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Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning
Journal homepage: stel.pubpub.org
Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2(3) 1
Article type
Full paper, double-blind
peer review.
Special issue Autoethnography in online doctoral education | More at https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.9415e58d
ISSN: 2753-2380
Cover image
Pontus Wellgraf
via Unsplash.
Publication history
Received: 04 June 2021. Revised: 13 December 2021.
Accepted: 13 December 2022. Online: DY MONDY MON 2022.
https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/
10.21428/8c225f6e.56810a1a10.21428/8c225f6e.56810a1a
Abstract
This study aims to determine the pedagogical and emotional challenges and the
teaching strategies implemented in face-to-face complementary tutorial sessions
requested by visually-impaired students (VIS) learning English as a foreign lan-
guage in a virtual undergraduate course whose graphic nature diminishes their
opportunities. The research methodology selected for this purpose is an evocative
autoethnography in which self-observation, self-reflection, and field notes were used
for the data collection needed. Transcripts were analysed using qualitative codes
for this collection under three main themes: pedagogical and emotional challenges
and teaching strategies. The findings revealed how pedagogical challenges derived
emotional challenges, a great sense of affective scaffolding to respond to neglected
VIS’ needs and concerns attached to materials adaptation, web accessibility issues,
and a redefinition of inclusion policies in higher education. A final reflection on the
implications of current language teaching that might work for VIS and teacher’s
training is made in addition to the limitations encountered.
Keywords
blindness; visually-impaired
students; pedagogical challenge;
emotional challenge; teaching
strategies; affective scaffolding;
sociocultural theory; critical
disability theory
Karen Villalba
Language Department, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia
Citation
Villalba, K. (2022). Learning
to “see” again: Overcoming
challenges while teaching English
to visually-impaired students.
Studies in Technology Enhanced
Learning, 2(3), 1-17.
Learning to “see” again: Overcoming challenges while
teaching English to visually-impaired students
Learning to “see” again
2 Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2(3)
https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.56810a1doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.56810a1a
1. Introduction
As an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher in
virtual undergraduate course contexts in Colombia, I imple-
ment diverse teaching strategies and materials for different
types of students depending on the content, learning styles,
and purposes. I faced an unexpected challenge regarding
teaching English since I was required to give face-to-face
tutorial sessions to 2 visually-impaired students (VIS) who
had difficulties with online activities. My main concern was
that I had no previous training. Therefore, I was not sure
about what to do first.
I then decided to think about some methods and theories
that could lead me to meet the blind students’ needs in the
face-to-face tutorial sessions and reflect on the accessibility
needed for certain digital materials. After covering the
review of Sharma (2019) and Brown (2003), I selected the
most suitable ones based on the idea that a single method
cannot satisfy all the needs of the second language learner of
English, and an eclectic approach might work.
I noticed that the Oral Approach and Situational
Language Teaching emphasize initially spoken language
teaching, and materials are taught orally as well before
presenting written forms. Students learn through repetition
and inductively. They rely on situations and are expected
to listen and repeat what the instructor says (Khalilova,
2021). The Audio-Lingual Method asks the learner to
repeat patterns until producing them spontaneously. Here,
conversations provide learners with materials and context,
and through them, they can obtain proper phonetic knowl-
edge (Mei, 2018). Total Physical Response (TPR) begins
by placing primary importance on listening comprehension
and coordinating speech and physical actions (Intarapan-
ich, 2013). In fact, in Colombia, in the last decade, some
researchers have tested the Total Physical Response and
Natural approach as language teaching methods to facilitate
the language learning process and guarantee the adaptabil-
ity and motivation of blind students (Torres, 2016). These
methods argue that “learning a foreign language mainly
relies on the hearing sense” (Jedynak, 2018, p. 201). It is, in
fact, the central means that VIS uses to acquire information.
Then, the day of the first meeting with my blind students
arrived. I decided that talking and listening to them was a
good start. No flashcards, no markers, no papers were going
to be the main characters this time. We had a normal conver-
sation. I noticed almost immediately their different skills.
One of them was a Braille instructor who disliked technol-
ogies such as YouTube, computers, and podcasts. The other
one worked in a restaurant, and he was a technology lover
who enjoyed keyboards shortcuts, using screen readers and
typing in forums. I knew after this meeting that technology
could not be out of our sessions, but I also realized how the
lack of accessibility was chasing us.
From this experience, I started wondering what roles
I would be performing here: facilitator, translator, reader,
among others. Were they strategies or roles? I asked myself.
I needed to know more. I did not want to give them a
low-quality class. Then, I explored the university’s options
for students with special needs, and I realized that policies
were unclear. I felt that the university was ignoring them,
and they were forced to use the virtual course exclusively
designed for sighted people.
