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Requirements gathering for assistive technology that includes low vision and sighted users
Abstract
Accessibility often concerns compatibility with third-party software in order to meet the needs of users who are disabled. The AccessLecture project seeks to transform the Apple iPad into a tool to make Math and Science class more accessible to visually impaired students. Accessing lecture material during lecture is a challenge to low vision students, in terms of the limited options that can be costly or can allow access only upon the completion of the lecture. This paper presents the techniques used to help the team gather the needs and tasks of math/science instructors and visually impaired students. The analysis of the environment, user groups and the tasks related to the course lecture were modeled in order to ascertain domain knowledge and to specify the system's requirements.
... Technology usage has been introduced with the Expanded Core Curriculum, and the use of assistive technology has been shown to be highly effective with VI students in accessing information and in the pursuit of an independent daily life (Altunay Arslantekin, 2012; Yalcin & Altunay Arslantekin, 2019). Studies in the literature support the effectiveness of assistive technology application in teaching science and mathematics since it ensures the active participation of students with VI in classes (da Mota Silveira & Martini, 2017;Koehler, Wild, & Tikkun, 2018;Ludi, Canter, Ellis, & Shrestha, 2012;Lunney, 1995;Nees & Berry, 2013;Negrete, Lisboa, Peña, Dib, & Vargas, 2020;Supalo, Humphrey, Mallouk, Wohlers, & Carlsen, 2016). Supalo et al. (2016) reported that students with VI can effectively participate in technologysupported science laboratories. ...
The Accessible Science for Students with Visual Impairment (ASVI) mentoring program aimed at developing innovative teaching methods for teaching science effectively to third-grade and fourth-grade students with visual impairment (VI). In order to achieve this, the program aimed to guide classroom or science teachers to develop or adapt instructional materials based on the objectives of the science class and also the needs of students with VI. The study was conducted during 2019-2020 at Aksaray University, in Turkey, with the participation of 10 faculty members (as the mentors) and 23 inservice teachers (as the mentees). The main purpose of the study was to investigate the inservice teachers’ perceptions (as mentees) about the faculty members’ mentoring roles, and to understand the mentors’ self-perceptions. This research was designed as a qualitative case study. The study’s findings revealed that mentors as the focus of the current study, they had the opportunity to implement procedures based on effective mentoring, and were thereby able to help the inservice teachers develop professionally in their preparations. Mentoring was highlighted as a means of overcoming some of the problems that the inservice teachers’ faced in their educating of students with special needs.
... Important alerts of the system must be recognized by users and, in some cases, they must confirm the visualization of these alerts to release the use of the system [20,21]. To ensure an easy identification of this alert, the next requirement should be implemented: R 13 -Provide information alerts by other communication channels beyond visual (e.g. ...
When applications intend to support accessibility, aspects of usability must be reviewed to adapt or extend common functional requirements that are implemented to ensure an easy use of applications. However, initiatives to develop guidelines for accessible mobile applications are recent and several approaches present only suggestions rather than a concrete list of requirements. This work presents an ample study on this subject, analyzing 247 scientific and technical articles to identify requirements that are discussed related to different types of impairments. This identification and further consolidation are carried out in a contextualized way via a classification schema proposed in this work. An observation based on analysis with real users is then performed to confirm and extend the initial requirements list and support our understanding about the limitations and needs of impaired users regarding the use of mobile technology. As result, this paper presents the main points of a guideline proposal for functional requirements, which should be considered by mobile applications to ensure accessibility with usability.
... These developments bring a palette of new opportunities to support an increased accessibility of the web content for the visually impaired users [20]. But in order to utilize and gain full benefit from these advances, a proper domain analysis of the visually impaired users' requirements is essential [13]. This type of analysis is defined as a process that acquires, classifies and analyzes all requirements of domain stakeholders [15]. ...
Access to web content continues to be a challenge for the visually impaired, as the needs of such community are very diverse. The access is further hindered by the fact that designers continue to build websites non-compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). To better understand the needs of the visually impaired community, three workshops were organized with various stakeholders coming from three different countries. The results from the workshops suggest that one-solution-fits-all model is inadequate without considering the levels of visual impairment when providing customized web experience. A set of requirements devised from the workshops guided the process of building a middleware prototype. Using eight adaptation techniques, the prototype provides the required user experience based on users level of visual impairment. Preliminary evaluation of the middleware suggests that several adaptation techniques perform better with non-WCAG compliant websites compared to those being compliant.
... Requirements for Vision Impairment users (C 1 ) Important alerts of the system must be recognized by users and, in some cases, they must confirm the recognition of these alerts to liberate the use of the system [10,13]. To ensure an easy identification of this alert, the next requirement should be considered: ...
When multimedia applications intend to support accessibility, aspects of usability must be reviewed to adapt or extend common functional requirements that are implemented to ensure an easy use of applications. Furthermore, these requirements must be identified and analyzed in a contextualized way, since different types of impairments require different types of requirements. This work analyzed 247 scientific and technological articles to identify requirements that are being considered to different types of impairments. The collected information was consolidated and classified according to groups of impairments. As result, this paper brings a checklist proposal focused on requirements for vision impaired users that should be considered by mobile multimedia applications to ensure accessibility with usability.
... Advances in web and mobile technologies provide greater flexibility and opportunities to support BVI [14]. In order to utilize these advances, a proper domain requirement analysis is essential [8]. This type of analysis is defined as a process that acquires, classifies and analyzes the total requirement of domain stakeholders [10]. ...
