Sunday, September 16, 2007

In the Eye of the Beholder

It's been an interesting week . . . I had eye surgery and have been recovering somewhat slowly ever since.

However, as I've been trying to do my coursework in 15-minute increments--trying not to strain the ol' eyeballs--I started thinking about eLearning for the visually impaired. Too often, I make the assumption that my learners will have full use of their eyes and ears. However, that's not always the case; learners come in all shapes and sizes and levels of abilities.

This little bout of pondering lead to a Google search on "eLearning for the visually impaired." Here are a few of the resources that I ran across:

e-Learn VIP (eLearning for Visually Impaired Persons) - This consortium has a newsletter that provides some interesting insights into designing elearning for those who are blind or visually impaired.

Customisation of an eLearning Environment for Visually Impaired Students -- This article from the Waterford Institute focuses on "how both Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) technologies can provide individual customisation of an eLearning environment for Visually Impaired Students."

There are a number of other available resources, but I'm at the end of my 15 minutes. I'll likely add a few more later!

Betsy

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Betsy

First, I hope you are recovering well from your eye surgery.

I have several hearing impaired students in my classes and I've often wondered about adjustments they might need for eLearning. Thanks for the articles.

Anonymous said...

Betsy

I'm new to blogging, so let me try this again:

First, I hope you are recovering well from your eye surgery.

I have several hearing impaired students in my classes and I've often wondered about adjustment they might need for eLearning. Thanks for the articles.

Carolyn

Brent G. Wilson said...

Hope your recovery has gone well. I am prone to vision problems, so my life at the keyboard is a mixed blessing. I can understand why a gap exists between old and young - the visual requirements alone can be an impediment.

Good to see your research on e-learning for the visually impaired. That's a key consideration in making web resources accessible.