@Science: a network about science accessibility for university students

At present, visually impaired students are strongly discouraged to attend university scientific studies, especially because of the lack of scientific resources fully accessible through assistive technologies, the difficulty to attend scientific university lectures based on explanations employing transparencies with mathematical expressions as well as graphical representations and the tools to work on mathematical expressions, which are often partially usable or incomplete for advanced subjects. Furthermore, the variety all over Europe of national braille codes to represent mathematical expressions and the language dependence of audio books recorded by human readers make difficult a cross country exchange of knowledge and resources. Some universities have been working on the improvement of assistive technologies in science learning for many years and they have collected best experiences, tools, accessible scientific resources and effective and efficient methods. Unfortunately, up to now many of these best practices and educational resources haven't got widespread all over Europe. In order to share knowledge among universities about science accessibility by visually impaired people and to produce guidelines and to document best practices, the @Science thematic network was established. It is supported for two years by the European Union eContent- Plus Programme. It involves six founding members from five European countries: Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Belgium and France. In the project lifetime, collaboration actions will be undertaken so as to involve in the thematic network other universities, software and hardware manufacturers, publishers, associations for visually impaired persons and students themselves. In so doing, each group will contribute with its experience and will gain knowledge from other experiences. Moreover, the guidelines and best practices will be the result of a two years exchange of knowledge among experts and end users. At first, this paper will introduce the main barriers which affect blind students in going through scientific studies. Then, it will present the objectives and the methodology of the @Science network

Experiences of People with Visual Impairments in Accessing Online Information and Services: A Systematic Literature Review

The World Wide Web is the largest source of electronic information in the world. Over the years, rapid advances in the internet have made it less accessible thereby making it increasingly difficult for people with visual impairments to access online information and services. This paper systematically reviews previous research to identify challenges that people with visual impairments face, and the role of accessibility technologies and guidelines to support people with visual impairments in their access to online information and services. The findings discuss three categories emerged from the literature: inaccessible content for the visually impaired, improving website accessibility for the visually impaired, and accessibility technologies and their benefits and limitations for people with visual impairments. The findings further discuss the usability issues which are present in accessing online content, the different attempts that have been made to mitigate these problems, and the different guidelines and tools that can be adopted by web designers to make websites more accessible for the visually impaired. It also discusses the versatility and availability of various accessibility technologies. Although these technologies provide basic access to online information, they are greatly limited in their functionality. Therefore, it is up to the web designers to change their perceptions when designing websites. With the proper use of the guidelines, the capabilities of accessibility technologies can be accommodated in making information provided accessible to all users including those with visual impairments. The contributions of this research are that it offers a rigorous narrative review to summarise the state of knowledge on challenges that people with visual impairments face in accessing online information and services, the support and limitations of accessibility technologies in addressing some of these challenges. In addition, this study identifies gaps and areas that deserve more scrutiny in future research including digital exclusion issues among the visually impaired, explanation on the unwillingness of web designers to develop accessible websites, improvements to accessibility technologies to support increasingly visually complex websites, among others. Since the visually impaired are a diverse group with different degrees of impairments, needs and preferences, we encourage researchers to involve them in future studies. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol11/iss2/3

Promoting game accessibility: Experiencing an induction on inclusive design practice at the global games jam

Copyright @ 2013 The AuthorsThe Global Games Jam (GGJ) attracts many people who are passionate about games development, coming from a range of educational backgrounds. Therefore, the event can be experienced by novices and student developers as an opportunity for learning. This provides an opening to promote themes and ideas that could help form future thinking about games design, emerging as a form of induction on key design issues for new practitioners. Such an approach aims to raise awareness about issues which learners could help develop and take with them into industry. However, the experience itself affords a deep experiential rhetoric and dialogue with experts that could be an effective pedagogical tool for issues seldom addressed deeply in formal educational settings. This paper describes an account by one such individual, being introduced to game accessibility through participation in the GGJ. As such, it is not intended as a rigorous empirical analysis, but rather a perspective on one way a game jam can be experienced, inviting further research on the topic

Pictures in Your Mind: Using Interactive Gesture-Controlled Reliefs to Explore Art

Tactile reliefs offer many benefits over the more classic raised line drawings or tactile diagrams, as depth, 3D shape, and surface textures are directly perceivable. Although often created for blind and visually impaired (BVI) people, a wider range of people may benefit from such multimodal material. However, some reliefs are still difficult to understand without proper guidance or accompanying verbal descriptions, hindering autonomous exploration. In this work, we present a gesture-controlled interactive audio guide (IAG) based on recent low-cost depth cameras that can be operated directly with the hands on relief surfaces during tactile exploration. The interactively explorable, location-dependent verbal and captioned descriptions promise rapid tactile accessibility to 2.5D spatial information in a home or education setting, to online resources, or as a kiosk installation at public places. We present a working prototype, discuss design decisions, and present the results of two evaluation studies: the first with 13 BVI test users and the second follow-up study with 14 test users across a wide range of people with differences and difficulties associated with perception, memory, cognition, and communication. The participant-led research method of this latter study prompted new, significant and innovative developments