At the time when we are debating the Internet as a human right, an access to basic online information is a challenge for blind and visually impaired community. Steps taken for their digital inclusion, such as, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are often insufficient. In this paper we present initial requirements gathered during three workshops organized with various stakeholders coming from three different countries. Initial results suggest that the context of use and the cultural dimension play a crucial role in making digital content accessible for this community. Additionally, a one-solution-fits-all model is inadequate without considering levels of visual impairment when providing customized web and mobile experience. Finally, we lay out challenges that with comprehensive requirements gathering in the future, could address various problems that blind and visually impaired face.
In this paper we describe a tablet-based system that is designed to help students with partial sight access math and science lecture material in and out of the classroom. The instructor writes material on the whiteboard, that has a Mimio Capture bar affixed magnetically as well as sleeves for the markers. The lecture material is sent as written strokes that the iOS app displays for the student in real-time. Students can adjust the size and contrast of the material, as well as write notes on the lecture itself for later viewing. The access to lecture provided by the system provides students the ability to follow an active lecture and take more ownership over learning through note taking.
Educational and career opportunities for the blind would be greatly expanded if they could function in sighted environments.
A sighted environment is defined as a dialog involving non-trivial mathematics; which employs visual renderings of the math
discussed; and where no provision is made for blind participants. After itemizing the common visual media found in the typical
classroom and workplace, this paper lists the minimum requirements necessary for the blind to function in a sighted environment.
The foremost challenges will be 1) the conversion of all visual lines of math related communication into blind accessible
formats; and 2) performing those conversions fast enough to provide synchronous communication between the blind user and his
sighted peers.
This study reports on the teaching of life sciences (biology) to blind and visually impaired learners in South Africa at 11 special schools with specific reference to the development of science process skills in outcomes-based classrooms. Individual structured interviews were conducted with nine science educators teaching at the different special schools and focus group interviews with ten Grade 12 learners taking a life science at each of the schools. The interviews were video- and audio-taped by sighted observers. The data was transcribed and the results coded and classified for inter-pretation purposes. The study revealed learners' difficulties in applying science process skills because of lack of vision, lack of confidence, lack of motivation, etc. For example, one such skill, namely ‘tabulation’, remains a problem to most blind learners. The blind learners were also very seldom engaged in practical work and field trips. Practical activities were limited to very simple and elementary exercises that provided little intellectual challenge and did not call for advanced problem-solving skills. Learners had limited access to computers, encyclopaedias, sources of reference and relevant publications. Educators did however apply cooperative learning strategies in schools where totally blind and partially-sighted shared the same learning environment.
Determining patterns in data is an important and often difficult task for scientists and students. Unfortunately, graphing and analysis software typically is largely inaccessible to users with vision impairment. Using sound to represent data (i.e., sonification or auditory graphs) can make data analysis more accessible; however, there are few guidelines for designing such displays for maximum effectiveness. One crucial yet understudied design issue is exactly how changes in data (e.g., temperature) are mapped onto changes in sound (e.g., pitch), and how this may depend on the specific user. In this study, magnitude estimation was used to determine preferred data-to-display mappings, polarities, and psychophysical scaling functions relating data values to underlying acoustic parameters (frequency, tempo, or modulation index) for blind and visually impaired listeners. The resulting polarities and scaling functions are compared to previous results with sighted participants. There was general agreement about polarities obtained with the two listener populations, with some notable exceptions. There was also evidence for strong similarities regarding the magnitudes of the slopes of the scaling functions, again with some notable differences. For maximum effectiveness, sonification software designers will need to consider carefully their intended users’ vision abilities. Practical implications and limitations are discussed.
This paper presents a new technique of delivery of classes—an instructional technique which will no doubt revolutionize the
teaching and learning, whether for on-campus, blended or online modules. This is based on the simple task of instructionally
incorporating text-to-speech software embedded in the lecture slides that will simulate exactly the delivery of an intended
lecture, assisted with teaching aids such videos, animations and music, as deemed necessary. The benefits of such an approach
in the educational system of the University are multifold and can be categorized in three different axes namely pedagogical,
administrative and financial. Our main interests in this article lie along the pedagogical benefits (which undoubtedly overlap
to some extent into administrative and financial axis) that this technique will bring in the system. While it is obvious that
the initial process does consume a reasonable amount of time and gradually reveals its own complexities, constraints and limitations
as described in this paper, the approach does however provide considerable elements to bring a major re-definition of the
overall teaching and learning framework at the University of Mauritius.
New technology tends to be inaccessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility features are frequently added as the technology matures; doing so late in the cycle incurs significant costs. The initial omission of accessibility features often results from systems designers' lack of insight into accessibility requirements. This paper discusses accessibility requirements for accommodating users with vision impairments from the complementary perspectives of the systems architect, the assistive technology developer, and the application developer. The paper concludes with a historical perspective of the evolution of the current Windows™ accessibility features and gives insight into future industry directions.
This paper reports on a tool for assisting students with visual disabilities in learning how to program. The tool is meant to be used by computer science majors learning the programming language Java. As part of the developmental process of building this tool, we have implemented a rapid prototype to be used by people with disabilities in order to define appropriate requirements for the full version of the tool. This requires that the prototype is completely usable via a keyboard and speech interface, and it is easily adaptable for trying out different strategies. In this paper, we present the motivation and philosophy of the full tool, called JavaSpeak. We also present the details of a prototype implementation of JavaSpeak.
Teachers of students of visual impairments in Kentucky were surveyed to identify the current assistive technologies their students were using and to identify the teachers' possible unmet training needs. Although the teachers had access to and used computer-based technologies, they lacked the training and support for teaching specific technologies to their students, so only half their students used these technologies.
The resonant interface: HCI foundations for interaction design
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- J A Gardner