Nataša Rebernik | University of Antwerp (original) (raw)
Papers by Nataša Rebernik
Universidad de Deusto, 2020
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2016
The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and business partners in six European countr... more The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and business partners in six European countries. The project is focused on understanding barriers to workplace inclusion, and tackling these barriers through education in ergonomics and universal design and collaboration between academia and business. An exploratory study suggested that workplaces could be further improved in the partner countries to meet the needs of disabled people and there was considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees’ needs, employers’ obligations and workplace adaptation. The findings led to the development of new Ergonomics curriculum content in Slovenia and Poland that was implemented in two partner universities. The curriculum was then tested through a series of industry-based projects. The projects formed collaborations between business, employees with disabilities, students and academics and involved adapting the workplace, job design and products to specific employee needs.
Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from... more Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from technical, cultural and environmental perspectives. The discovery that water – at the beginning rivers, lakes and bays – can be utilised to improve human mobility represents an important historic milestone with a direct impact on human migration, trade and infrastructure development. Most of the early watercraft such as logboats, reed/stalk boats, skin boats, bark boats, and rafts were made from organic material non-resistant to air and UV rays. Hence, these artefacts have mainly been preserved in watery environments which caused their research has always been a logistically complicated process. The lack of archaeological data in the last two centuries resulted in having only logboats being recognised as a significant cultural heritage. However, the recent development of modern underwater archaeology and sophisticated 3D digitisation tools have accelerated the interest of a wider heritage community in studying early watercraft. In 2015, Global initiative: Early Watercraft – a global perspective of invention and development was inaugurated in Vrhnika, Slovenia. The initiative aims to connect researchers interested in early watercraft into a global network and provide an open forum to geo-locate and exchange the data as well as to discuss the strategies to recognise this type of heritage as a significant human achievement. At this stage, 95 individuals from 18 organisations in 43 countries are involved in the network. The initiative coincides with Early Watercraft1 a web-based geospatial information system published by the University of Ljubljana and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia. The platform runs on Arches (v3.0), an open source data management system for heritage developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund. At this stage, the Early Watercraft platform includes detailed information on almost all known (92) logboats from Slovenia. The platform is aiming to expand into a Global Virtual Cultural Heritage Environment (GVCHE). When Arches will be upgraded to a newer version, it will provide a better user experience. It will also include a European database with almost 3500 logboats recorded from early 19th Century until today.
Sustainable Cities and Society, 2019
Public space users with impairments are not only those with disabilities, but also the elderly, t... more Public space users with impairments are not only those with disabilities, but also the elderly, the long-term ill, the injured, pregnant women, parents with small children, etc., and each of them has a certain level of special needs when using public spaces. Public space users with disabilities live with diverse disabilities, be they physical, sensory, mental or cognitive, and the diversity within each of the groups is significant as well. The needs of disabled citizens reflect the diversity recognized within the groups of disability. In addition, there is a significant level of individuality expressed through individuals' characteristics, attitudes and motivations, as well as constraints towards themselves, their (dis)abilities, their lives and their community, the environment in which they live, etc. CONCLUSIONS (process-wise; typology of materials gained): A detailed folder of digitally and manually produced multimodal material, collected for and by participants with identified demographic and personal data. Researcher's diary with observations of the users. SPATIAL CONCLUSIONS (content-wise): Public spaces still tend to be designed to fit the needs of a fully abled adult male, thus creating barriers for a great array of citizens with different impairments. Urban planning design still focuses mainly on visual aspects of the environment, thus primarily creating visually attractive but non-inclusive public spaces. As a result, it discriminates to a large extent against visually impaired people, who rely on senses other than vision. Nevertheless, in recent years, progress in increasing the accessibility of public spaces in the two cities has significantly increased for the physically impaired. For the visually impaired, accessibility of public spaces has improved, but many barriers can still be detected.
