Online ICT-courses integrated for the hearing-impaired individuals' education: A preliminary study from the students' perception

Abstract

Computers and Internet have become necessities of life, mostly because they provide a gateway into the World Wide Web. The web-growth as a platform for online-learning makes the Web an essential technology; hence the accessibility issues in Web applications are vital, this includes the Hearing-Impaired Individuals. The objective of this research is to investigate the Hearing-Impaired Individuals' level of interests in the various ICT courses, hence to identify the most-demanded chosen ICT course, to offer via E-Learning. The Methodology of this research were designed in such a way where the questionnaires for the students acts as the research instrument involved in this research. A total of 24 schools executing the Hearing-Impaired Education Program from the whole of Malaysia is the research location. This brings a total of 245 Hearing-Impaired Students from Form 4 and Form 5 of the Secondary Level as the research sample. In evaluating the results of the questionnaires, among all the ICT courses, the Computer Graphics course has the majority chosen by the Hearing-Impaired Individuals, mainly for reasons like enhances deaf-creativity in drawing images, web-design, 3D-animation and multimedia purposes. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.