Lack of accessibility in the design of e-learning courses continues to hinder students with vision impairment. E-learning materials are predominantly vision-centric, incorporating images, animation, and interactive media, and as a result students with acute vision impairment do not have equal opportunity to gain tertiary qualifications or skills relevant to the marketplace and their disability. Due to its logical, rather than physical, nature IT help desk and network administration roles are ideal for people who are blind. This paper describes the development of a fully accessible e-learning environment to deliver advanced IT network curriculum to adults with acute vision disabilities. The components include a virtual classroom, accessible learning materials, a remote computer laboratory, and delivery of the learning materials by vision impaired instructors. Industry standard courses in advanced IT were redeveloped, and the accessible on-line learning environment was developed to deliver the courses. Vision impaired students who excelled in the pilot project were trained as instructors, gaining industry-standard instructor certifications. These instructors were used to assist with the design of accessible methods and delivered the materials to the vision impaired students.

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Advanced IT Education for the Vision Impaired via e-Learning

Vision-impaired students face tremendous obstacles in their quest to access learning materials delivered in web-based and other electronic formats. The predominance of visual prompts, use of flash and animation and the inability of screen reading applications to interpret images all contribute to make much of the current e-learning materials associated with computing studies inaccessible by blind or vision-impaired students. This paper describes a university research project undertaken to improve the accessibility of Cisco e-learning materials for vision-impaired computing students.allThe network architecture which supports the delivery of the Cisco courses to both local and remote vision-impaired students is also presented.

http://www.cucat.org/publications/Remote_Local_Cisco.pdf

Remote and local delivery of cisco education for the vision-impaired

The delivery of laboratory exercises to students that are unable to attend in person due to physical disabilities is a significant issue. Both Netlab and Packet Tracer are inaccessible to many students who use assistive technology, particularly those with vision impairment. This paper presents the development of an accessible, cost effective, remote laboratory and describes the modification to laboratory sessions necessary for the blind to undertake CCNA laboratory sessions remotely and with full accessibility. Also discussed is the development of an accessible network simulator, iNetSim, illustrating possible methodologies that may be applied to make existing simulation packages accessible to those with severe vision impairment.

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Remote Laboratory Access for Students with Vision Impairment

With the development of the modern telecommunication systems and networks many new options for providing education services have emerged. A general worldwide trend is the development of distance learning sites and virtual laboratories, which are providing state-of-the-art education in all possible areas and are coexisting with the available on-site and in-person courses and subjects. In the Internet-oriented 21st century many university students have turned to and prefer these electronic and virtual educational resources, not only as additional learning options, but also as primary means for obtaining the latest educational materials by the leading university lecturers worldwide. This process has presented one of the major challenges for the available virtual learning environments - how to make it possible for the students to access, use and work with real equipment. In this paper we present our vision for a virtual laboratory which will provide the possibility for the students to access remotely and in real time the available laboratory set of telecommunication devices. In the Introduction section of the paper we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the available virtual learning environments. In the next Section we introduce the general conceptual model of the planned laboratory and later we present the actual structure and the organizational requirements for its implementation. The paper continues with a Section, which presents the created virtual laboratory and its capabilities, and is finalized by the Conclusions and References sections.

Designing the next generation of virtual learning environments — Virtual laboratory with remote access to real telecommunication devices

The employment of visually impaired workers in information technology (IT) support has rarely been considered a viable career choice because computers are vision driven and the person who is visually impaired would have difficulty seeing a computer screen to diagnose and fix any problem. Once computer networks have been installed, little physical work needs to be done; however, continuing logical work in establishing and maintaining connections and access to the data is required. Users on business networks constantly request assistance from computer network professionals via an IT help desk. People who are visually impaired with technological skills are well suited to this helpdesk role. Research undertaken by Curtin University in conjunction with the Association for the Blind in Western Australia has shown that accessible e-learning environments can be developed to assist adults with visual impairments achieve industry-standard qualifications in IT networking. Industry-standard qualifications are certifications offered by industry leaders in their fields, such as Cisco and Microsoft. Cisco training, in particular, provides skills and knowledge for people who are visually impaired to maintain any computer network--the networks in their offices as well as in their homes. This article describes an accessible e-learning environment that was designed to deliver advanced IT skills to legally blind students in preparation for employment. The aim was to convert industry-standard training materials in print into accessible formats and to deliver the learning materials in ways that are more suited to adult students with visual impairments. The components of the learning environment are discussed, together with the successes and problems that were faced, in the hope that others may learn from our experiences. SCOPING THE PROBLEM Adults who are visually impaired continue to face problems in obtaining employment. Although education and training are not the sole answer to the problem, postsecondary education and training have been found to be a significant factor in obtaining employment in numerous studies (Capella-McDonnall, 2005; Kirchner, Schmeidler, & Todorv, 1999; Lee & Park, 2008). Unfortunately, few e-learning training courses are accessible to people who are visually impaired. Although attempts have been made to increase the accessibility of IT training materials, the major providers of such instructional documents, such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Oracle, still fall short in providing fully accessible e-learning curricula for those who are visually impaired. This article describes an accessible e-learning environment that was developed to deliver advanced IT skills to adults with visual impairments in preparation for employment and to solve challenges faced by several undergraduate students with visual impairments at Curtin University of Technology who were studying Cisco technologies. CONVERTING INDUSTRY-STANDARD COURSES The training courses chosen for conversion were the IT networking course offered by Cisco Systems, because Cisco is the leading supplier of computer network equipment to organizations internationally and its routers and switches link the majority of the Internet. Although the Cisco training materials are effective for sighted users, they are not accessible to individuals who are visually impaired. The Cisco curriculum is rich in media, and much of the content is delivered using animation and interactive web pages. It relies heavily on visual keys to illustrate learning objectives, and much of the content cannot be accessed by screen-reading applications. Six Cisco e-learning courses were chosen to provide a relevant skill set for employment in IT. The introductory courses provide the skills to assemble and disassemble physical computers, install and manage operating systems and software applications, and generally troubleshoot computing problems. …

Adapting Advanced Information Technology Network Training for Adults with Visual Impairments

This paper describes iNetSim, a universally accessible network simulator, created to allow vision-impaired and sighted users to complete Cisco Certified Network Associate level two (CCNA 2) laboratory sessions Previously, software used in the CCNA course was not accessible to those with impaired vision because it utilized images of network topology These images were incompatible with screen reader software In contrast, iNetSim is assessable by blind and vision impaired users, in addition to those with normal vision It is based on Mac OS X Tiger, an operating system with an integrated screen reader called VoiceOver

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J. Hope

Papers

A cisco education tool accessible to the vision impaired