Multimedia in life and education of visually impaired and blind people

The process of learning about the world is conditioned by our senses, the more senses are involved in the act of cognition, the greater our knowledge is. The limited perception of stimuli resulting from eye damage has a funda-mental impact on the cognitive, emotional, social, motor and communication spheres. It is difficult to imagine how limited the ability of visually impaired people to satisfy all their personal needs is. The use of multimedia for support and educational work can contribute greatly to the improvement of the quality of the general functioning of visually impaired people, not only in the aspect of teaching and learning.Proces poznawania świata jest warunkowany pracą naszych zmy-słów, im więcej zmysłów zostaje zaangażowanych w akt poznania, tym większa jest nasza wiedza. Wynikający z uszkodzenia wzroku ograniczony odbiór bodź-ców ma fundamentalny wpływ na sfery poznawcze, emocjonalne, społeczne, motoryczne i komunikacyjne. Trudno sobie wyobrazić, jak bardzo ograniczona zostaje możliwość zaspokojenia wszystkich potrzeb osobistych osób z dysfunk-cjami wzroku. Wykorzystanie multimediów do wsparcia i pracy edukacyjnej może przyczynić się do poprawy jakości ogólnego funkcjonowania nie tylko w aspekcie nauczania i uczenia się

Translating Scientific Content into Accessible Formats with Visually Impaired Learners: Recommendations and a Decision Aid Based on Haptic Rules of Perception

Students with visual impairments (VI) miss out on science because of inaccessible visual graphics (such as pictures and diagrams) of the phenomena that are the focus of curricula. My project examines how efforts to translate these into non-visual representations, such as raised line graphics, tend to be less effective than expected because they are perceived using “rules” of haptic perception by VI learners but developed using “rules”' of visual perception by sighted designers. In response, I introduce my recommendations, in the form of a decision aid, informed by a series of interlinked concatenated studies consisting of user testing, workshops, and co-design sessions composed of multi-disciplinary teams that included VI educators, learners, inclusive designers, musicians, and domain experts from engineering and the cognitive neuroscience

Instructional eLearning technologies for the vision impaired

The principal sensory modality employed in learning is vision, and that not only increases the difficulty for vision impaired students from accessing existing educational media but also the new and mostly visiocentric learning materials being offered through on-line delivery mechanisms. Using as a reference Certified Cisco Network Associate (CCNA) and IT Essentials courses, a study has been made of tools that can access such on-line systems and transcribe the materials into a form suitable for vision impaired learning. Modalities employed included haptic, tactile, audio and descriptive text. How such a multi-modal approach can achieve equivalent success for the vision impaired is demonstrated. However, the study also shows the limits of the current understanding of human perception, especially with respect to comprehending two and three dimensional objects and spaces when there is no recourse to vision

A framework for the assembly and delivery of multimodal graphics in E-learning environments

In recent years educators and education institutions have embraced E-Learning environments as a method of delivering content to and communicating with their learners. Particular attention needs to be paid to the accessibility of the content that each educator provides. In relation to graphics, content providers are instructed to provide textual alternatives for each graphic using either the “alt” attribute or the “longdesc” attribute of the HTML IMG tag. This is not always suitable for graphical concepts inherent in technical topics due to the spatial nature of the information. As there is currently no suggested alternative to the use of textual descriptions in E-Learning environments, blind learners are at a significant disadvantage when attempting to learn Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematical (STEM) subjects online. A new approach is required that will provide blind learners with the same learning capabilities enjoyed by their sighted peers in relation to graphics. Multimodal graphics combine the modalities of sound and touch in order to deliver graphical concepts to blind learners. Although they have proven successful, they can be time consuming to create and often require expertise in accessible graphic design. This thesis proposes an approach based on mainstream E-Learning techniques that can support non-experts in the assembly of multimodal graphics. The approach is known as the Multimodal Graphic Assembly and Delivery Framework (MGADF). It exploits a component based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to provide non experts with the ability to assemble multimodal graphics and integrate them into mainstream E-Learning environments. This thesis details the design of the system architecture, information architecture and methodologies of the MGADF. Proof of concept interfaces were implemented, based on the design, that clearly demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. The interfaces were used in an end-user evaluation that assessed the benefits of a component based approach for non-expert multimodal graphic producers

Teaching strategies used with a blind student in a bilingual bachelor program at Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira

Se encontró que no hay suficiente información, entrenamiento para profesores, materiales, publicaciones, planes de bilingüismo o investigaciones que guíen el proceso de aprendizaje de estudiantes ciegos en contextos bilingües. Esta es la razón por la cual los profesores han tenido que crear sus propias estrategias de enseñanza en un proceso constante de ensayo y error. Este estudio de caso cualitativo se preocupó por la falta de importancia que se le ha asignado a la población ciega en el campo educativo. Por esto, el objetivo de este proyecto fue encontrar estrategias de enseñanza para incluir al participante ciego en aulas de clase regulares de un programa bilingüe. Este proyecto se llevó a cabo en la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira con un grupo de cuatro profesores seleccionados por medio del muestreo no probabilístico debido al enfoque cualitativo del presente estudio. Adicionalmente, el estudiante ciego de la Licenciatura en Bilingüismo con Énfasis en Inglés fue escogido a través del muestreo por conveniencia debido a que él era el único estudiante ciego de este programa

Making Graphical Information Accessible Without Vision Using Touch-based Devices

Accessing graphical material such as graphs, figures, maps, and images is a major challenge for blind and visually impaired people. The traditional approaches that have addressed this issue have been plagued with various shortcomings (such as use of unintuitive sensory translation rules, prohibitive costs and limited portability), all hindering progress in reaching the blind and visually-impaired users. This thesis addresses aspects of these shortcomings, by designing and experimentally evaluating an intuitive approach —called a vibro-audio interface— for non-visual access to graphical material. The approach is based on commercially available touch-based devices (such as smartphones and tablets) where hand and finger movements over the display provide position and orientation cues by synchronously triggering vibration patterns, speech output and auditory cues, whenever an on-screen visual element is touched. Three human behavioral studies (Exp 1, 2, and 3) assessed usability of the vibro-audio interface by investigating whether its use leads to development of an accurate spatial representation of the graphical information being conveyed. Results demonstrated efficacy of the interface and importantly, showed that performance was functionally equivalent with that found using traditional hardcopy tactile graphics, which are the gold standard of non-visual graphical learning. One limitation of this approach is the limited screen real estate of commercial touch-screen devices. This means large and deep format graphics (e.g., maps) will not fit within the screen. Panning and zooming operations are traditional techniques to deal with this challenge but, performing these operations without vision (i.e., using touch) represents several computational challenges relating both to cognitive constraints of the user and technological constraints of the interface. To address these issues, two human behavioral experiments were conducted, that assessed the influence of panning (Exp 4) and zooming (Exp 5) operations in non-visual learning of graphical material and its related human factors. Results from experiments 4 and 5 indicated that the incorporation of panning and zooming operations enhances the non-visual learning process and leads to development of more accurate spatial representation. Together, this thesis demonstrates that the proposed approach —using a vibro-audio interface— is a viable multimodal solution for presenting dynamic graphical information to blind and visually-impaired persons and supporting development of accurate spatial representations of otherwise inaccessible graphical materials

Will the Dazzling Promise Blind Us? Using Technology in the Beginning Public Speaking Course

Because proponents of technology promise that by using electronic media, such as computer and video technologies, students\u27 communication skills will improve, many public speaking instructors are using or considering using various types of technology. However, the effectiveness of various technologies as vehicles for delivering communication skill instruction have yet to be examined extensively. Therefore, communication educators need to assess the value of technology as compared to conventional delivery systems and consider the challenges before incorporating technology into the beginning public speaking course. This essay presents an overview of some of the uses of technology in the public speaking course, describes the instructional challenges, and outlines one process instructors may consider when deciding whether to implement technology into the beginning public speaking course

Graphic Notation in Music Therapy: A Discussion of What to Notate in Graphic Notation and How

This article presents graphic notations of music and related forms of communication in music therapy contexts, created by different authors and practitioners. Their purposes, objects of description, and the elements of graphic language are reflected upon in a comparative discussion. From that it becomes clear that the aspect of overview is a fundamental one, facilitating perception of complex data. This also makes possible to memorise complex data, extending the natural limits of human memory. Discovering hidden aspects in the clinical data, as well as sharing and communicating these aspects are also important concerns. Among the authors discussed, there is a large variety both in goals and methods. Keywords are proposed to circumscribe moments of possible interest connected to graphic notations. I suggest that the discipline of graphic notation can be useful for the grounding of music therapy presentation and research in empirical, clinical-musical reality, and welcome further discussion and explorative work