Disability and Rehabilitation, 2016
The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of peopl... more The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of people with disabilities working in the open labour market. The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and industrial partners in six European countries, focused on understanding and tackling barriers to workplace inclusion for workers with disabilities. This study sought to explore the perceptions and needs of stakeholders in terms of workplace adaptation to the needs of employees with disabilities. An exploratory online survey was completed by 480 participants across six countries. The analysis suggests that workplaces could be further improved to meet the needs of employees with considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees' needs, employers' obligations and workplace adaptation. This snapshot suggests there is still a gap between intent and reality in workplace inclusion and further strategies are needed to improve the opportunities for employees with disabilities. The paper argues that ergonomics may have a key role to play in tackling these challenges and adapting the workplace environment and job design to suit the needs of individual employees. Implications for rehabilitation This study suggests there is considerable scope for workplace adaptation and improvements to meet the needs of employees with disabilities. Employers need and want further specialist practitioner guidance to facilitate workplace inclusion and support adaptation to individual needs. Organisations would benefit from training to raise awareness about potential solutions and approaches that would support more widespread employment of people with disabilities.
Sustainability, 2020
Cities are exposed to a growing complexity, diversity and rapid socio-technical developments. One... more Cities are exposed to a growing complexity, diversity and rapid socio-technical developments. One of the greatest challenges is as of how to become fully inclusive to fit the needs of all their citizens, including those with disabilities. Inclusive city, both in theory and practice, still lacks attention. Even in the context of ambitious contemporary concepts, such as smart and sustainable city, the question remains: Do smart and sustainable cities consider inclusiveness of all their inhabitants? Among numerous evaluation systems that measure city’s smartness, sustainability or quality of life, those tackling inclusion are very rare. Specifically, disability inclusion is hardly covered. This may be one of the reasons why cities struggle with applying disability inclusion to practice in a holistic and integrative way. This paper proposes a Disability Inclusion Evaluation Tool (DIETool) and Disability Inclusion Performance Index (DIPI), designed to guide cities through a maze of acces...
Sustainable Cities and Society
Due to the emerging complexity of cities, this paper argues for a holistic, integrative and relat... more Due to the emerging complexity of cities, this paper argues for a holistic, integrative and relational approach to more inclusive city planning and design to fit the needs of citizens with diverse impairments. It proposes and tests a new theoretical model called the combined methodological approach (CMA). The backbone of this model is an often-overlooked qualitative, bottom-up-driven, slow, small and deep-data-oriented ethnographic research, combined with components or phases of post-occupancy evaluation and behavioural mapping as two user-oriented techniques for assessing usage-space relationships. The paper is rather theoretical, as it focuses on the argumentation of different approaches in city planning, design and governance. However, tests of the proposed model were conducted in public open spaces of four pilot cases in two European cities (Maribor and Ljubljana, in Slovenia). The proposed CMA was tested against its applicability to real urban environments. The results, in acco...
Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent d... more Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent discrimination and ensure access to information, products, services, and spaces for all. Disability may not necessarily lead to exclusion, unless society fails to respond to the needs of people regardless of their impairment. Digital tools combined with ethnographic research may help researchers explore users’ needs, perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes and can aid in understanding the interactions between the human, the space, and the digital within the urban realm. This paper thus outlines a diversity of digital tools in the context of the disability-inclusive city. Through ethnographic encounters with Joe, Ann, and Vanessa, we then explore how these tools can be applied to practice. Centering on Joe, we attempt to exemplify some of the key issues that need to be addressed when looking into the terrain of disability, the city, and digital tools. Points of interest This paper explores h...
There were 42 million disabled people aged 15– 64 in the EU-27 in 2012. The urban population is i... more There were 42 million disabled people aged 15– 64 in the EU-27 in 2012. The urban population is increasing, and has according to United Nations Population Fund already exceeded 50% of the global population. Cities are becoming more and more complex. City governments face challenges in designing fully inclusive city services, spaces and information. These still tend to be designed in a way to fit the needs of an active, fully abled person, thus excluding a great number of citizens with impairments. With this article we contribute to the issues raised; first, by proposing a four-dimensional model towards addressing the complexity of the societal challenges; second, by elaborating a holistic Vision of a Smart and Inclusive City, and finally as a part of this vision, by proposing a concept of a holistic modular digital tool, namely Social Cooperative Monitoring Tool to support the inclusiveness of the city.
