Universal Access

The Information Society is bringing about radical changes in the way people work and interact with each other and with information. In contrast to previous information processing paradigms, where the vast majority of computer-mediated tasks were business-oriented and executed by office workers using the personal computer in its various forms (i. e. , initially alphanumeric terminals and later on graphical user interfaces), the Information Society signifies a growth not only in the range and scope of the tasks, but also in the way in which they are carried out and experienced. To address the resulting dimensions of diversity, the notion of universal access is critically important. Universal access implies the accessibility and usability of Information Society technologies by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Universal access aims to enable equitable access and active participation of potentially all citizens in existing and emerging computer-mediated human activities by developing universally accessible and usable products and services, which are capable of accommodating individual user requirements in different contexts of use and independently of location, target machine, or run-time environment.

This flagship report of the East Asia and the Pacific Region of the World Bank outlines an ambitious course of action to eradicate energy poverty in the Region by 2030. Despite its impressive economic growth, over 1 billion people in the EAP Region still lack the most basic access to electricity and modern cooking solutions. With every second household in the Region depending on solid fuels for cooking, indoor air pollution is a major health risk factor, particularly for women and children. This flagship report urges the governments of EAP countries to work simultaneously on two paths.

dotConnect Universal offers universal access to data of different databases for the Microsoft .NET Framework. It supports most of major database servers, including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, InterBase, and Firebird. Other servers can be accessed through their ADO.NET, OLE DB and ODBC providers.

This two-volume set LNCS 10907 and 10908 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, UAHCI 2018, held as part of HCI International 2018 in Las Vegas, NV, USA, in July 2018.The total of 1170 papers and 195 posters included in the 30 HCII 2018 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 4373 submissions.