Is Moodle Accessible for Visually Impaired People?

Proceedings of: 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies. Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, May 6-9, 2011.Most educational centers are currently using e-learning tools to provide the pedagogical resources for the students, especially in higher education. Nevertheless, some students are not able to access to this information because these authoring tools are not as accessible as they should be. The main aim of this paper is to evaluate if one of the most widely e-learning tool used around the world, Moodle, is accessible for visually impaired people. The evaluation shows that the accessibility guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are not accomplished by the tool. Moreover, it shows that people using screen readers are not able to access to the majority of the functionality of Moodle.The work presented in this paper has been partially founded by MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542), GEMMA (TSI-020302-2010-141) and SAGAS (TSI-020100-2010-184) research projects.Publicad

"Dreaming in colour’: disabled higher education students’ perspectives on improving design practices that would enable them to benefit from their use of technologies"

The focus of this paper is the design of technology products and services for disabled students in higher education. It analyses the perspectives of disabled students studying in the US, the UK, Germany, Israel and Canada, regarding their experiences of using technologies to support their learning. The students shared how the functionality of the technologies supported them to study and enabled them to achieve their academic potential. Despite these positive outcomes, the students also reported difficulties associated with: i) the design of the technologies, ii) a lack of technology know-how and iii) a lack of social capital. When identifying potential solutions to these difficulties the disabled students imagined both preferable and possible futures where faculty, higher education institutions, researchers and technology companies are challenged to push the boundaries of their current design practices

IT on teaching and learning process of visually impaired students

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reduced CSF turnover and decreased ventricular Aβ42 levels are related

International audienceBACKGROUND: The appearance of Aβ42 peptide deposits is admitted to be a key event in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, although amyloid deposits also occur in aged non-demented subjects. Aβ42 is a degradation product of the amyloid protein precursor (APP). It can be catabolized by several enzymes, reabsorbed by capillaries or cleared into cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The possible involvement of a decrease in CSF turnover in A4β2 deposit formation is up to now poorly known. We therefore investigated a possible relationship between a reduced CSF turnover and the CSF levels of the A4β2 peptide.To this aim, CSF of 31 patients with decreased CSF turnover were studied. These patients presented chronic hydrocephalus communicating or obstructive, which required surgery (ventriculostomy or ventriculo-peritoneal shunt). Nine subjects had idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH), and the other 22 chronic hydrocephalus from other origins (oCH).The Aβ42 peptide concentration was measured by an ELISA test in 31 ventricular CSF samples and in 5 lumbar CSF samples from patients with communicating hydrocephalus. RESULTS: The 5 patients with lumbar CSF analysis had similar levels of lumbar and ventricular Aβ42. A significant reduction in Aβ42 ventricular levels was observed in 24 / 31 patients with hydrocephalus. The values were lower than 300 pg/ml in 5 out of 9 subjects with iNPH, and in 15 out of 22 subjects with oCH. CONCLUSION: The decrease of CSF Aβ42 seems to occur independently of the surgical hydrocephalus aetiology. This suggests that a CSF reduced turnover may play an important role in the decrease of CSF Aβ42 concentration

Evaluations of People Depicted With Facial Disfigurement Compared to Those With Mobility Impairment

There are few extant studies of stereotyping of people with facial disfigurement. In the present study, two experiments (both within-participants) showed positive evaluations of people depicted as wheelchair users and, from the same participants, negative evaluations of people with facial disfigurements, compared to controls. The results of Experiment 2 suggested that implicit affective attitudes were more negative toward people with facial disfigurement than wheelchair users and were correlated with evaluation negativity. Social norms were perceived to permit more discrimination against people with facial disfigurement than against wheelchair users. These factors could help to explain the evaluative differences between the two disadvantaged groups