Using Markup Languages for Accessible Scientific, Technical, and Scholarly Document Creation

In using software to write a scientific, technical, or other scholarly document, authors have essentially two options. They can either write it in a ‘what you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) editor such as a word processor, or write it in a text editor using a markup language such as HTML, LaTeX, Markdown, or AsciiDoc. This paper gives an overview of the latter approach, focusing on both the non-visual accessibility of the writing process, and that of the documents produced. Currently popular markup languages and established tools associated with them are introduced. Support for mathematical notation is considered. In addition, domain-specific programming languages for constructing various types of diagrams can be well integrated into the document production process. These languages offer interesting potential to facilitate the non-visual creation of graphical content, while raising insufficiently explored research questions. The flexibility with which documents written in current markup languages can be converted to different output formats is emphasized. These formats include HTML, EPUB, and PDF, as well as file formats used by contemporary word processors. Such conversion facilities can serve as means of enhancing the accessibility of a document both for the author (during the editing and proofreading process) and for those among the document’s recipients who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers and screen magnifiers. Current developments associated with markup languages and the accessibility of scientific or technical documents are described. The paper concludes with general commentary, together with a summary of opportunities for further research and software development

Surveillance on Tactile-Based Media Accessibility Levels for the Visually Impaired in Bandung Train Stations

This paper intended to survey tactile-based media accessibility levels for the visually impaired in train stations incorporated in Operational Region II Bandung. Data collection got conducted on interviews with 30 visually impaired. Research objects included context as an orientation and mobility (OM) system as stated in 'Regulation of the Minister of Transportation of the Republic of Indonesia Number 36 of 2019 concerning Minimum Service Standards for Transporting People by Train' and 'Regulation of the Minister of Public Works and Public Housing of the Republic of Indonesia Number 14 of 2017 concerning the Requirements for Building Facilities Convenience’, namely: tactile paving, braille sign , signage, map, information board, and ticket. Generally, the visually impaired did not receive good minimum services at the station since the universal design principles had not yet get applied to design tactile-based accessibility standards. The accessibility levels of those media came from the visually impaired pragmatical usage

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Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The changes to Section 508 of the 1998 amendments to the Rehabilitation Act were designed to strengthen current law to ensure that people with disabilities will have equity in the use o

”Beyond 3D printers”: understanding long-term digital fabrication practices for the education of visually impaired or blind youth

Disability professionals could use digital fabrication tools to provide customised assistive technologies or accessible media beneficial to the education of Blind or visually impaired youth. However, there is little documentation of long-term practices with these tools by professionals in this field, limiting our ability to support their work. We report on such practices in a French organisation, providing disability educational services and using digital fabrication since 2013, for six years. We trace how professionals defined how digital fabrication could and should be used through a range of projects, based on pedagogical uses and the constraints in creation, production and maintenance. We outline new research perspectives going beyond 3D printers and its promises of automation to embrace hybrid approaches currently supported by laser cutters, the learning and documentation process, and the production of accessible tactile media at a regional or national scale

Designing and Evaluating Accessible E-Learning for Students with Visual Impairments in K-12 Computing Education

This dissertation explores the pathways for making K-12 computing education more accessible for blind or visually impaired (BVI) learners. As computer science (CS) expands into K-12 education, more concerted efforts are required to ensure all students have equitable access to opportunities to pursue a career in computing. To determine their viability with BVI learners, I conducted three studies to assess current accessibility in CS curricula, materials, and learning environments. Study one was interviews with visually impaired developers; study two was interviews with K-12 teachers of visually impaired students; study three was a remote observation within a computer science course. My exploration revealed that most of CS education lacks the necessary accommodations for BVI students to learn at an equitable pace with sighted students. However, electronic learning (e-learning) was a theme that showed to provide the most accessible learning experience for BVI students, although even there, usability and accessibility challenges were present in online learning platforms. My dissertation engaged in a human-centered approach across three studies towards designing, developing, and evaluating an online learning management system (LMS) with the critical design elements to improve navigation and interaction with BVI users. Study one was a survey exploring the perception of readiness for taking online courses between sighted and visually impaired students. The findings from the survey fueled study two, which employed participatory design with storytelling with K-12 teachers and BVI students to learn more about their experiences using LMSs and how they imagine such systems to be more accessible. The findings led to developing the accessible learning content management system (ALCMS), a web-based platform for managing courses, course content, and course roster, evaluated in study three with high school students, both sighted and visually impaired, to determine its usability and accessibility. This research contributes with recommendations for including features and design elements to improve accessibility in existing LMSs and building new ones