Designing educational materials for a blind arduino workshop

Lauren Race, Claire Kearney-Volpe, Chancey Fleet, Joshua A. Miele, Tom Igoe, Amy Hurst

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

There is an overall shortage of accessible educational material available for blind and low vision learners. This shortage is especially pronounced in the domain of electronics, where the materials are historically visually-rendered and complex. To address this, we took a qualitative approach to designing and evaluating tactile graphics and textual descriptions when building circuits. To gain an understanding of their efficacy, we provided a circuit description [3], component diagrams (Figure 4), and a tactile schematic [9] as educational materials in a Blind Arduino workshop with eight participants and interviewed these participants about their experience. Our research revealed the complexities of designing these materials: our tactile component diagrams were usable and helpful, whereas our tactile schematics and circuit descriptions presented learning barriers in a microcontroller workshop. We provide recommendations for future research to design accessible materials to teach electronics.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI EA 2020 - Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450368193
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 25 2020
Event2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2020 - Honolulu, United States
Duration: Apr 25 2020Apr 30 2020

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHonolulu
Period4/25/204/30/20

Keywords

  • Accessibility
  • Blind
  • Electronic circuits
  • Inclusive design
  • Schematics
  • Tactile graphics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Designing educational materials for a blind arduino workshop'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this