As we know, technology has brought empowerment and
entitlement to many communities worldwide, but it has
also left behind those who suffer from a lack of accessibility
(Ullah, 2020). A clear example of that is what happens to
VIS in academic contexts. Accessibility and effective teaching
strategies for different groups of students with diverse forms
of disabilities in the EFL context represent a significant
concern since regulations, and authoritarian policies can be
somewhat limiting and dangerous than empowering and
enabling students to participate actively in virtual environ-
ments. Creating and adapting materials became an arduous
task since the course, books, and resources available are
primarily visual. Additionally, the complex relations between
educational experiences in Colombia affected by centralism,
different forms of violence, and discrimination influence the
access and equity to educate blind and visually-impaired
students.
This study is autoethnography, which corresponds
to the practice of critical analysis perspective on self “as
an object of inquiry and the sense in which selfhood is a
social construction” (Denzin, 20014, p.28). Through this, I
attempt to vividly illustrate what challenges I have faced as
a visually-impaired students’ teacher and what strategies I
have developed to address these challenges. It started as a
frustrating, demanding process, and self-reflection of what I
do to teach them constantly emerged while searching for a
way to become a better English teacher who was swimming
in the field of special education and is trying to raise the
voices of the marginalized students.
2. Literature Review
Different challenges identified in special education for
the VIS and the initial strategies applied in the past will be
Villalba (2022)
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described to illustrate what research has defined and the
evolution it has had to contextualize the problem stated.
Historically, protecting the rights of people with
disabilities has been a slow process. The more significant
judicial consideration must defeat stigma and perceptions
(Waterstone, 2014). As education is a fundamental right
for all granted in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the laws must help deal with the dominant problem
in the disability field I am addressing, the lack of access
to language learning that blind people suffer? First, I will
expose the early schools, methods, and strategies used to
teach VIS. Secondly, I will get closer to the first attempts to
teach languages to blind people, and finally, I will explore
how technology is responding to the current needs of VIS. I
found this historical review relevant to understand where we
are in terms of special needs pedagogies and avoid omitting
previous research works that might construct my selfhood.
2.1 Exploring initial efforts to teach blind people
Among the first efforts to offer primary education to
sensory disabled people, I encountered oralism and sign lan-
guage as ways to teach them (Rotatori, Bakken & Obiakor,
2011). In 1784, the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris was
the first school created explicitly for blind people. By 1829,
three critical events co-occurred, and the New England
Asylum was built for the Blind in The US (Rotatori, Bakken
& Obiakor, 2011), Louis Braille created his reading-writing
method with dots. The Coventry University in the UK be-
came a pioneer in special education by providing tutors with
a Disability Office and the Royal National College for the
Blind (RNC) (Orsini-Jones, M., 2009). Consequently, some
skills in terms of language teaching started to be considered,
such as the reading skills issues which were solved by using
Braille; writing tasks receive time adjustment, and speaking
and listening were re-thought when they were focused on
visual aids.
At this point, I explored what Cox & Dykes (2001)
argued that the limited nature of visual associations for
students with visual impairments has academic and class-
room implications. Subsequently, they indicate that the
physical orientation of students is a good start, as well as
appropriate activities to recognize objects, locations, and
partners. My main concern was that language teaching has
been primarily visual. I realized that a general tutor who has
visually-impaired students in the classroom must collaborate
with vision specialists to determine the best strategies. One
of these could be the support of sound and voice recording.
In the last half of the twentieth century, significant
progress for visually-impaired people was the invention of
sound reproduction (Stuckey, 1993). The telephone became
more accessible for ordinary people, and other methods
(records, cassette recordings, and radio) expanded the
access to information in the classroom. In this way, oralism,
Braille, physical orientation, and audio have evolved to start
systematizing education for blind people and have a consid-
erable influence in the EFL field eventually.
2.2 Teaching English to blind students
In the case of foreign language teaching, helping vis-
ually-impaired students to learn them has been addressed
in different studies abroad. In England, for instance,
“most lecturers agreed that the discipline required for the
advanced preparation of the teaching materials for students
with special educational needs also benefited other students”
(Orsini-Jones, M., 2009, p.3). However, I reflected that the
challenge was behind adapting specific resources, a subject
that demands time and requires orientation from specialized
instructors and centers.
Then, I explored the first official English courses for
blind people. I discovered that one of the first programs
for teaching English was developed by the Catholic Guild
for the blind in New York City in 1968. The focus was on
the principles of modern linguistic science and included
aural-oral method or training through the ear, adaptation of
materials, and later introduction of graphic symbols (Snyder
& Kesselman, 1972). In the late ’80s, Nikolic (1987) suggests
that visually-impaired learners can speak another language if
their strengths are capitalized. Here I noticed that the author
underlines the pedagogical challenges related to selecting
activities that foster their memory and good hearing.
Later, I found how Aikin (2003) developed didactic
materials for visually-impaired students in Spain, based on
her consideration that these students will learn different
languages if they have access to activities in which commu-
nicative functions are more important than the linguistic
code. That was a reason that led her to work with tactile
materials visually attractive to sighted students and helpful
for the ones that are not. In this way, I started to understand
that students who have access to flexible materials that
include sighted and visually-impaired students in the same
classroom can also promote school integration.
Other authors, such as Hanzálková (2006) and Coşkun
(2013), have focused on materials, equipment, and pro-
cedures available for teaching English to blind students.
