Accessible Virtual Classroom For Visually Impaired Students - Literature review Example

?Accessible virtual room for visually impaired Virtual rooms and virtual education is becoming very common nowadays with special emphasis on K-12 and adult education classes. K-12.inc, the for-profit organization focusing on K-12 education has made great inroads in this direction and has an annual income exceeding 15 billion dollars. It is easy to see why the concept of a virtual classroom appeals to a lot of people. It’s usually much cheaper than the regular schooling system and provides much more flexibility when it comes to learning and applying the knowledge. A common complaint levied against the traditional schooling system is that the students have no flexibility in following the curriculum, ie, all students are expected to follow at the same pace as that set by the teacher. However, each student has his or her own learning style and speed, which is especially marked for students who are at the either extreme of the IQ spectrum. Virtual classrooms remove this restriction by letting each student access and process the information according to their unique customized rate. Also, every pupil receives a fair amount of individual attention, which is not possible in a traditional classroom environment. The concept of a virtual classroom is also valuable to people who are in geographically or economically inaccessible parts of the world. It might not be possible to have a school for a community of a few people that are perched in a mountainous area or a desert region. Further, students who are physically disabled such as paraplegics or the mentally challenged can often still experience a conventional education as part of a virtual classroom setup. It is also seen that virtual classrooms are becoming popular for higher education purposes – where this was initially developed. Many universities now offer real degrees through virtual education. This is highly pronounced for many adults who are unable to attend classes at a university, but can still avail of the benefits of university education. For example, an executive working in California can still enroll in an MBA course at Yale or Princeton without impeding with his work by enrolling in one of their online courses. In graduate classes especially, the students may benefit from the instructions of an expert who may be located at another university in a different country. However, the purpose of this paper is to explore and study if these classrooms are also tailored to meet the demands of the visually challenged population. The visually impaired are traditionally at a disadvantage when it comes to computers and online resources such as the internet – because the mode of data transfer in these media is through sight. If this handicap can be overcome, online classes can be a great resource for the blind as they can empower themselves through the wealth of online educational resources available. Much is yet to done, but several important progresses have already been achieved to this extent. Tactile and Haptic devices have made great inroads into the education of the blind. It needs to be explored in greater detail how several of the successful virtual classrooms have addressed the specific needs of this community. Virtual classrooms are a multimodal information transfer environment. It combines the features of a web conference and video – audio conference. The device applications and multimodal sensitivity are the results of the combined benefits of several web applications such as email, chat, screen sharing, polling, web conference rooms, video – audio chats, telephone conference and so on. Before the question of the usability of virtual classrooms for the visually impaired in analyzed, it would be instrumental to analyze the specific features of a virtually information transfer environment. This is attempted in the next section where each of these features are considered in some detail. Features of a Virtual Classroom The following are the key features of a virtual classroom. 1) Real time audio and video Real time audio and video form one of the key features of a virtual classroom as it ties it to a traditional classroom where audio and visual data is exchanged in real time. I first prerequisite for this would be a good Internet connection. Assuming that this is given, the student can exchange voice messages with another student or more importantly an instructor who might be physically located elsewhere. This is extremely important as the student is able to communicate his thoughts and questions to an instructor and the instructor is able to judge the progress of the student and make necessary suggestions. Also, students can collaborate and communicate with each other – despite where they might physically be located. This is vital as well, as anthropologists and sociologists have long argued that interaction and social communication is vital to growing children. Often, a few words or a picture might explain a lot more and more eloquently than many lines of text. Needless to say, for visually impaired children, real time audio plays a very important role in their education. Many virtual classrooms also allow the use of telephone for the data exchange, with the web console usually having a button to access their telephone directly. Also, these web consoles allow several people to log in and interact at the same time – same as a web conference. This allows a live community discussion and the students can not only feel part of group but also benefit from the idea exchange involving a larger number of people. All these applications require some initial configuration. For children and visually impaired students, these might require adult supervision and benefits. 