Universidad de Deusto, 2020
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2016
The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and business partners in six European countr... more The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and business partners in six European countries. The project is focused on understanding barriers to workplace inclusion, and tackling these barriers through education in ergonomics and universal design and collaboration between academia and business. An exploratory study suggested that workplaces could be further improved in the partner countries to meet the needs of disabled people and there was considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees’ needs, employers’ obligations and workplace adaptation. The findings led to the development of new Ergonomics curriculum content in Slovenia and Poland that was implemented in two partner universities. The curriculum was then tested through a series of industry-based projects. The projects formed collaborations between business, employees with disabilities, students and academics and involved adapting the workplace, job design and products to specific employee needs.
Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from... more Early watercraft can be considered as one of the first and most significant human inventions from technical, cultural and environmental perspectives. The discovery that water – at the beginning rivers, lakes and bays – can be utilised to improve human mobility represents an important historic milestone with a direct impact on human migration, trade and infrastructure development. Most of the early watercraft such as logboats, reed/stalk boats, skin boats, bark boats, and rafts were made from organic material non-resistant to air and UV rays. Hence, these artefacts have mainly been preserved in watery environments which caused their research has always been a logistically complicated process. The lack of archaeological data in the last two centuries resulted in having only logboats being recognised as a significant cultural heritage. However, the recent development of modern underwater archaeology and sophisticated 3D digitisation tools have accelerated the interest of a wider heritage community in studying early watercraft. In 2015, Global initiative: Early Watercraft – a global perspective of invention and development was inaugurated in Vrhnika, Slovenia. The initiative aims to connect researchers interested in early watercraft into a global network and provide an open forum to geo-locate and exchange the data as well as to discuss the strategies to recognise this type of heritage as a significant human achievement. At this stage, 95 individuals from 18 organisations in 43 countries are involved in the network. The initiative coincides with Early Watercraft1 a web-based geospatial information system published by the University of Ljubljana and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia. The platform runs on Arches (v3.0), an open source data management system for heritage developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund. At this stage, the Early Watercraft platform includes detailed information on almost all known (92) logboats from Slovenia. The platform is aiming to expand into a Global Virtual Cultural Heritage Environment (GVCHE). When Arches will be upgraded to a newer version, it will provide a better user experience. It will also include a European database with almost 3500 logboats recorded from early 19th Century until today.
Sustainable Cities and Society, 2019
Public space users with impairments are not only those with disabilities, but also the elderly, t... more Public space users with impairments are not only those with disabilities, but also the elderly, the long-term ill, the injured, pregnant women, parents with small children, etc., and each of them has a certain level of special needs when using public spaces. Public space users with disabilities live with diverse disabilities, be they physical, sensory, mental or cognitive, and the diversity within each of the groups is significant as well. The needs of disabled citizens reflect the diversity recognized within the groups of disability. In addition, there is a significant level of individuality expressed through individuals' characteristics, attitudes and motivations, as well as constraints towards themselves, their (dis)abilities, their lives and their community, the environment in which they live, etc. CONCLUSIONS (process-wise; typology of materials gained): A detailed folder of digitally and manually produced multimodal material, collected for and by participants with identified demographic and personal data. Researcher's diary with observations of the users. SPATIAL CONCLUSIONS (content-wise): Public spaces still tend to be designed to fit the needs of a fully abled adult male, thus creating barriers for a great array of citizens with different impairments. Urban planning design still focuses mainly on visual aspects of the environment, thus primarily creating visually attractive but non-inclusive public spaces. As a result, it discriminates to a large extent against visually impaired people, who rely on senses other than vision. Nevertheless, in recent years, progress in increasing the accessibility of public spaces in the two cities has significantly increased for the physically impaired. For the visually impaired, accessibility of public spaces has improved, but many barriers can still be detected.