Coşkun introduces his research on the use of T3 or talking
Learning to “see” again
4 Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2(3)
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tactile, a specially made Braille-free tactile diagram that is
placed on a pressure-sensitive surface. It uses a combination
of touch, sound, and learning systems called audio-haptic
pedagogy by creating tactile diagrams carrying layers of
information that can be vocal, musical, or other audio
sounds (Coşkun, 2013).
2.3 New technologies, new challenges
In terms of accessibility, I can recognize that smart-
phone-based assistive technologies are an emerging trend
for blind people. The accessibility services such as “talking
back, haptic feedback, screen magnifier, large text, color
contrast, shortcuts, among others, are facilitating blind and
visually-impaired people in performing several operations”
(Khan, Khusro & Alam, 2018, p.2775). These services allow
users to have an assistant while taking notes or finding
locations, increasing the size of text or graphs when there is
a low vision condition, avoiding colour confusion for colour
blindness, and having easy access to icons.
Today, experts even talk about the Universal learner who
has emerged then as an online integrated learning module
that incorporates accessible technology and universal design
for learning to improve online education for VIS (Sapp,
2009). Most applications of universal design in such materi-
als have focused on providing access through design features
that work with adaptive software, such as screen readers, or
additional options, such as captioning (Rose & Meyer, 2002).
While implementing all these new materials and adjust-
ments, overcoming several issues emerge in online, blended,
and traditional scenarios. In Asia, for example, some works
have been done to reveal the instructions modifications and
the unique ways that blind students might learn English
(Melie et al., 2020; Olivares, 2020; Setyawati et al., 2018).
One of these projects developed by Susanto & Nanda (2018)
specifies the needs of the students and the general implica-
tions of their visual impairments, such as difficulties with
Non-Visual Desktop Access and reading Braille materials.
Other challenges both blind students and teachers faced
were discussed by Kocyigit & Artar (2015). These authors
could group under two main headings these challenges:
emotional and pedagogical. The emotional part was related
to the number of negative feelings they might encounter,
and the pedagogical challenges were connected to the
barriers and problems while teaching. For Lund & Chemi
(2015), emotions can influence the ways students interact
with the world, and they can model the way teachers reflect
and develop their pedagogical strategies. In this part, my
research work matches the same concerns toward these
types of challenges, especially the emotional part behind
every pedagogical action performed in class in which I am
attempting to teach English to blind individuals either while
using online materials or adapted ones.
2.4 Gaps in the literature
These previous studies have shown the evolution of the
materials and strategies implemented by teachers. This
literature review also illustrates that several pedagogical and
emotional challenges remain the same as the population’s
needs evolve. They are simply translated to other scenarios
such as virtual environments.
This autoethnography attempts to address the gap
between what is known about language teaching strategies
and the emotional and pedagogical challenges implied in
teaching EFL to VIS. The idea is to itemize aspects to guide
teachers when the integration of special education and
language learning meets and offer opportunities to become
more visible in this field.
3. Theoretical Framework
After reviewing different challenges while teaching blind
students and the efforts made toward them through history,
it is essential to support how theories have responded to
sketch special education before interwoven it with foreign
language learning.
3.1 Sociocultural theory
From the interpretive perspective, it was essential
to understand the social substance and dynamic of the
organic impairment to find the most effective psychological
compensation (Vygotsky, 1983). Then, the social/cultural
implication of disability and Vygotsky’s paradigm for special
education was suitable in this qualitative study.
Special education was the primary domain used by
Vygotsky to obtain data to support his general theoretical
conceptions (Gindis, 1990). These studies helped modify the
purpose of special education from giving supervisory care to
educating students. These ground-breaking and even revo-
lutionary educational studies also established the benefits of
early intervention and helped create the commitment to the
development of the field of special education.
I selected Vygotsky because he asserts that impairment
leads to a restructuring of social relationships and a dis-
placement of all behavior systems. The primary problem of
Villalba (2022)
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disability is not the impairment itself but its social implica-
tions (Gindis, 1990). He promoted an exceptional education
model called inclusion based on positive differentiation
in which education starts from the individual’s strengths
instead of the weaknesses.
According to a social constructivist perspective, the
“disabled identity results from social, cultural, environmen-
tal and/or political factors such as social discrimination
and power relationships” (Abeele, de Cock, & Roe, 2012, p.
130). Other authors consider that the group of practices and
actions that affect people’s lives is what makes them disabled
(Moser, 2006).
Based on the definitions above, my blind students may
experience problems with access to certain activities and
gaining reception within the community. Therefore, two
essential aspects emerged to solve this: “understanding the
opportunities and challenges of Information and Communi-
cationTechnology (ICT) for people with disability, give us a
broader understanding of the possible impact virtual worlds
may have on people with disability” (Stendal, 2012, p.2)
and scaffolding defined as “providing contextual supports
for meaning by using simplified language, teacher modeling,
cooperative learning and hands-on learning” (Ovando,
Collier, & Combs, 2003, p. 345).
