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Education and STEM on the Web

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Abstract

Difficulty accessing digital educational material in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) hinders many students from receiving an education according to his/her preferences and fully enjoying the opportunities offered by our technology-enhanced society. Web resources enhance the delivery of STEM content by offering interactive and visual models, dynamic content, videos, quizzes, games and more. STEM content can be delivered in several ways including visually, vocally, or through a 3-D printed Braille bar or other assistive technology. In this chapter, we focus on the accessibility of STEM Web content for students with disabilities who are prevented from fully accessing digital visual resources, precluding a fully inclusive education. This chapter offers an overview of the state of the art of accessibility of STEM content on the Web, focusing especially on the experience of blind students. Existing issues and the authors’ opinions in the field are aimed at motivating future research and development.

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... However, disabled students are underrepresented in STEM [11]. Blind and partially sighted students often experience particular difficulties in accessing STEM [9]. This includes challenges experienced by screenreader users in accessing formulas, graphs and figures and carrying out exercises. ...
... They include reproducing the sounds of animals or objects, mnemonic diagrams to support learning songs and producing different rhythmic accompaniments to music. The exercises and games were tested by seven [8][9][10][11] year old children with intellectual disabilities living in an orphanage and led to a significant improvement in their musical skills. They learnt to correlate previously unfamiliar sounds with objects, sing more confidently and produce correct rhythmic accompaniments, which only a few of them were able to do previously. ...
Chapter
This short paper introduces five papers about different ways in which technology can be used to support the education of disabled children and young people. The topics covered include music education (two papers), for children with intellectual impairments in orphanages and autistic learners respectively, science education for hearing impaired students, classroom participation at a distance for autistic students and a recommender app for open learning resources. The approaches used include games, exercises, body motions, animations, a quiz and a robot based system with audio, video and vibro-tactile interfaces. Most of them were successful, but only tested with a small number of children and young people. The presentation of these papers is introduced by a brief discussion of the role of ICT in making education accessible to disabled people. It notes that there has been a tendency to develop learning technologies for specific groups of disabled people rather than for all learners and this is borne out in the papers.
... Balancing functionality with ease of use is also a challenging task. For example, according to Leporini and Buzzi (2019), developing V-Labs compatible with assistive technologies is challenging due to the need for consideration of different technologies and compatibility within the V-Lab platform. This indicates necessitating a deep investigation of the accessibility requirements and compatibility environment across different platforms. ...
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Discovering mathematics: the challenges that deaf/hearing-impaired children encounter
  • E Ray
Ray, E. (2001). Discovering mathematics: The challenges that deaf/hearing-impaired children encounter.
Evaluation of interactive learning materials for universal design: case of geogebra in norwegian high schools
  • P Shrestha
Shrestha, P. (2017). Evaluation of Interactive Learning Materials for Universal Design: Case of GeoGebra in Norwegian High Schools (Master's thesis, Oslo and Akershus Univeristy College of Applied Sciences).
Accessible Coding in Education
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