A mobile e-learning application for enhancement of basic mathematical skills in visually impaired children

Abstract

Although smartphones are equipped with accessibility functions, they still pose significant problems for visually impaired people. Sometimes these functions cannot fulfil the expectations of users. Early mobile devices had physical buttons and a keypad, and visually impaired users could navigate around the keypad using the tactile markers on the buttons. However, the lack of tactile markers makes it much more difficult to operate a touchscreen device. This paper describes an e-learning platform that is designed to improve the accessibility of smartphone applications for students who are visually impaired but have some useful vision. A User-Centered Design approach was used to develop an effective solution for visually impaired students. A study was conducted during the development of the described platform, and the results showed that our suggested design improves task completion time as compared to the initial version. Participants also expressed higher levels of satisfaction when using the improved design of this platform. The modified design was also assessed using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS), and the results indicate that it is quite reliable and rated well among visually impaired children. Furthermore, developers can use our suggested design guidelines such as clear navigation, color contrast, immediate feedback, icon arrangements, button and text size in the development of new applications.