What I can reflect from this is that the ICT might work
as an efficient mediation for the challenges if it is adapted
and the human support recognized as scaffolding could turn
to me into an effective one since I was trying to overcome
possible emotional challenges because of the vulnerable
nature of disability in Colombia and the evident lack of web
accessibility in my virtual English course.
Authors such as Porayska-Pomsta & Pain recognize that
providing students with cognitive and affective support is
equally vital to their fruitful learning (2004). This concept
was underlined in this autoethnographic project since the
analysis of sets of human-human tutorial and classroom
dialogues was being made. There are tremendous amounts
of linguistic politeness to be central to successful commu-
nication due to the particular circumstances surrounding a
tutorial session with two blind students looking for compre-
hensive support after being segregated from their virtual
environments.
3.2 Critical disability theory and accessibility
As I could understand from sociocultural theory, the
challenge behind disability is the marginalization of the
individuals in terms of power and domination and the
failure of society to accommodate such
Differences. This is how the critical social theory emerges
as an emancipatory dialogue thinking from the diversity in
which gender and disability are ways of signifying relation-
ships of power (Garland-Thomson, 1996).
A tentacle from this critical social theory is called the
critical disability theory, “a diverse set of approaches that
essentially seek to theorize disability as a cultural, political,
and social phenomenon, rather than an individualized,
medical matter attached to the body” (Hall, 2019). Conse-
quently, I selected this critical disability theory as a manner
to find a solution that could respond to the inclusion of blind
students in the EFL classroom and as a way to get attached
to a deeper philosophical view of it through Habermas’s
approach looking toward the universality as the real power
of the web (Adam & Kreps, 2006).
In this concept of universality, I found the feeling of
inclusion in the air. However, the graphical nature of the
standard interface is still the main concern I have in terms
of accessibility. People with low vision or visual acuity loss
(Leat, Legge & Bullimore, 1999) can play with specialized
monitors or size adjustments, others with colour blindness
usually deal with high contrasts and images, but those
considered legally blind and completely sightless represent
a considerable challenge since they face images, tables,
frames, and charts without description (Paciello, 2000).
In this way, accessibility should be considered a combina-
tion of web accessibility guidelines, standards, and coding to
deal with disabilities and extend the opportunity to navigate,
identify and interact with them (Rutter et al., 2007). Since
this is a demanding process, I started to understand that
there is no single formula for accessibility, and it entails
more than one solution and sometimes complex alternatives.
Most approaches are aimed at facilitating the access of
blind users to computers through alternative sensory chan-
nels such as the auditory channel and tactile devices (Harper
& Yesilada, 2008). Universal design features are intended
to increase access to educational materials presented only
visually by making the learning goals achievable by indi-
viduals with vast differences in their abilities (Saap, 2009).
These last concepts gave me some ideas about dealing with
the materials. The last missing aspect was regarding the
teaching strategies that I could implement in EFL teaching
while taking care of my student’s unique needs.
Learning to “see” again
6 Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2(3)
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4. Research design
4.1 Autoethnography
Autoethnography encompasses an array of different eth-
nographic techniques that in some way embrace the “self”
or “I” of research (Ellis, 2004 ;) and “lets you use yourself
to get to the culture” (Pelias, 2003, p. 372). Therefore, it is
an excellent way to get closer to what personal experience
can explore in a particular case, such as teaching visual-
ly-impaired students in EFL. While autoethnography is an
emergent form of research, some studies have been conduct-
ed on ESL students and EFL teachers in which topics such as
identity, EFL textbooks, immigration, and ESL writing have
been discussed (Lapidus et al., 2013; Kanno & Norton, 2003;
Norton, 2000, 2001).
Regarding the type of autoethnography, as Norman
Denzin (1997, 228) claims: evocative auto ethnographers
“bypass the representational problem by invoking an episte-
mology of emotion, moving the reader to feel the feelings of
the other.” Using the examples of real-life experiences while
teaching visually-impaired people is poorly developed and
researched, and it is interesting to discover the emotions be-
hind it. In fact, through evocative autoethnography, substan-
tive contribution to social understanding is underlined, and
space for reflexivity, emotional impact (Lake, 2015), and the
description of reality by the researcher involved is a valuable
feature to the way pedagogy emerges in special needs con-
text. Since the main focus of this work was to describe the
emotional and pedagogical challenges faced as an English
teacher who is struggling with VIS for the very first time,
an autoethnography was selected due to its methodological
principle of focusing on one specific aspect of being and how
it was internalized by interacting with others and exploring
one’s “learning experience, struggles, solutions, failures and
successes” (Kaveh, 2012, p.7). Autoethnography can also
“provide a medium for an evocative story, compel emotional
responses and activate a critical analysis of her own lived
experiences” (Hagan, 2005, p. 401).
For this research, the common purpose of selecting
autoethnography also has to do with the disregarded voices
of tutors and instructors who day after day try to work in
favor of inclusion even if the institution or government is not
guiding the process. It also favors the individuals to become
part of the transformation of education and become visible
among the others.
