Impact of Exposure of Chemical Fumes on Blood Pressure and Peak Expiratory Flow Rate in Industrial Workers of Faisalabad

Objectives: 1. To determine the impact of duration of exposure to industrial chemical fumes on Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR) and blood pressure of the industrial workers. 2. To find out the association between changes in blood pressure and PEFR due to exposure to industrial chemical fumes in these subjects. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed at Aziz Fatimah Medical and Dental College, Faisalabad. The study participants were 151 males working in the chemical industries. The study was approved by institutional ethical committee and informed consent was taken from the participants. Free camp was arranged for three days in September 2020 in the industrial area of Faisalabad. Thorough history of exposure to chemicals was taken using structured proforma. PEFR values were recorded using Wrights handheld peak flow meter. Blood pressure was taken by auscultatory method using mercury sphygmomanometer. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 22. Results: Systolic and diastolic blood pressures were significantly raised with increase in duration of exposure.  PEFR levels were significantly declined with increase in duration of exposure to chemicals. Significant negative association was noted between diastolic blood pressure and PEFR (p value = 0.003). Negative correlation was observed between PEFR and systolic Blood pressure, however it was not statistically significant (p value = 0.92). Conclusions: PEFR decreased while Systolic and diastolic blood pressures increased significantly with increase in the duration of exposure to chemicals. There was a significant negative correlation between PEFR and diastolic blood pressure while there was no association between PEFR and systolic blood pressure.

Blind-Friendly Universal User Interfaces: Towards the Design of Adaptive User Interfaces for Blind People

Worldwide 39 million people are blind, and the number of people that could be blind is predicted to be 79 million in 2020. The loss of vision puts a limitation on a blind person to perform daily activities smoothly, which hampers the person’s participation/progress in education, employment, and social networking. The access to information on ubiquitous devices including smartphones, smartwatches, and wearable assistive bands is an emerging trend for not only people with vision but also those that are visually impaired. A large number of blind people are using smartphone-based assistive technologies and accessibility services such as talkback and voice assistants in performing their common-life activities including placing calls, sharing pictures, reading books, and sending messages, etc. However, existing accessibility services face several problems including late learning, accessing and selecting nonvisual items on the screen, finding an item of interest in a complex menu structure, and operating multiple connected-devices. In addition, the diversity of the devices, mutable user requirements, equipment, apparatus, systems, apps, services, accessibility, usability, and context-sensitivity contributes to the frustrating user experience significantly. Therefore, an accessibility-inclusive blind-friendly user interface model is required to perform activities on touchscreen interfaces. This thesis defines a semantically enriched universal accessibility framework by designing a usable, personalized, light-weight, and semantically enriched accessibility-inclusive user interface to operate common applications on a smartphone. The proposed blind-friendly interface design simplifies User Interface Artefacts (UIAs) such as layouts, labels, buttons, and panels, etc., on touchscreen interfaces. The users can share UIAs to other devices instead of sharing the whole screen by enhancing the availability and consistency of multiple devices. The user v experience of blind people in operating smartphone/smartwatch interfaces were evaluated through empirical and automated user studies. The evaluation framework peculiarly recorded and investigated the behaviour of the blind people on several usability parameters including attitude, intention to use, perceived usefulness, understandability & learnability, operability, ease of use, system usability scale, minimal memory load, consistency, and user satisfaction. The study leveraged an improved user experience of blind people in performing common-life activities on a smartphone. The findings of this thesis provide an essential reference for usability experts, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) experts, and application developers in designing accessibility-inclusive services for touchscreen user interfaces