Co-designing a 3D-Printed Tactile Campus Map With Blind and Low-Vision University Students

Este trabalho analisa a relação entre educação e comunicação no contexto da educacional de surdos. A interface entre esses campos, para essa minoria, está baseada nas produções audiovisuais que têm desconsiderado as especificidades culturais e linguísticas da comunidade surda. Parte dessa produção cultural tem sido apenas adaptada por meio de legendas ou janelas de interpretação em língua de sinais, mas pouca produção é de autoria de surdos. A pesquisa investiga a produção audiovisual de alunos surdos na perspectiva da educação para as mídias. Analisa o telejornal O Jornal do Surdo, realizado pelos participantes em uma oficina de linguagem audiovisual, instrumento de pesquisa-ação. Os dados evidenciam a urgência em se desenvolver políticas de incentivo à realização audiovisual de alunos surdos, considerando a relevância da visualidade desses sujeitos para a criação de novas estéticas audiovisuais. Conclui que a inclusão de surdos na produção de novas linguagens amplia o espaço de participação no contexto audiovisual e viabiliza o empoderamento de realizadores surdos.

A educação inclusiva, enquanto modalidade transversal de ensino no Brasil tem exigido o desenvolvimento de estratégias pedagógicas no âmbito educacional, em específico, na Educação Superior. Atualmente, observa-se um número crescente de estudantes com deficiência ingressos nas diversas universidades brasileiras em diferentes cursos de graduação. Esta situação traz desafios aos processos de organização de currículo, avaliação e promoção de estratégias que contribuam com o acesso, permanência e conclusão destes estudantes. Nesta linha, este artigo tem por objetivo analisar as narrativas de estudantes universitários cegos acerca de suas experiências acadêmicas no Ensino Superior visando contribuir para a abertura de novos campos de inteligibilidade sobre o processo de inclusão nesse nível de ensino. O estudo foi desenvolvido em uma universidade brasileira (Distrito Federal), a partir da realização de entrevistas semiestruturadas com 02 estudantes cegos, durante um semestre letivo. A análise dos resultados culminou nos seguintes eixos temáticos: a) Os desafios curriculares, e b) Os sentidos acerca da inclusão acadêmica. Depreende-se da análise realizada, o desconhecimento por parte do universitário cego acerca dos direitos concernentes às estratégias adaptativas que devem ser acessadas no seu processo de escolarização. Além disso, as estratégias pedagógicas, quando desenvolvidas e ofertadas para os participantes, não se basearam em práticas pedagógicas específicas para o sujeito cego, mas em escolhas casuais e pessoais a depender dos seus respectivos professores.

This study focuses on improving the mobility and self-reliance of blind students to navigate university campuses. The main objective of this study was to design and develop a Smart Guide application, integrating a smart stick and application to help blind students navigate the university and its buildings safely and adequately. This system applies a combination of different components such as an obstacle sensor positioned on the stick to detect any obstacle, a global positioning system (GPS) module for instantaneous location tracking, and light sensors to make students aware of the changes in environmental lighting and to assist connection between the blind students, their guardians, and building security guards, enabling timely assistance in case of walking difficulties or emergencies. The Arduino board technology was employed for hardware integration, implementing ultrasonic and light sensors, and GPS modules, although the application is developed using Arduino IDE and XCode IDE. An iterative waterfall development methodology was utilized to implement this smart stick. The primary results demonstrate that the obstacles have been detected by the system successfully and are aware of users at the time, while the GPS module’s effectiveness assures connectivity with guardians and security. The safety and mobility of blind students have been significantly enhanced by the system’s real-time location tracking and environmental observation. This study exhibits the development of merging sustaining hardware and software solutions to enhance availability for visually impaired students in university and provide an innovative and balanced system for extensive application. Future studies will focus on advancing navigation competence in outdoor environments and managing challenges related to emergency buttons and sensors.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of the Edmodo mobile learning environment on promoting psychological security among university students with visual impairments, at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The researchers employed a combination of descriptive and quasiexperimental methodologies. The primary study sample consisted of 20 visually impaired students from Beni Suef University, divided equally between an experimental group (10 students) and a control group (10 students). To achieve the research objectives, the Psychological Security Scale was utilized and the experimental group received an intervention involving the implementation of a mobile learning environment using Edmodo. The data analysis revealed a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the postassessment, with the experimental group demonstrating an elevated sense of psychological security. Furthermore, the experimental group showed significant improvements in the pre- and postassessments, favoring the latter, with a standard score of 3.781. No significant differences were observed between the postassessment and the follow-up evaluation of the experimental group, with a standard score of 0.471, indicating the continuous effectiveness of the Edmodo mobile learning environment in enhancing the psychological security of visually impaired university students. This efficacy was sustained even one month after the student's graduation, as evidenced by the follow-up assessment.

