority in every digital strategy. However, these strategies can definitely expose ethical dilemmas by creating barriers to other groups, such as people with disabilities, who are equally deserving of access.

One of my fellow students, Yin Chenk, has a deep knowledge about the importance of ethics in web platforms as he is doing his PHD in a relevant program at CUNY. He had the chance to present his information by defining more precisely what ethics means.

Ethics is derived from the Greek word “ethikos” which means “character”,  “norm”,  “manner” “accustomed place” and also the word ethos which means moral character. Basically means a code of conduct, a set of beliefs that distinguish right and wrong behaviors. Sometimes it is also synonymous with moral. Ethics involves judgment about appropriate behavior that carries in our everyday interactions, movements and modularity. Ethical standards of behavior has not stopped a lot of professionals from violating these standards. For that reason, laws have been placed to adjust legal restrictions. These restrictions work in the same level with ethical standards and agree on penalties for violating ethics.

One of the panels in this Conference was referring to the disappearance of computer ethics. It was mentioned that in time the use and design of information technology would become as routine as the use and design of television sets. This argument about the disappearance of computer ethicsis more applicable to the users of information technology rather than to developers or designers. The increase of software tools that are continuously created, the free- and open-source software supporters they work with and also the explosive growth of intelligent technologies make ethical guidance in this area even more important.

Ethical Tasks for Teacher/Learners

Some of the speakers mentioned that there are some core principles in terms of the ethical goals that reflect on the behavior of tutors, students as well as the group of people that have disabilities. Self control, self discipline and integrity, are types of leadership essentially including basic traits in order to be considered ethical. In the 21st century, leadership is grounded with moral and ethical virtues and the challenge is how these can be measured and implemented in an educational context as well as what character traits are related to ethical leadership.

Teachers need to provide self-disciplinary guidelines by formulating forms of ethical conduct. They need to promote public trust and confidence in the teaching profession as well as to guide ethical actions in teaching. They need to emphasize the social responsibilities of the profession towards the community. Some of their basic tasks are to not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, age, national origin, ethnic background or disability. Also, they should not exploit professional relationships with students, parents and other members of the educational community in order to gain personal advantage .From time to time it would be useful, the teachers should point out the relationship that should exist between them and their students, as they interact with each other. The scope of the ethical code is to guide teacher behavior reflecting the responsibilities of teachers to educational stakeholders.

It was also pointed out that according to educational ethics, students must be approached as  human beings, who need to be influenced at the level of their values and their ideals. They should maintain a  healthy environment, free from harassment (even sexual harassment), intimidation, abuse and also  discrimination .Their grades have to be evaluated and assigned upon their  demonstrated performance and competencies independently .  The educator should keep any personally identifiable information they have obtained for them during their courses in educational platforms strictly confidencial.

Ethics and Accessibility for Designers

Website accessibility is fundamentally an ethical responsibility shared by web developers and designers. In one of the panels that took place at the Accessibility conference, there were some Technology Accessibility specialists from CUNY invited and they referred to the fact that the designers and developers are responsible for the best interaction of people with disabilities in educational platforms and software tools, which helps them use technology more constructively. They are also associated with the ethical commitments, as they develop technical specifications, guidelines, techniques and supporting resources that describe accessibility solutions. They need to be responsible about providing effective, workable and cost efficient solutions not only for people with disabilities but also for all the users that interact with those technologies. 

When developing or redesigning a website, evaluating accessibility which is also called “testing,” “auditing,” or “assessment” has to be taken into consideration. Some examples that were analysed in the panel discussion were alternative text for images (alt texts) in website markup. This  is helpful for people who cannot see and who use a screen reader that reads the information on the page . They also mentioned text audio transcripts as well as keyboard input where an accessible website does not rely on a mouse and makes everything available through the use of a keyboard. Then, people with disabilities can use assistive technologies that mimic keyboards, such as speed input.