Disability and Rehabilitation, 2016
The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of peopl... more The European Disability Strategy (2010-2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of people with disabilities working in the open labour market. The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and industrial partners in six European countries, focused on understanding and tackling barriers to workplace inclusion for workers with disabilities. This study sought to explore the perceptions and needs of stakeholders in terms of workplace adaptation to the needs of employees with disabilities. An exploratory online survey was completed by 480 participants across six countries. The analysis suggests that workplaces could be further improved to meet the needs of employees with considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees' needs, employers' obligations and workplace adaptation. This snapshot suggests there is still a gap between intent and reality in workplace inclusion and further strategies are needed to improve the opportunities for employees with disabilities. The paper argues that ergonomics may have a key role to play in tackling these challenges and adapting the workplace environment and job design to suit the needs of individual employees. Implications for rehabilitation This study suggests there is considerable scope for workplace adaptation and improvements to meet the needs of employees with disabilities. Employers need and want further specialist practitioner guidance to facilitate workplace inclusion and support adaptation to individual needs. Organisations would benefit from training to raise awareness about potential solutions and approaches that would support more widespread employment of people with disabilities.
Sustainability, 2020
Cities are exposed to a growing complexity, diversity and rapid socio-technical developments. One... more Cities are exposed to a growing complexity, diversity and rapid socio-technical developments. One of the greatest challenges is as of how to become fully inclusive to fit the needs of all their citizens, including those with disabilities. Inclusive city, both in theory and practice, still lacks attention. Even in the context of ambitious contemporary concepts, such as smart and sustainable city, the question remains: Do smart and sustainable cities consider inclusiveness of all their inhabitants? Among numerous evaluation systems that measure city’s smartness, sustainability or quality of life, those tackling inclusion are very rare. Specifically, disability inclusion is hardly covered. This may be one of the reasons why cities struggle with applying disability inclusion to practice in a holistic and integrative way. This paper proposes a Disability Inclusion Evaluation Tool (DIETool) and Disability Inclusion Performance Index (DIPI), designed to guide cities through a maze of acces...
Sustainable Cities and Society
Due to the emerging complexity of cities, this paper argues for a holistic, integrative and relat... more Due to the emerging complexity of cities, this paper argues for a holistic, integrative and relational approach to more inclusive city planning and design to fit the needs of citizens with diverse impairments. It proposes and tests a new theoretical model called the combined methodological approach (CMA). The backbone of this model is an often-overlooked qualitative, bottom-up-driven, slow, small and deep-data-oriented ethnographic research, combined with components or phases of post-occupancy evaluation and behavioural mapping as two user-oriented techniques for assessing usage-space relationships. The paper is rather theoretical, as it focuses on the argumentation of different approaches in city planning, design and governance. However, tests of the proposed model were conducted in public open spaces of four pilot cases in two European cities (Maribor and Ljubljana, in Slovenia). The proposed CMA was tested against its applicability to real urban environments. The results, in acco...
Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent d... more Successful inclusion is a subject that addresses the question of how well a society can prevent discrimination and ensure access to information, products, services, and spaces for all. Disability may not necessarily lead to exclusion, unless society fails to respond to the needs of people regardless of their impairment. Digital tools combined with ethnographic research may help researchers explore users’ needs, perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes and can aid in understanding the interactions between the human, the space, and the digital within the urban realm. This paper thus outlines a diversity of digital tools in the context of the disability-inclusive city. Through ethnographic encounters with Joe, Ann, and Vanessa, we then explore how these tools can be applied to practice. Centering on Joe, we attempt to exemplify some of the key issues that need to be addressed when looking into the terrain of disability, the city, and digital tools. Points of interest This paper explores h...
There were 42 million disabled people aged 15– 64 in the EU-27 in 2012. The urban population is i... more There were 42 million disabled people aged 15– 64 in the EU-27 in 2012. The urban population is increasing, and has according to United Nations Population Fund already exceeded 50% of the global population. Cities are becoming more and more complex. City governments face challenges in designing fully inclusive city services, spaces and information. These still tend to be designed in a way to fit the needs of an active, fully abled person, thus excluding a great number of citizens with impairments. With this article we contribute to the issues raised; first, by proposing a four-dimensional model towards addressing the complexity of the societal challenges; second, by elaborating a holistic Vision of a Smart and Inclusive City, and finally as a part of this vision, by proposing a concept of a holistic modular digital tool, namely Social Cooperative Monitoring Tool to support the inclusiveness of the city.