2) Chat Chats in virtual classrooms work the same way as they do otherwise. It has been the main mode of interaction for students in virtual classrooms. In a traditional classroom, there are two types of interactions – the formal interaction between a student and teacher, and the informal interaction between students themselves. In a virtual environment, chats serve the latter purpose. Chat rooms also work better in settings where the Internet connection may not have high fidelity or speed. Also, written text as in chats can be easily converted to sound by a speech synthesizer thus ensuring that the visually impaired can also partake of its benefits. 3) Whiteboard ? A white board serves the same purpose as a chalk and blackboard in a traditional classroom. The instructor is able to write down the main points, key concepts, mathematical equations, chemical symbols, circle or underline important terms, teach spellings in a language class, draw figures and point out faults using this screen. The main instrument is a virtual pen, using which he or she can write down on the screen or a special digital tablet, which is then transferred as such to the student’s screen that might be physically located hundreds of miles away. Mass production and rapid use has made this very accessible to the population, and most virtual classrooms provide such devices as part of their initial joining package. The specific application of whiteboards and other such visual components shall be considered in the latter parts of this discussion. 4) Screen and other application sharing In a traditional classroom, students are able to share their notebooks, texts and other data that enhance the pace and quality of communication. This might seem impossible to do in virtual classrooms, after there is the factor of physical separation. While this does remain an impeding factor, a lot of it is mitigated through the concept of application sharing. Here, the students themselves, or the student and the teacher are able to share a part of their screen with others. This is done through the technical concept of a remote desktop sharing – wherein a remote computer can access and experience a host computer as if seeing on their own desktop. For example, a student might be able to share the web browser or a page of textbook that they are reading at that instant, so that the instructor is undoubtedly aware of which portion of the text that they are referring to at that instant. This is not restricted to just the screen. The students may to share other resources as well, such as a new idea, a new game that may help in understanding something better or a presentation. The specific application of screen sharing and other such visual components shall be considered in the latter parts of this discussion. 5) ?Polling Polling, as the name implies is the method of making collective decisions or gauging general opinions by combining the opinions and attributes of several participants. For example, a teacher might want to know if a set of students has understood a given concept and if they are ready to move on to the next level. Or, a student might want to know if a given class may want to work on his project or some one else’s. This forms a way to exercise democracy in a virtual environment. ?The technical component that allows this called a radio button or a tick mark emulator. Here, each person is able to exercise a decision, at the end of which the number of selections for each option is computed and displayed. Most virtual classroom consoles have buttons for such purposes. 6) Web Browser ? Web browsers form one of the most integral parts of a virtual classroom. This allows the students to access the vast resources of information available online and to access information that might be presented in a more acceptable format. Web browsing represents one of the fields where virtual classrooms may actually have an advantage over traditional classrooms – as information is not limited but is vast; a more advanced student can easily gain information by accessing pages that display contents that exceed his given curriculum. However, they also represent one of the greatest distractions to a virtual classroom as many students are found to wander off to other pages and engage in reading comics, playing games or engaging in social networking sites. Most web consoles in use today such as Wimba, Blackboard etc require students to login and once they are logged in, the console can keeps track of their web activity and usage. These activities are discussed in greater detail in the section on enrollment and login. 7) Breakout session ? This is again, another advantage of virtual classrooms over traditional classes. Students can ‘breakout’ from the main class and work in smaller groups of their own so that they can have a more detailed discussion, collaborate on a project etc. In a real classroom this requires more space and an active monitoring by the teacher concerned. In the virtual classrooms, all this requires is a different chat room, where an instructor may or may not monitor the student discussions. Some consoles allow the chat room to be designated as private, so that only the participants can ensure that no one eve drops on their conversations. Each chat room, depending on the specific console being used, can have the option of application sharing. 