4.2 Research questions
• RQ1. What challenges have I faced as a visually-im-
paired students’ teacher?
• RQ2. What strategies have I developed to address
these challenges?
To answer the questions, I collected data from my field
notes, self-observation, and self-reflection made for one
month and memories I had from previous semesters before
the pandemic. I could have in situ sessions, make questions
in real-time, and observe their behavior, gestures, and even
their tone. Since auto ethnographies allow me to write
about remembered moments selectively perceived to have
a significant influence (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011), I
collected eleven self-observation pages analysed by coding
what events were pedagogical challenges and which were
emotional. I maintained a sequential order of my self-re-
flection in the tutorial sessions with the blind students by
adding a reflection paragraph for each self-observation
page. I categorized the pedagogical challenges every time I
encountered a difficulty connected to the university, lesson
planning, material accessibility, and lack of training. I
decided to focus on the feelings I had every time I faced a
pedagogical challenge for the emotional ones. For instance,
self-questioning my decisions as a teacher, controlling the
frustration, dealing with fears, or simply looking for support.
I relied upon the self-observation and a few field notes
taken simultaneously while having the face-to-face sessions
because I wanted to evoke in readers a feeling that the
experience described is lifelike. Collecting the information
directly from the participants, who became a valuable source
of continuous evaluation and self-analysis, was also a way to
show coherence to make my VIS more visible.
For each session, I included a classification of the teach-
ing strategies I applied to name my actions and describe how
this implementation helped me overcome the challenges.
Finally, field notes were shorter since only four sessions in-
cluded them, but they were helpful to focus on the materials
used and describe how VIS manipulated them.
4.3 Ethics and quality
To assure the quality or trustworthiness of this study,
actual blind students are part of the interaction with me,
transcripts of the recorded classes are available to check
the reliability of the data collected and the software at last.
It is helping me organize the information so I can have a
clear picture of the challenges mentioned and the recurrent
teaching strategies. People involved in the field notes and
Villalba (2022)
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my story also provided consent to allow me to use their
opinions and perceptions of the class and their personal
experiences as learners. This process was developed as
part of understanding the ethical issues that come with
autoethnography. I find my monologic voice and dialogic
and multiplicity of other voices reported through my internal
speech (Roth, 2009).
5. Results
This autoethnography exposes a closer view of the
challenges I have faced as an EFL teacher for blind students
and the teaching strategies implemented to overcome them
initially.
From the list in Figure 1, the significant pedagogical chal-
lenges were about the following three aspects: First, lack of
institutional support (when I searched for the institutional
guidelines, I found unclear inclusion policies). Secondly, lack
of training in this field and a lack of knowledge regarding
Braille and inclusive lesson planning. The first two challeng-
es made me feel that things were beyond my control because
there were no institutional documents to read and people in
charge. Working alone did not offer solid support, and hence
I decided to focus on the third most significant challenge
that seemed more manageable to me. Braille gave the
impression to be the first resource my blind student’s trust;
I felt frustrated for not having the ability to communicate
by using this code or incorporating it into our sessions. My
initial attempts to learn it was also useless since I felt I had
no talent, and my learning process was too slow.
Right after this initial experience, three essential inci-
dents emerged:
1. There were Braille printers that I could use without
learning Braille previously.
2. The Braille code in English was different from
Spanish, and it was not a universal code.
3. I explored two web pages that were the pioneers
of visually-impaired learning and instruction: The
Perkins School for the blind and the Hadley School
for the blind in The United States.
These two sites offered general guidelines, valuable
courses and, materials. At that moment, I felt that I was not
the only teacher under the same circumstances, and I felt
encouraged to conduct more research.
The fourth and the fifth most common challenges
were adapting materials for VIS and redesigning lesson
plans. In writing, I observed that the blind students needed
to participate in a collaborative asynchronous forum that
was open for almost a month. In the registered virtual
course, they have a different tutor assigned. I felt that the
university’s dynamic was to encourage blind students to
work in Moodle by receiving my assistance (which is unfair
for them). I decided then to inform the virtual tutor about
the students’ situation, and he allowed them to prepare
an oral presentation using the same topic from the writing
section.
Nonetheless, I was concerned about it because it is
frustrating not developing the activity as their partners do.
Additionally, they were interested in learning about the way
English is written, so I brought the alphabet made of foamy
to maintain the interest they had in a friendly manner and
explain spelling easily. Figure 1 indicates what pedagogical
challenges were more common and least evident in the
self-observation description and field notes.
6. Findings
Through this autoethnography, a closer view of the chal-
lenges I have faced as an EFL teacher for blind students and
the teaching strategies implemented to initially overcome
them are exposed.
