Preliminary Construct Validity of the AccessTools Public Building Assessment for People with Disabilities
Mentor 1
Roger Smith
Start Date
16-4-2021 12:00 AM
Description
The AccessTools mobile app generates comprehensive information about building accessibility. This app, being developed by the Rehabilitation Research Design and Disability (R2D2) Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is intended to be used by trained raters with a high degree of building accessibility knowledge to comprehensively assess the accessibility of community buildings. To date, however, it has not been documented how relevant the assessment and its information are for people with disabilities. This preliminary validity study begins to validate the AccessTools taxonomy of questions regarding its relevance to people of four different disability types: hearing, vision, mobility, and cognitive. Two primary instruments are being used for data collection: Qualtrics survey software and the AccessTools mobile application. Three participants of each disability type will be recruited from local disability organizations for a total of twelve participants. Participants first complete a pre-survey to gather demographic data and ensure eligibility. Upon completion of the first survey, participants follow instructions to download the AccessTools mobile app. They rate each question as “Not Applicable”, “Somewhat Applicable”, or “Applicable” based on how relevant that question is to them given their impairment. Once all the questions have been assessed, participants complete a post-survey to report the time spent reviewing questions and any additional comments or concerns. Researchers will then compare the assessments of expert raters with the assessments of participants with disabilities. This will identify how well the experts’ generic ratings match actual individual raters with disabilities. Researchers expect to determine which AccessTools questions are most relevant to specific individuals based on their impairment. This study will contribute to the construct validation of AccessTools. Additionally, if the expected correlation between experts and participants with disabilities is high, it will provide evidence for including a personalization scheme for AccessTools reports and for related building accessibility rating systems.
Preliminary Construct Validity of the AccessTools Public Building Assessment for People with Disabilities
The AccessTools mobile app generates comprehensive information about building accessibility. This app, being developed by the Rehabilitation Research Design and Disability (R2D2) Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is intended to be used by trained raters with a high degree of building accessibility knowledge to comprehensively assess the accessibility of community buildings. To date, however, it has not been documented how relevant the assessment and its information are for people with disabilities. This preliminary validity study begins to validate the AccessTools taxonomy of questions regarding its relevance to people of four different disability types: hearing, vision, mobility, and cognitive. Two primary instruments are being used for data collection: Qualtrics survey software and the AccessTools mobile application. Three participants of each disability type will be recruited from local disability organizations for a total of twelve participants. Participants first complete a pre-survey to gather demographic data and ensure eligibility. Upon completion of the first survey, participants follow instructions to download the AccessTools mobile app. They rate each question as “Not Applicable”, “Somewhat Applicable”, or “Applicable” based on how relevant that question is to them given their impairment. Once all the questions have been assessed, participants complete a post-survey to report the time spent reviewing questions and any additional comments or concerns. Researchers will then compare the assessments of expert raters with the assessments of participants with disabilities. This will identify how well the experts’ generic ratings match actual individual raters with disabilities. Researchers expect to determine which AccessTools questions are most relevant to specific individuals based on their impairment. This study will contribute to the construct validation of AccessTools. Additionally, if the expected correlation between experts and participants with disabilities is high, it will provide evidence for including a personalization scheme for AccessTools reports and for related building accessibility rating systems.
