scholarly journals Accommodating the Syllabus to Visually Impaired Students in the English Language Classroom

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Ana-Isabel Martínez-Hernández ◽  
Begoña Bellés-Fortuño

The inclusion of students with disabilities in the education system results in content or assessment accommodations to suit the students’ special needs and to ensure they have acquired the objectives listed in the curriculum. In this paper, we aim at proposing different ways to accommodate a university English language test to a partially blind student who used text-to-speech tools (TTS) in order to provide them with accurate assessment. To carry out this research, the student has been monitored throughout the course to see which accommodations fit their1 needs best. All in all, we have observed that read-aloud accommodations lead to a better inclusion of the partially sighted student and better performance.

SAGE Open ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401880779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Asamoah ◽  
Kwadwo Ofori-Dua ◽  
Ebenezer Cudjoe ◽  
Alhassan Abdullah ◽  
Joy Ato Nyarko

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception of visually impaired students, their peers without disabilities, and teachers about inclusive education, focusing on a second cycle educational institution in the Eastern region of Ghana implementing inclusive education for the visually impaired. In this study, we collected data from 23 visually impaired students, 27 students without disabilities, and 19 teachers in the inclusive school. Data were collected through semistructured in-depth interviews. This study followed a phenomenological approach, reporting findings from participants’ own words. The study findings revealed that visually impaired students and some teachers supported inclusion while a number of students without disabilities disliked the practice. Some teachers indicated that the idea of inclusive education is a good way to ensure equal educational opportunities. The study concludes that Ghanaian teachers in inclusive schools should be equipped with training to teach students with disabilities.


Author(s):  
M. S. Heetha ◽  
M. Shenbagapriya ◽  
M. Bharanidharan

Visually impaired people face many challenges in the society; particularly students with visual impairments face unique challenges in the education environment. They struggle a lot to access the information, so to resolve this obstacle in reading and to allow the visually impaired students to fully access and participate in the curriculum with the greatest possible level of independence, a Braille transliteration system using VLSI is designed. Here Braille input is given to FPGA Virtex-4 kit via Braille keyboard. The Braille language is converted into English language by decoding logic in VHDL/Verilog and then the corresponding alphabet letter is converted into speech signal with the help of the algorithm. Speaker is used for the voice output. This project allows the visually impaired people to get literate also the person can get a conformation about what is being typed, every time that character is being pressed, this prevents the occurrence of mistakes.


Author(s):  
Edgar Guadia Encalada ◽  
Cristina del Rocío Jordán ◽  
Verónica Elizabeth Chicaiza ◽  
Sarah Jacqueline Pazmiño

This paper addresses the issue of the development of the English language reading skills and subskills using the Braille System as the fundamental tool for visually impaired people. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the use of the Braille System and the reading skill competence. This research was applied to 21 pupils with different blindness conditions and from 10 to 32 years old who belong to the Special Education School “Julius Dophner” in the city of Ambato, Ecuador. This preliminary study was carried out using a quasi-experimental design, where pre-tests and post-tests were applied during a three-week period. Pupils took active part in the reading of the different primers at the beginning and after the treatment process. A t-test was used to examine the hypothesis. The results revealed that the improvement in the English language reading for specific information subskill through the Braille system was meaningful. Additional testing should be done to validate the scores obtained by visually impaired students with the use of this tool. Pupils showed a positive and very enthusiastic attitude about the learning process of the English language through this tool with which they are familiar.


Author(s):  
James Carpenter

The educational research literature has promoted integrating students with disabilities into mainstream classrooms since the 1970s. In 2007, the Japanese government amended the School Educational Law, which has increased the number of educational opportunities available to students with disabilities. At the same time, the Japanese education system is, increasingly, following the global trend of promoting English as a foreign language (EFL) education at every level of the education system. There are approximately 1.64 million visually impaired people in Japan. Of these, an estimated 187,800 are blind. Even as the disability rights movement in Japan advances its agenda of barrier-free access, the processes through which blind students learn (and can be taught) foreign languages has not been well described within the broader educational community. In this paper, I will present the results of an interview study conducted with student and teacher participants at a school for the visually impaired in Japan. In this study, I sought to address two research foci: 1) what best practices can support teachers in conducting classes with visually impaired students; and 2) how visually impaired students relate to and engage with their EFL classes. Through my analysis of the interview data, I identified three core themes: a) the importance of targeted needs analysis; b) the centrality of braille for equity and access; and c) a tension between traditional educational support systems for visually impaired students in Japan, and what contemporary students increasingly need.