6.1 Pedagogical challenges
From the list in Figure 1, the major pedagogical chal-
lenges were about the following three aspects: First, lack of
institutional support (when I searched for the institutional
guidelines, I found unclear inclusion policies). Secondly,
lack of training in this field and lack of knowledge regarding
Braille and inclusive lesson planning. The first two challeng-
es made me feel that things were beyond my control because
there were no institutional documents to read and people
in charge. Working alone did not offer actual support and
hence I decided to focus on the third biggest challenge that
seemed more manageable to me. Braille gave the impression
to be the first resource my blind students trust, I felt frustrat-
ed for not having the ability to communicate by using this
code or incorporating it into our sessions. My initial attempts
to learn it were also useless since I felt I had no talent for it
and my learning process was too slow.
Right after this initial experience, three important inci-
dents emerged. First, there were Braille printers that I could
use without learning Braille previously. Second, Braille code
in English was different from Spanish, it was not a universal
code. Thirdly, I explored two web pages that were the
Learning to “see” again
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pioneers of visually-impaired learning and instruction: The
Perkins School for the blind and the Hadley school for the
blind in The United States. These two sites offered general
guidelines, useful courses and, materials. In that moment, I
felt that I was not the only teacher under the same circum-
stances, and I felt encouraged to conduct more research.
The fourth and the fifth most common challenges were
adapting materials for VIS and redesigning lesson plans.
I could observe that in writing, it was mandatory for the
blind students to participate in a collaborative asynchronous
forum that is opened for almost a month. In the registered
virtual course, they have a different tutor assigned and I
felt that the dynamic of the university was to encourage the
blind student to work in Moodle by receiving my assistance
(which is unfair for them) I decided then to inform the
virtual tutor about the students’ situation and he allowed
them to prepare an oral presentation using the same topic
from the writing section. Nonetheless, I was concerned
about it because it is frustrating the fact of not developing
the activity as their partners do. Additionally, they had
interest in learning about the way English is written, so I
brought the alphabet made of foamy to maintain the interest
they had in a friendly manner and explain spelling easily.
Figure 1 indicates what pedagogical challenges were more
common and least evident in the self-observation description
and field notes.
6.2 Emotional challenges
While the pedagogical challenges were related to the
interaction with the English course, the emotional challenges
were a response to these pedagogical problems that made
me initially feel helpless. Then, a big question I asked myself
when I started this process, Am I currently prepared to teach
blind people?
A massive wave of negative thoughts covered my head
nonstop. Reflecting on every decision made and every action
taken during my sessions with the blind students became
my daily routine. It was like a metacognitive strategy that
I was using to monitor what I was doing wrong or not. I
categorized it then as impotence and was the most common
emotional challenge since, through it, I realized I could
not solve all the pedagogical challenges immediately. I
constantly wrote impressions and thoughts, and my inner
voice was active daily, looking for my constant improvement
but affected by a feeling of powerlessness. This led me to the
second most relevant emotional challenge that reduced my
levels of anguish due to the crisis I had at the beginning.
One of the most vivid examples of this was when I went
to the ICT leader office to request some assistance in terms
of accessibility, and he replied:
You must be very careful with these blind people because
of their condition. They become manipulators. A braille
printer needs an expert, and we do not have any.
I was in shock. The level of prejudices was high, and he
simply did not care. I felt he despised my students, but his
attitude encouraged me to continue looking for options to
start reducing my distressful feelings. I did not want to be
Figure 1. Pedagogical challenges recurrence in tutorial sessions with visually impaired students
Villalba (2022)
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like him, which convinced me to become part of the solu-
tion. Consequently, I decided to request the braille printer
from my boss. Still, she said that I had to wait for permission
from the central office (Colombia is a centralist country and
depends on the decisions made in the capital city). I formally
understood that I needed to create my materials and lessons
to continue supporting them without any institutional help.
The last two challenges encountered were related to my
fear of failing since I wanted to give hope to these students
while learning English. Simultaneously, I did not want to
discriminate them unconsciously with language, behavior, or
suppositions that could increase their frustration toward the
course.
As it is seen in Figure 2, 5 main emotional challenges
recurrence can be analysed. In Table 1, each emotional
challenge contains a type of pedagogical challenge that is
connected to its origin.
6.3 Scaffolding and teaching strategies
The emotional process behind the pedagogical challenges
encountered in the tutorial sessions revealed several feelings
that led to my selection of strategies. I felt the necessity to
implement techniques from the literature review, such as the
principles behind the oral and audio-lingual methods and
the practical scaffolding suggestions. At this level, I felt that
my level of empathy was directly affecting my performance
as an English teacher. Grading became less critical, a desire
to create materials emerged and feelings of anger toward the
government obliged me to assume this challenge to protest.
I think this is the reason why effective scaffolding was the
main character. I opted to use strategies that could guaran-
tee the motivation and support that were missing from the
institutions in charge and the willingness to communicate.
Since they could not see what was presented on the screen, I
incorporated specific affective scaffolding here to guarantee
the acceptance of the materials adopted and avoid blocking
and lack of confidence. Therefore, in these sessions, I did
not use expressions such as Do not say it, you are entirely
wrong, I cannot understand you.