8) Hand raising Anyone who has ever been in a classroom will know that hand raising is an important part of every learning experience. This is a way whereby a student may raise an issue or ask a question in a polite way so that the class is not disturbed. Students themselves may have several questions about a particular topic while the class is in session – as they should – and one of the greater aims of a virtual classroom is to ensure that there is more student participation and feedback. Without this, education remains unidirectional and unattractive. This becomes and important issue in a virtual classroom – understandably so – what would be the ideal substitute for a hand raise? Several consoles have different solutions to this issue. Some use bells, or ‘buzz’ buttons. The main concern is that these activities might not be able to get the attention of the class or that they might be forgotten. The key is to have an online gesture that is the equivalent of an uncanny hand that stands out above the crowd of heads in a classroom. Some have a button that is often shaped just like the outstretched palm – upon pressing which the class is notified of the desire of one of the participants to address them. Consoles then allow the instructor to decide on the course of action at that point. Hand raising for the visually impaired in virtual classrooms is discussed in latter section. 9) Recording sessions Being able to record and replay sessions is one of the greatest advantages of an online classroom. In a traditional classroom, it is not possible to revisit a lecture – albeit one that might have either been difficult to follow, boring or one that the student may have missed due to his absence. Virtual classrooms allow students to record a lecture by a teacher and then revisit it as many times as might have been necessary. Students can hear the same topic again and again until they become cleared of their doubts. Online classroom consoles allow their lectures to be recorded in either mp3 (audio) or mp4 (audio + video) formats. The only requirement is that the client desktops have enough space for the storage. It has been observed that students in virtual classrooms have the tendency to save every lecture, meaning that the memory requirement annually comes to several hundred gigabytes. Though not an issue in K-12 education, advanced graduate level courses may have issues with download, as lectures usually are the intellectual property of the university or the lecturer and copyright laws control their dissemination. This discussion does not bother with such legal issues. 10) Presentation display and authoring tools The display of the presentations is a key area where the various virtual classroom vendors, their client applications and online courses compete with each other. The urge is to make the contents as appealing and accessible to the readers. The possibilities for this are enormous. With modern web design systems, the ability of the vendors to design the best possible content is remarkable. Modern consoles use Java, CSS, Flash or DOT Net interfaces that have wider appeal and allows a more flexible range of animation as well as audio – video control. The key question in these designs is whether these packages have wide applicability as well, that is, using a particular design package may allow the creation of visually stunning presentations, but if it is not a very popular content, most operating systems and web browsers may not be able to support it – making it practically useless. However, in this discussion, the focus is on the applicability of presentation to the visually impaired and to this extent, these questions are not particularly relevant. At the same time, presentation is important in this context and shall be discussed in the section specifically devoted to the same. Authoring tools allow the instructor or anyone else to create course content. The key impetus here is to aloe user generated content, which can then be distributed and modified. This requires the consoles to allow direct access to resources that help in creating an appealing content without too much technicality. Most consoles achieve this by allowing direct access to PowerPoint, word, excel or project from which the user generates their content. 11) Enrollment, Login, Participation and scheduling The consoles require the user, ie, a student to be logged in while using the system. This keeps track of their enrollment and participation. The enrollment tracker is vital for public school systems that make use of virtual classrooms, as state law mandates those students who do not appear for ten days continuously be removed from the roaster. After having logged in (which requires a specific user name and password that is unique to each client) the participation of the student is monitored by the system through several different methods. While the class is in session, the instructor keeps track of the student’s activity. The required reading materials are marked when the student opens the document and after having completed reading, the student can then answer a number of tests, quizzes etc which