Development of a Teaching Material for the Human Skeleton using a Visual Information Compensation Function

Abstract: We investigated the use of a talking pen (Touch Memo ® ) combined with a specially labeled model of the human skeleton as a self-learning material on anatomy for visually impaired students. The talking pen replays previously input information when a dot-code label (re-recordable label) is touched. This study aimed to obtain students' evaluations of sites at which the dot-code labels can be attached at the indicative positions on the skeleton model to ensure ease of use, thereby determining the most user-friendly ways to use the labels for visually impaired students. Twenty-two visually impaired students specializing in acupuncture and moxibustion participated in the study. Four sites of attachment of the dot-code label to the skeleton module were examined: (a) directly to the bone, (b) head of a wooden screw in the skeleton model, (c) inside a hole of a 3.5-mm diameter, and (d) inside a hole with a 5-mm diameter. The participants evaluated the talking pen using a 5-point scale on the basis of recognition of the dot-code label and the responsiveness of the talking pen to the dot-code label. The results showed that students experienced more difficulty in recognizing the dot-code label by touch and in getting the talking pen to respond when the label was attached to a 3.5-mm hole than when it was attached by other means. In addition, regardless of t he degree of visual impairment, the most user-friendly sites were when the label was attached to the model directly and when it was attached to a 5-mm hole. However, attaching the label directly to the skeleton model often peeled off; therefore, we conclude that the use of the model with a 5-mm hole should be used and improved further

Development of a Teaching Material for the Human Skeleton using a Visual Information Compensation Function

We investigated the use of a talking pen (Touch Memo®) combined with a specially labeled model of the human skeleton as a self-learning material on anatomy for visually impaired students. The talking pen replays previously input information when a dot-code label (re-recordable label) is touched. This study aimed to obtain students’ evaluations of sites at which the dot-code labels can be attached at the indicative positions on the skeleton model to ensure ease of use, thereby determining the most user-friendly ways to use the labels for visually impaired students. Twenty-two visually impaired students specializing in acupuncture and moxibustion participated in the study. Four sites of attachment of the dot-code label to the skeleton module were examined: (a) directly to the bone, (b) head of a wooden screw in the skeleton model, (c) inside a hole of a 3.5-mm diameter, and (d) inside a hole with a 5-mm diameter. The participants evaluated the talking pen using a 5-point scale on the basis of recognition of the dot-code label and the responsiveness of the talking pen to the dot-code label. The results showed that students experienced more difficulty in recognizing the dot-code label by touch and in getting the talking pen to respond when the label was attached to a 3.5-mm hole than when it was attached by other means. In addition, regardless of the degree of visual impairment, the most user-friendly sites were when the label was attached to the model directly and when it was attached to a 5-mm hole. However, attaching the label directly to the skeleton model often peeled off; therefore, we conclude that the use of the model with a 5-mm hole should be used and improved further

Development of Web Crawler and Database System for Visually Impaired Students - An Application to Career Support Web System -

This report describes a Web application intended for visually impaired users. Today hundreds of millions of people benefit from the Internet (or the World Wide Web), which is the greatest source of information in the world. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has set the guidelines for Web content accessibility, which allows visually impaired people to access and use Web contents. However, many of Web sites do not yet follow these guidelines. Thus, we propose a Web application system that collects desired data related to a specific topic as an agent (i.e., in place of the visually impaired person), stores the collected information in a database, and presents it to the user as per the user's choice of color and font size. We have implemented this system using a Web crawler, and a simple Web database technology that runs on an open source Wiki platform. This system is, then, applied to a career support, namely job opportunity database, for visually impaired students as a pilot project. A test tool confirmed that the system is compliant with the rules and guidelines for Web content accessibility