In contrast, I included expressions related to the encour-
agement of interest, such as your attempt are great, or I trust
your memory. I felt aware of the necessity of using different
types of scaffolding to accomplish the lesson’s objectives
and deal with the unique needs of these students. Certain
opinions expressed by the students were related to how
helpful my modeling might be to one of them. For instance,
the following extract is shared:
Ahh, now that you say it, what helps me the most
is when your intonation sounds like a question or a
surprise? Your voice is sweet and happy. For example,
you told me the expression the other day: Of course, I
did not know the meaning, but I associate it with Claro
in Spanish. (Interview # 2)
I could infer that the student prefers my effective
scaffolding to face records on his own because, at the level
at which he is now, he feels more comfortable if I gradually
provide the input. Simultaneously, I feel that I am con-
trolling his frustration by using politeness in some way.
Figure 2. Emotional challenges recurrence in tutorial sessions with visually impaired students
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Table 1. Emotional Challenges Generated by Pedagogical Challenges
Impotence Reducing anguish Reducing
frustration
Fear of failing Discriminating
unconsciously
Lack of institutional
support
Redesigning lesson
plans
Evaluating materials
for VIS
Braille knowledge Recognizing multi-
sensory skills
Lack of devices Adapting materials
for VIS
Creating materials for
VIS
Lack of inclusive
education training
Time constraints
Lack of accessible
materials
Curriculum compo-
nents
Moreover, by questioning the students, I could promote
their leading role in their learning process and learn from
them while maintaining dialogues. Another conclusion
from the endless questions I addressed was that one tutorial
session per week was not enough to help my blind students.
I planned to work with him every Thursday for 2 hours to
use the Moodle platform exercises as well. To guarantee time
efficiency, I selected the following strategies based on the
answers given by the blind students: translating instructions
from Moodle to L1 and describing each virtual environment
in detail (screen description) would be helpful for them.
Finally, listing the steps to follow and eliciting from their
visual residue (trusting what they remember when they
could see before losing their sight) helped me to contex-
tualize them quickly and give meaningful examples of the
lessons or tasks given.
In this figure, it is appreciated the number of teaching
strategies implemented and the frequency of use.
Figure 4 shows the strategies implemented to counteract
some examples of both types of challenges at the same
time. It also shows examples of pedagogical challenges that
originate emotional challenge directly.
7. Discussion
The findings revealed how pedagogical challenges
derived emotional challenges and how they are interrelated
to the teaching strategies applied to cope with them. The
first research question demands determining the challenges
faced as a visually-impaired students’ teacher. In this
Figure 3. Teaching strategies implemented in tutorial
sessions with visually-impaired students
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Figure 4. Teaching strategies interrelated to pedagogical and emotional challenges
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autoethnography, there were five main pedagogical challeng-
es out of twelve:
• Lack of institutional support
• Lack of training in special education
• Lack of Braille knowledge
• Adapting materials for VIS
• Redesigning lesson plans
The first three challenges exposed the fact that actions
that affect people’s lives make them disabled, as Moser
mentioned (2006). The sociocultural approach clarifies
the errors made by institutions while offering a diminished
version of the curriculum and education and ignoring the
inclusion plan. Here, the university was ignoring this critical
aspect, and the VIS should not be forced to use a virtual
course that is inaccessible. This approach indicates the mis-
conceptions toward disability as a simple medical problem
because it outlines how the person deals with the restrictions
of their environment regarding the disability itself.
The last two challenges revealed what Carter, Nunan &
Credo claimed about material design. In materials develop-
ment, should materials be driven by theory or practice, or
should syllabus needs drive them? Learner needs? or market
needs? (2011). These unresolved issues affected the blind
students’ rights since the online materials were not accessi-
ble. The alternative sensory channels such as the auditory
channel and tactile devices suggested by Harper & Yesilada
(2008) were not available either. This situation reveals that
other interests, such as political ones, were over the VIS
needs.
There were five emotional challenges encountered:
impotence, reducing anguish, reducing frustration, fear of
failing, and discriminating unconsciously. From this group,
the most common ones were the feelings of impotence and
attempted to reduce the anguish. One factor that could
have increased the levels of anguish and impotence were
the social implications of sensory disabilities since barriers
from the negative imaginaries and the biomedical view that
endure in society cause exclusion (Oviedo et al., 2021) that
even might directly affect teachers and instructors around
them who found themselves trapped.
The fear of failing and discriminating against VIS
unconsciously were also relevant findings since these are
initial misconceptions to blind people that any instructor
might face, such as the ones Monbeck refers to as idealized
views and wrong impressions such as helpless, maladjusted,
or rejected people (1996). These emotions were normal and
could be overcome by questioning students to learn from
them and increase self-reflection toward them.
However, previous studies that are focused on the tech-
niques and materials EFL teachers use to teach VIS, body
movement experience, and language learning in VIS and the
challenges both blind students and teachers faced in their
learning or teaching processes (Başaran, 2012; Kashdan &
Barnes, 2002; Kocyigit & Artar, 2015), have not determined
yet to what degree the challenges and restrictions met can
affect the VIS learning experience. This could be considered
a limitation of the study and lead other researchers to
explore this issue deeply.