test his level of understanding. All of this information is relayed to a central console, which keeps track of the student’s participation and progress. The consoles also list the various classes in session at a given time and allow the student to request and schedule a meeting with another student(s) or an instructors – just as would be possible using an android device. It should be mentioned here that several of these consoles also allow mobile access. These also allow the students and the teacher to set an agenda. ? Virtual classrooms and the Visually impaired Visually impaired children and adults have a large variation of abilities and disabilities as their development level strongly depends on the individual support they may have received for development of various skills; important or otherwise 1. It is understandable that between an adult and a child, the child is in the process of learning and experiencing things that are yet to be recognized or understood – while this might be a different level for an adult. The sensory channels for a visually impaired child to experience these important things are hearing and touch. “Because of the restriction with the sense of seeing, visually impaired children interact with the environment based on other complementary senses”. Understandably, navigating everyday life without sight makes most everyday tasks difficult 2. “This need is similar for adults and children, but children can be more sensitive to it, because they have less experience and thus they have less understanding of the environment” 3. The key in all virtual classroom situations requires the users to be confident of the use of these consoles and this is especially true for the visually impaired. Visual impairment sets limitations for experiencing and interacting with the environment and thus the establishing rules of learning and interacting as is valid for other children are not applicable for these children. Because of the sensory impairment, a visually impaired child can have remarkable difficulties in making sense of the world 4. It is essential that everyone involved understands that the concepts and meanings of visually impaired children can be of an individual kind and differ from the usual ones. Visually impaired children can be careful about trying out new things, as they are most often unclear about their concepts. Concepts connected to the a virtual classroom have to be carefully chosen, explained, and presented to ensure that the child has the correct understanding. For this purpose, all visually impaired children require Linguistic guidance and experiencing multimodal interaction—especially haptics—to help them use their senses for navigation 5. Thus, visually impaired children require more linguistic support to use applications for virtual classrooms 6. When making information technology accessible for disabled people an answer is to use customized devices and design the interfaces according to established guidelines that are maintained by the organizations representing disabled people 7. Another solution is to implement multimodal applications making use of the latest interface technology. When lacking of a certain ability the rest of the abilities are used to substitute the impairment in the best possible ways 8. The emphasis it to replace one of the modalities in a multimodal application with other modalities. Such user aided interfaces can not only be important for virtual classroom but also to serve as invaluable aids for people with disabilities in many different areas, such as education, training, rehabilitation, and communication. They can offer access to information, entertainment and games. There is special assistive technology designed and developed particularly for the needs of blind computer user. Special screen readers allow the text to be converted directly to voice information. Information on the screen is read aloud through speech synthesizer. Screen magnifiers are handy when a partially sighted user has to enlarge a portion of the display. “A Braille display passes information through the user’s fingertips as its mechanical parts physically change position and form Braille sentences” 3. These devices are however expensive and more suited for adults. The creation of alternate keyboards or tablets are often essential for blind students, however this may not always be economically feasible. The goal is to combine the use of real tangible materials with advantages of information technology. The benefit these devices have compared to most haptic devices is that they are used in a simple and natural manner. The application can be manipulated directly with fingers by touching and pressing the surface of the device. Hand-made or industrially manufactured overlays can be set on top of these devices, such as Flexiboard 9 and IntelliKeys 10. Overlays are customizable and can be constructed individually for a particular child. For example, fabrics, pearls and waxed strings can be glued on overlays, or printed embossed graphics and figures can be used. We now move on to explore, how various virtual classrooms have managed to deal with the visually impaired. Feature Blackboard Moodle Atour Wimba IBM CISCO Real time audio Supportive system, clear voice Supportive system, clear voice Supportive system, clear voice Supportive system, clear voice Supportive system, clear voice Supportive system, clear voice Real time video No