Teaching Cybersecurity to Students with Visual Impairments and Blindness

This work showcases specific adaptations used to make cybersecurity accessible to high school students with visual impairments and blindness (VIB). The rapidly growing field of cybersecurity demands a diverse workforce; however, barriers exist which can deter students with disabilities from studying cybersecurity, let alone pursuing a career in the field. To help overcome this challenge, we launched the first GenCyber camp specifically developed and instructed for high school students with VIB in summer 2019. We created a unique learning environment by combining interactive instructional aids, accessible development environments, and innovative instructional strategies. With intent to show cybersecurity as a viable career option for a diverse workforce, the program outcomes from this work included a clear understanding of the GenCyber Cybersecurity Concepts, sparking interest in cybersecurity careers, and building the confidence to pursue those careers. This material is based upon work supported by the National Security Agency and National Science Foundation through the GenCyber program under award number 19-AL-UAHx-UV-S1

Learning about Business Intelligence - Challenges of the Visually Impaired

Modern business systems, especially those of middle and large size, generate a large amount of different data.This data is important for proper analysis, prediction of future trends or in other words for making various business decisions. The large amount of data that can be found in many different formats and in different technology can be stored on multiple locations that all refer to the same business system. Education about technology, such as various business organizations’business intelligence systems and data warehouses is important part of many higher education curriculums. However, since many business intelligence tools rely on various graphical representations of data they are not suitable for visually impaired students. In this paper a discussion about challenges that visually impaired students encounter when trying to learn about business intelligence is given along with directions for future research

Alternative Techniques for Blind Low Vision Students Enrolled in Coding Courses

BLV (blind low vision) students face difficulties when taking coding classes. Individual Development Environments (IDE) can be inaccessible which make it difficult if not impossible for BLV students to complete coursework. Alternative techniques are described which will allow a BLV student to successfully complete coursework. The author has found the Command Line Interface (CLI) is often a recommended alternative to a Windows based IDE interface. Many blind computer programmers use the Windows and Linux command interfaces which are described as part of this discussion

Learning about Business Intelligence - Challenges of the Visually Impaired

Modern business systems, especially those of middle and large size, generate a large amount of different data.This data is important for proper analysis, prediction of future trends or in other words for making various business decisions. The large amount of data that can be found in many different formats and in different technology can be stored on multiple locations that all refer to the same business system. Education about technology, such as various business organizations’business intelligence systems and data warehouses is important part of many higher education curriculums. However, since many business intelligence tools rely on various graphical representations of data they are not suitable for visually impaired students. In this paper a discussion about challenges that visually impaired students encounter when trying to learn about business intelligence is given along with directions for future research

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

Unconventional computation and teaching: Proposal for MUSIC, a tone-based scripting language for accessibility, computation and education

This paper provides a proposal for a tone-based programming/scripting language called MUSIC (the name is an acronym for Music-Utilizing Script Input Code). In a MUSIC program input and output consists entirely of musical tones. Computation can be done through musical transformations of notes and melodies. MUSIC can be used for teaching the basics of script-based programming, computer-aided composition, and provided programming access to those with limitations in sight or physical accessibility. As a result of MUSIC's approach to tone-based programming and computation, it also allows for a development environment that utilizes computer expressive performance for highlighting structure, and emotional transformation to highlight bugs. © 2014 Old City Publishing, Inc

The Role of Sonification as a Code Navigation Aid: Improving Programming Structure Readability and Understandability For Non-Visual Users

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) play an important role in the workflow of many software developers, e.g. providing syntactic highlighting or other navigation aids to support the creation of lengthy codebases. Unfortunately, such complex visual information is difficult to convey with current screen-reader technologies, thereby creating barriers for programmers who are blind, who are nevertheless using IDEs. This dissertation is focused on utilizing audio-based techniques to assist non-visual programmers when navigating through large amounts of code. Recently, audio generation techniques have seen major improvements in their capabilities to covey visually-based information to both sighted and non-visual users – making them a potential candidate for providing useful information, especially in places where information is visually structured. However, there is little known about the usability of such techniques in software development. Therefore, we investigated whether audio-based techniques capable of providing useful information about the code structure to assist non-visual programmers. The major contributions in this dissertation are split into two major parts: The first part of this dissertation explains our prior work that investigates the major challenges in software development faced by non-visual programmers, specifically code navigation difficulties. It also discusses areas of improvement where additional features could be developed in order to make the programming environment more accessible to non-visual programmers. The second part of this dissertation focuses on studies aimed to evaluate the usability and efficacy of audio-based techniques for conveying the structure of the programming codebase, which was suggested by the stakeholders in Part I. Specifically, we investigated various sound effects, audio parameters, and different interaction techniques to determine whether these techniques could provide adequate support to assist non-visual programmers when navigating through lengthy codebases. In Part II, we discussed the methodological aspects of evaluating the above-mentioned techniques with the stakeholders and examine these techniques using an audio-based prototype that was designed to control audio timing, locations, and methods of interaction. A set of design guidelines are provided based on the evaluation described previously to suggest including an auditory-based feedback system in the programming environment in efforts to improve code structure readability and understandability for assisting non-visual programmers

SODBeans

Comprehending and debugging computer programs are inherently difficult tasks for sighted programmers. These tasks are even more difficult for non-sighted programmers, who rely on audio-based representations of programs. The state-of-the-art approach to building program execution and debugging environments for non-sighted programmers is to retrofit existing visual environments with screen readers. Because of intrinsic differences in the ways humans process auditory and visual information, we argue that these environments are insensitive to the needs of the blind community. We present an alternative: SODBeans (the SonifiedOmniscient Debugger in Netbeans), a compiler, debugger, and accessibility architecture for Netbeans 6.5

Empirical studies on programming language stimuli

Comprehending and debugging computer programs are inherently difficult tasks. The current approach to building program execution and debugging environments is to use exclusively visual stimuli on programming languages whose syntax and semantics has often been designed without empirical guidance. We present an alternative: Sodbeans, an open-source integrated development environment designed to output carefully chosen spoken auditory cues to supplement empirically evaluated visual stimuli. Originally designed for the blind, earlier work suggested that Sodbeans may benefit sighted programmers as well. We evaluate Sodbeans in two experiments. First, we report on a formal debugging experiment comparing (1) a visual debugger, (2) an auditory debugger, and (3) a multimedia debugger, which includes both visual and auditory stimuli. The results from this study indicate that while auditory debuggers on their own are significantly less effective for sighted users when compared with visual and multimedia debuggers, multimedia debuggers might benefit sighted programmers under certain circumstances. Specifically, we found that while multimedia debuggers do not provide instant usability, once programmers have some practice, their performance in answering comprehension questions improves. Second, we created and evaluated a pilot survey analyzing individual elements in a custom programming language (called HOP) to garner empirical metrics on their comprehensibility. Results showed that some of the most widely used syntax and semantics choices in commercial programming languages are extraordinarily unintuitive for novices. For example, at an aggregate level, the word for , as in a for loop, was rated reliably worse than repeat by more than 673% by novices. After completing our studies, we implemented the HOP programming language and integrated it into Sodbeans