Indonesian language is a compulsory subject in university level. This subject has been taken by all Indonesian university students with or without disabilities. This study aimed to design Indonesian Language course based on Augmented Reality (AR) and interactive website that were adapted for blind students. This study was developmental research using ADDIE model. The subjects of this study were students with disabilities in private universities at East Java, Indonesia. Result of study showed that in analysis stage there were five things needed by disability students. In the design stage, flowchart and storyboard were made. In the developmental stage, website structures were built using WordPress; while Augmented Reality was designed using Unity platform. In the implementation stage, limited and extensive trial tests were conducted. In the evaluation stage, there were two main activities. First, students were given tests. Second, product was revised. Conclusion of this study was learning materials of Indonesian language course could be developed by implementing ADDIE model, so it could be used by blind students.

Visually impaired (VI) and blind users use accessibility features like type-to-speech software or Zoom Text, to navigate the internet. Accessibility features do not compensate for fundamental browsing experiences of understanding visual and informational hierarchy, skipping around, or skimming sections, leading to cognitive burden on the user. Despite growing interest in accessibility research, many websites are difficult for blind and VI users to navigate. With number of students in universities increasing, key processes, such as registration, have become web-based. Over 500,000 blind and VI students are enrolled in universities so it’s imperative that they be able to register for classes efficiently and independently. The goal of this study is to improve the experience of adding, dropping, and changing grading format of classes, for blind and VI users. The new design will be tested against the existing one for usability, accessibility, and ease of use.

As a step toward distinguishing problems with a screen reader (JAWS), web pages, and users, we tested two blind university students with our Usability Proficiency Assessment Tool (UPAT). We then tested their understanding of web-based software that they often used with JAWS in their education. One student had advanced skills and the other had intermediate skills in using tables, headings, forms, images, links, and combinations of these web features. Despite their more than adequate skills they had many problems using software that was in high compliance with World Wide Web consortium (W3C) standards (Ryan, 2008). The problems stemmed from gaps between JAWS and web pages. We review these gaps and make recommendations for closing them. Implementing our recommendations will require a dialogue among developers of screen readers and applications as well as users and trainers.

This study developed and evaluated an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) voice-over course tailored for a blind learner. Motivated by the need to make voice-over training accessible, the qualitative research focused on a 23-year-old blind university student. The course utilized non-visual methods, such as audio recordings, verbal instructions, and tactile tools, to teach vocal modulation, emotional expression, and clarity. Results showed significant improvement in the participant’s voice-over skills, including enhanced vocal modulation and emotional expression. Feedback indicated the course was effective but suggested adding more diverse practice scenarios and descriptive audio examples. The study contributes to inclusive education by demonstrating that specialized training programs can be adapted for blind learners. It provides a model for making voice-over work accessible and offers recommendations for applying the approach to other fields and assessing long-term impacts on professional development.

Infographics are a big challenge for people with visual impairments. We therefore investigate in our work how access to graphical STEM content can be improved for blind university students using specific interaction concepts on a two-dimensional tactile display. In a study, we tested our ATR system with four blind participants. The results show that the information could be extracted correctly. The two main interaction methods, zooming and element filtering, were rated as very useful by the participants. The system was compared to tactile paper graphics commonly used by participants as a baseline. The comparison showed that the ATR system is competitive with tactile paper graphics, and the majority of the users preferred ATR.