specific system for visually impaired No specific system for visually impaired No specific system for visually impaired No specific system for visually impaired No specific system for visually impaired No specific system for visually impaired Chat Text to voice synthesizer available No such system available Screen magnifier available Text to voice synthesizer available Text to voice synthesizer available Text to voice synthesizer available whiteboard Screen magnifier available for the partially disabled Screen magnifier available for the partially disabled No such system available; supervision necessary Screen magnifier available for the partially disabled Screen magnifier available for the partially disabled No such system available; supervision necessary Screen sharing Possible but no system for visually impaired Possible but no system for visually impaired Possible but no system for visually impaired Possible but no system for visually impaired Possible but no system for visually impaired Possible but no system for visually impaired Break out session No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired Polling No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired Web browser Braille websites accessible; speech synthesizer available Braille websites accessible; Braille websites accessible; Braille websites accessible; speech synthesizer available Braille websites accessible; speech synthesizer available Braille websites accessible; speech synthesizer available Hand raising Hand raising button – can be navigated with sound buttons No system for the visually impaired Hand raising button – can be navigated with sound buttons No system for the visually impaired Hand raising button – can be navigated with sound buttons Hand raising button – can be navigated with sound buttons Agenda Speech synthesizer; supervision necessary No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired No particular system for visually impaired Speech synthesizer; supervision necessary Record session Adult supervision, navigation using sound Adult supervision, navigation using sound Adult supervision, Adult supervision, Adult supervision, Adult supervision, navigation using sound Participant list Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Participation status Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Sound synthesizer Ease of use Most accessible of the six Unfriendly Unfriendly Moderately friendly Seldom useful friendly Login Sound access available Adult supervision Adult supervision Sound access available Sound access available Download Can be navigated using sound No system for the visually impaired No system for the visually impaired No system for the visually impaired No system for the visually impaired No system for the visually impaired Navigation Adult supervision, Use of speech synthesizer Adult supervision Adult supervision Adult supervision Adult supervision Adult supervision, speech synthesizer is more expensive Thus, we can see that most of the classrooms available today do not have easy accessibility for the visually impaired. Much work still needs to be done in this field. References 1) P. Pagliano, Using a Multisensory Environment: A Practical Guide for Teachers, David Fulton Publishers, 2001. 2) C. Arter et al., Children with Visual Impairment in Mainstream Settings, David Fulton Publishers, 1999. 3) M. Lee and L. MacWilliam, Learning Together: A Creative Approach to Learning for Children with Multiple Disabilities and a Visual Impairment, Royal National Inst. for the Blind, 2002. 4) R. Saarinen et al., “Agent-Based Architecture for Implementing Multimodal Learning Environments for Visually Impaired Children,” Proc. 7th Int’l Conf. Multimodal Interfaces, ACM Press, 2005, pp. 309-316. 5) R. Saarinen, “Supporting Visually Impaired Children with Software Agents in a Multimodal Learning Environment,” Virtual Reality, vol. 9, nos. 2-3, Springer-Verlag, 2006, pp. 108-117. 6) Goldstein, E.B., 1999. Sensation and Perception, fifth ed. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, Pacific Grove, CA. 7) Tiresias.org (2006). Guidelines for the Design of Accessible Information and Communication Technology Systems. . 8) VisionConnection (2006). Accessibility and assistive technology, a compendium of available assistive technology products. VisionConnection, Lighthouse International, Inc. . 9) Flexi Forum 2006. Meeting place for Flexiboard users. . 10) Inclusive Technology, 2006. IntelliKeys Transparent Overlays. . 11) Roth, P., Petrucci, L., Pun, T., 2000. From dots to shapes: an auditory haptic game platform for teaching geometry to blind pupils. In: Proceedings of International conference on computers helping people with special needs (ICCHP 2000), pp. 603–610 12) Chan, A., MacLean, K.E., McGrenere, J., 2005. Learning and identifying haptic icons under workload. In: WorldHAPTICS 2005, IEEE Press, pp. 432–439 13) Nielsen, J., 1993. Usability Engineering. Academic Press. 14) van Erp, J.B.F., Spape ?, M.M.A., 2003. Distilling the underlying dimensions of tactile melodies. In: Proceedings of Eurohaptics 2003, Dublin, Ireland, pp. 111–120. 15) Feintuch, U., Rand, D., Kizony, R., Weiss, P.L., 2004. Promoting Research and Clinical Use of Haptic Feedback in Virtual Environments. In: Proceedings of Fifth International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies (ICDVRAT’04). Univer-sity of Reading, UK, pp. 141–147. Read More