Teaching robot programming activities for visually impaired students: A systematic review

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of studies concerning the use of robotics for the programming education of individuals with visual impairment. This study presents a thorough discussion and classification of the surveyed papers, including: different programming teaching methodologies based on robotics for people who are blind; the use of several robotics kits and programming environments; the evaluation procedure for each environment; and the challenges found during the teaching process. Based on these papers we created a guideline to prepare, conduct and evaluate a robot programming workshop for people who are visually impaired. These instructions include, for example, how to train instructors to work in workshops for people with visual disabilities, how to prepare concrete and digital support materials, suggestions of work dynamics for programming teaching, how to conduct collaborative activities, forms of feedback for the student to better understand the syntax and semantics of the language, recommendations for the development of a robotic environment concerning the hardware (robot) and software (programming language to operate the robot). These recommendations were validated with two users with visual impairment.