Author(s):  
Earl W. Huff ◽  
Julian Brinkley

Prior research into the accessibility of computing education focused primarily on the curricula and tools used in the classroom and the challenges students with disabilities faced in learning from them. We argue that there is insufficient research that explores these problems through observations in an actual programming course to learn about the learning and teaching processes used in conjunction with such curricula and tools. We address this gap through a four-week diary study involving a teacher and two visually impaired students throughout an ongoing distance learning programming course to examine teacher perceptions of their students’ performance in learning to code and students’ perceptions of the course material, tools, and instruction. Findings reveal that despite challenges encountered, students could achieve their learning outcomes from the teacher’s instructions. Additionally, we learn how online learning could be a viable platform for a more accessible learning experience for visually impaired learners.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (S1) ◽  
pp. 57-59
Author(s):  
K. Indumathi ◽  
R. Sophia

This article extrapolate Innovative Best Practices for accessible libraries. Many Academic Libraries striving to provide accessible resources to students with Visual Impairment. Librarians have taken measures to satisfy the needs of the Visually Challenged library users. But the library staff are not satisfied with their services rendered to the special students. Best innovative practices described in this paper may help the Library Staff to reach the fullest satisfaction of the visually impaired students of Academic Institutions. The guidelines and suggestions are to be implemented to treat the students with disabilities especially the Visually Challenged library users in an academic environment are also described.


Author(s):  
Elena Grigoryeva ◽  
Elena Nikolaeva ◽  
Elena Semenova

В статье подробно рассматривается современный научный задел по проблеме создания адаптивной среды для слабовидящих и незрячих студентов педагогического вуза. Авторы приводят психофизиологические характеристики слабовидящих и незрячих лиц. Анализируются данные опроса преподавателей по проблеме обучения слабовидящих и незрячих студентов. Приводятся программные и аппаратные средства обучения слабовидящих и незрячих, позволяющие в значительной степени облегчить процесс обучения студентов с нарушениями зрения, описывается опыт их применения и выявляются наиболее эффективные из них.The article gives detailed consideration of modern scientific research made on the problem of creation of adaptive environment for visually impaired students in teacher training universities. The authors give psychophysiological features of blind and partially sighted persons. The research also analyses the results of the survey conducted among teachers which is based on the problem of teaching blind and partially sighted students, describes different types of software and hardware used for teaching visually impaired students and which allow to facilitate teaching process of such students, outlines practice of implementation of the described soft- and hardware and reveals the most efficient kinds.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 1133-1138
Author(s):  
Lindita Ademi ◽  
Valbon Ademi

The problem for developing a TTS (text-to-speech) is a very active field of research. As the Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI) come of age, the need for a more ergonomic and natural interface than the current one (keyboard, mouse, etc.) is being constantly felt. Talking of natural interfaces, what comes to mind, is sound (speech) and sight (vision). These form the basis of many intelligent systems research like robotics. Moreover, speech can also serve as an excellent interface for visually impaired , or people with motor neuron disorders. In this paper we attempt at developing a TTS system for Albanian Language. A lot of commercial systems are available for many foreign languages (mostly English), but there is yet to be a competitive system available for Albanian language. Although the task of building very high quality, unlimited vocabulary text-to-speech (TTS) system is still a difficult one, with many open research questions, we believe the building of reasonable quality voices for many tasks can serve our needs. Here we have worked with standard Albanian, the most commonly spoken. We hope to easily extend the system to other languages, since there are a lot of underlying similarities between languages. Albanian language being highly phonetic, result in simple letter-to-sound rules. We used the standard concatenative synthesis. The main problem faced by us was to make the synthesized speech sound natural. We investigated the reasons for the mechanical sounding speech and developed different synthesis models to overcome some of those problems. Moreover, we implemented some standard and also novel intonation and duration modification algorithms, which can be incorporated into the TTS at a later stage. Our main achievement was reasonably legible speech with an unlimited vocabulary. The following paper presents a brief overview of the main text-to-speech synthesis problem and its subproblems, and the initial work done in building a TTS for Albanian.


1997 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 344-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dick ◽  
Evelyn Kubiak

Efforts at inclusion and mainstreaming are pervasive in classrooms across North America. One of the many special populations formerly segregated but currently mainstreamed includes blind or partially sighted students. In this article we discuss some of the challenges faced by blind and visually impaired students and some of the tools available to help these students in their efforts to learn mathematics.


1994 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kalloniatis ◽  
A.W. Johnston

This article reports the results of an analysis of questionnaires administered to partially sighted children and their parents. The aim of the study was to identify the visual environmental adaptation problems (VEAPs) of children who attend regular classrooms but have support from teachers of visually impaired students. In addition to discussing the VEAPs that were found in various areas, the article offers suggestions for adaptive techniques and materials that will help these children function more effectively.


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