Instructional eLearning technologies for the vision impaired

Abstract

The principal sensory modality employed in learning is vision, and that not only increases the difficulty for vision impaired students from accessing existing educational media but also the new and mostly visiocentric learning materials being offered through on-line delivery mechanisms. Using as a reference Certified Cisco Network Associate (CCNA) and IT Essentials courses, a study has been made of tools that can access such on-line systems and transcribe the materials into a form suitable for vision impaired learning. Modalities employed included haptic, tactile, audio and descriptive text. How such a multi-modal approach can achieve equivalent success for the vision impaired is demonstrated. However, the study also shows the limits of the current understanding of human perception, especially with respect to comprehending two and three dimensional objects and spaces when there is no recourse to vision.