Regarding the second research question, fourteen teach-
ing strategies were applied. The questioning was the most
used strategy since there was a necessity to understand what
the VIS wanted, their previous experiences, and learning
styles. Additionally, for redesigning the lesson plans, adapt-
ing the materials, or simply creating new ones, a dialogic
exercise with VIS was appropriate to listen and understand
what fits their demands. From this exercise of questioning
VIS, it could be inferred that differentiated instructional
strategies are a way to respond to the variance among
learners. Teaching EFL 4 macro-skills (listening, speaking,
reading, and writing) appear to require some degree of
differentiated instruction (Lewin-Jones & Hodgson, 2004).
As such, content must be carefully selected, and a social
component is mandatory since UDL involves:
• Action and expression for demonstrating what VIS
knows.
• Engagement.
• Interaction with other members of the group.
Suppose the course fails at it, as Bohman claims. In that
case, it is necessary to incorporate standards into a social
debate to describe changes (2005) that can eventually
incorporate social and cultural aspects of language learning
into the English course. According to the answers given, VIS
finds listening and writing less interactive and demands little
social interaction due to phonics and spelling recognition
difficulties and forum collaboratively work (overwhelmed by
visuals without descriptions). Therefore, exploring the prin-
ciples of universal learning design would eventually shape
the way English is taught to VIS. It allows students with
disabilities to access courses without adaptation. It allows
the coursework to be available in various formats for the
non-disabled, making it easier for everyone to access. It is
an approach that recognizes many instructional pedagogies
that facilitate accessibility for diverse learners (Burgstahler,
2009).
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Effective scaffolding was also one of the main features
in this process since this strategy guarantees encouraging
students to advance to the next step in learning a language
and avoid negative emotions that can hinder their learning
(Boekaerts, 2007). This offers more confidence and sets the
affective scenario for self-improvement as an EFL teacher
under a humanistic perspective.
Several other teaching strategies were influenced by the
affective and polite character mentioned from this selected
strategy. For instance, the way modeling was shared through
the incorporation of laugh, positive feedback, and motiva-
tion enhancement guided the learning process to meet the
VIS needs. With the growth of undergraduate students with
disabilities, teachers need to be confident in their commu-
nication tactics by incorporating politeness and face-nego-
tiation theories (Myers et al., 2012). Perhaps, the selection
of strategies has had another component equally relevant to
the research. The necessity of compensation and minimizing
both types of challenges require teachers to cover socio-af-
fective, cognitive, and context-based or emerging strategies
to respond to the situation.
8. Conclusion
The lack of guidelines and institutional support repre-
sents a significant concern beyond teachers’ performance.
From the autoethnographic perspective, I evaluated what I
could determine as challenges and teaching strategies, but
the implications that remain external and directly affect
my work were approached rapidly. However, the impact of
what the government and universities do about inclusion
and web accessibility meaningfully modifies the situation.
The sense of frustration and abandonment established in the
emotional challenges list could gradually be modified with
more support. Finally, it would be another topic for research
to understand the critical situation of inclusion in South
American countries that will help us have a clear picture of
the relationships of dominance that do not contribute to the
optimal participation of disabled learners.
Colombia has started the inclusion journey by not
denying access to education to blind people and those with
any visual impairment. Nevertheless, it is still far from
including them and supporting them appropriately in public
higher education institutions. English as a subject could be
that flexible field in which the first steps could be given due
to language and the skills implied, which are not necessarily
attached to visual aids or the graphic nature of virtual
environments.
The journey toward universalization of virtual courses
has started, and I feel encouraged by what web accessibility
could eventually bring to the field of special education and
the opportunities that could bring to blind learners. There
must be a balance of teamwork between web designers and
instructors who have the responsibility to translate scaffold-
ing to the digital area.
I could recognize through this experience that what I
needed to do was far beyond that, and I needed to look for
more options to expand my new portfolio of redesigned
learning activities based on their particular needs. Then, my
self-reflection went over the adaptation of materials and the
recognition of multisensory skills in the way that the theory
behind universalization and accessibility indicated. Subse-
quently, I started evaluating what web accessibility meant
and how the creation of my materials could compensate for
that. Finally, what blind students are doing, in general, is
looking for comprehensive support after being segregated
from their virtual environments. Then, recognizing this is the
starting point of a humanistic virtual course design for them.
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Acknowledgements
This paper draws on research undertaken as part of the Doctoral Programme in E-Research
and Technology Enhanced Learning in the Department of Educational Research at Lancas-
ter University.
About the author
Karen Villalba is a current student of the Doctoral Programme in e-Research and Technology
Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University. She holds a master’s degree in English teaching
from Universidad del Norte, Colombia. She has twelve years of experience as an English
teacher in undergraduate programs and eight years of experience as a virtual tutor. The
main research topics of her interest are about special education, EFL and technologies,
mobile learning, and sensory disabilities.
Email: karenramos@uninorte.edu.co ORCID: 0000-0002-5068-46530000-0002-5068-4653
Email: karen.villalba.ramos@gmail.com