There is increasing awareness of the needs of children with low vision, particularly in developing countries where programmes of integrated education are being developed. However, appropriate low vision services are usually not available or affordable. The aims of this study were, firstly, to assess the need for spectacles and optical low vision devices in students with low vision in schools for the blind in Kenya and Uganda; secondly, to evaluate inexpensive locally produced low vision devices; and, finally, to evaluate simple methods of identifying those low vision students who could read N5 to N8 print after low vision assessment. A total of 230 students were examined (51 school and 16 university students in Uganda and 163 students in Kenya, aged 5-22 years), 147 of whom had a visual acuity of less than 6/18 to perception of light in the better eye at presentation. After refraction seven of the 147 achieved 6/18 or better. Eighty two (58.6%) of the 140 students with low vision (corrected visual acuity in the better eye of less than 6/18 to light perception) had refractive errors of more than 2 dioptres in the better eye, and 38 (27.1%) had more than 2 dioptres of astigmatism. Forty six per cent of students with low vision (n = 64) could read N5-N8 print unaided or with spectacles, as could a further 33% (n = 46) with low vision devices. Low vision devices were indicated in a total of 50 students (35.7%). The locally manufactured devices could meet two thirds of the need. A corrected distance acuity of 1/60 or better had a sensitivity of 99.1% and a specificity of 56.7% in predicting the ability to discern N8 print or better. The ability to perform at least two of the three simple tests of functional vision had a sensitivity of 95.5% and a specificity of 63.3% in identifying the students able to discern N8 or better.

This article reports the results of a study that explored the use of a computer-generated tachistoscopelike display of electronic braille to increase the reading speeds of three blind university students. The results did not indicate conclusively that such a program is effective. The subjects’ braille reading speed continued to be slow, which indicates the need for further research in the use of technology to improve braille reading skills.

Retention of linear arm-positioning movements in a congenitally blind university student was tested with either distance or location cues and under retention conditions of rest, location, and distance interpolated tasks. Results revealed a consistent superiority for retention with location cues. The conclusion is drawn that these data would support a dual proprioceptive storage mode hypothesis.

The efficiency of a learning process directly depends on how well the students are attentive. Detecting the level of attention can help to improve the learning quality. In recent years, there have been several attempts to leverage EEG signal processing as a tool to detect whether a student is attentive or not. In such work, the level of attention is determined by analyzing the EEG power spectrum, which is mostly followed by machine learning approaches. However, the efficiency of such methods for detecting auditory attention of blind or visually-impaired students has not been analyzed. This study aims to investigate such a scenario. To this end, we propose an EEG recording protocol to simulate the learning process of visually-impaired students as closely as possible. Ten different university students participated in the experiment. In the proposed protocol, the EEG signals were recorded by using EMOTIV EPOC+ wireless EEG headset. Then, the power spectrum of the recorded EEG signals was analyzed, and the most relevant features were extracted using the Fisher feature selection method. Then, Linear SVM, RBF SVM, KNN, and LDA classifiers were used to evaluate the proposed protocol. The results of the classification showed that the level of auditory attention could be detected up to 89% accuracy.

The aim of this study was to identify the challenges faced by undergraduate students with visual impairment at Taibah University during COVID-19 Outbreak. The study focused on two main variables: gender and degree of visual impairment. The sample of the study consisted of 87 undergraduate students with visual impairment enrolled in the academic year 1442 H. The data collection instruments consisted of 35 statements divided into five dimensions: online learning, financial, social, psychological, and physical mobility to examine participants’ challenges. The results of the showed that the challenges faced students with visual impairment are financial, psychological, social, online learning and physical mobility challenges. The results also showed that there were statistically significant differences based on gender with females facing more challenges than males. Regarding the degree of visual impairment, there were statistically significant differences based on the degree of visual impairment with blind students facing more challenges than low vision students. Keywords: Challenges, undergraduate, visual impairment, COVID-19, university students

The article touches upon the problem of the specifics of teaching blind students in a music university. Its integral part is the issue of fixing educational material on the musical-theoretical disciplines "Elementary Music Theory", "Solfeggio", "Harmony", "Analysis of Musical Works", "Polyphony". Memorizing the exercises by heart with subsequent playing on the piano, and writing down the musical text in Braille represent the two main ways of such fixation (the third one requires mastering computer programmes). Particular attention is paid to the difficulties of written fixation in Harmony. Students acquire the skills to write in four lines while still in college, but with such writing they can mix up a cell or a line on a Braille writing device. Writing in one line reminds of singing harmonic solfeggio exercises as one-voiced, in the direction from bass to soprano, but when writing each note in a line, students must indicate the octave sign. The optimal solution is to write in columns, where each measure is written in the form of four columns. This reduces the total work time for solving the harmony task, as it enables better navigation in the space of the Braille device (more than twenty bars can fit on one page).