Abstract
Special education teachers for visually impaired students rely on tools such as raised-line maps (RLMs) to teach spatial knowledge. These tools do not fully and adequately meet the needs of the teachers because they are long to produce, expensive, and not versatile enough to provide rapid updating of the content. For instance, the same RLM can barely be used during different lessons. In addition, those maps do not provide any interactivity, which reduces students’ autonomy. With the emergence of 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers, it is now easy to design affordable interactive small-scale models (SSMs) which are adapted to the needs of special education teachers. However, no study has previously been conducted to evaluate non-visual learning using interactive SSMs. In collaboration with a specialized teacher, we designed a SSM and a RLM representing the evolution of the geography and history of a fictitious kingdom. The two conditions were compared in a study with 24 visually impaired students regarding the memorization of the spatial layout and historical contents. The study showed that the interactive SSM improved both space and text memorization as compared to the RLM with braille legend. In conclusion, we argue that affordable home-made interactive small scale models can improve learning for visually impaired students. Interestingly, they are adaptable to any teaching situation including students with specific needs.
Highlights
With more than 285 million visually impaired people in the world, including 19 million visually impaired children below the age of 15 (WHO, 2012), it is important to provide adapted and accessible tools that help them understand spatial concepts used in geography, science, and mathematics
Several authors have investigated the use of 3D printing for the creation of accessible interactive 2.1D maps (2.1D usually refers to relief with just one height)
Shapiro–Wilk test confirmed that each set of data was normally distributed
Summary
With more than 285 million visually impaired people in the world, including 19 million visually impaired children below the age of 15 (WHO, 2012), it is important to provide adapted and accessible tools that help them understand spatial concepts used in geography, science, and mathematics. Several tools are currently used, such as raised-line maps (RLMs) printed on swellpaper (see Figure 1); and numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of those maps for spatial learning (Ungar, 2000). Raised lines maps are expensive, cumbersome to produce, Interactive Small-Scale Model for VI Users and cannot be adapted to all learning situations (Rice et al, 2005). Picard and Pry (2009) showed that exploring a SSM of an urban environment improves allocentric spatial learning in visually impaired users. Such models are made of wood or plastic and do not provide any interactivity or feedback when they are touched. It is possible to embed different sensors (e.g., buttons or conductive painting) or to use capacitive technologies (Sato et al, 2012) to make those models interactive and provide multisensory feedback
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