A cisco education tool accessible to the vision impaired
Summary (2 min read)
1. INTRODUCTION
- Vision-impaired students taking the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) course have limited access to the traditional learning resources due to the visiocentric nature of the materials.
- As screen readers do not work with Packet Tracer, only sighted students can use it.
- To overcome this limitation, the iNetSim application described in this paper was developed to be a “universally accessible” network simulator for use by both sighted and vision-impaired students.
2. DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT
- This release included VoiceOver [2], a system wide screen reader designed to provide full computer functionality to vision-impaired users.
- Mac OS X includes the Cocoa API [3] that allows rapid development of complex applications, and Core Data [4], which reduces the time required to implement an application’s document back-end.
3. SPECIFICATION
- INetSim is intended to replace Packet Tracer, allowing visionimpaired and sighted students to complete CCNA level 2 (Routers and Routing Basics).
- For CCNA 2, “students will develop skills on how to configure a router, manage Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) Software, configure routing protocol on routers, and set the access lists to control the access to routers.” [5].
- All user interface and network topology elements are reachable with VoiceOver keys and provide a meaningful response when read by VoiceOver.
3.1 Topology Design
- The system represents network devices including routers, switches, hubs and PCs.
- Input of device configuration data is required for simulation.
- Each device may have several ports of different types including Ethernet, serial and console.
- The user creates a connection by specifying two ports to connect and a cable type.
- Removing a connected port disables the connection the same way unplugging a cable would in a real network.
3.2 Network Simulation
- A command line interface to devices provides control and feedback over the simulation.
- The interface acts in a similar way to the operating system for that device type (e.g. a generic DOSlike system for PCs and Cisco IOS for routers).
- A subset of the commands applicable to CCNA 2 allows the user to display and modify device configuration, establish routing protocols and ping, Traceroute or telnet to other devices.
- INetSim maintains a representation of routing tables to simulate these tasks correctly.
4. USER INTERFACE DESIGN
- Accessibility for the vision impaired drove the design of iNetSim.
- Network simulators usually depend on the use of a mouse to add simulated communication links between devices.
- Tables are Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
- As a GUI is also available, sighted iNetSim users can alternatively use a more traditional drag-drop mouse-based interface.
4.1 VERIFICATION
- The user successful completed the two CCNA 2 laboratories in the test, even though he was unfamiliar with the material in those modules.
- Tools capable of discovering accessibility problems are available for use by application designers.
- Involving representative users in field testing, prototyping and evaluation will generally lead to better usability[9].
- Verification of the final interface using the Accessibility Verifier , revealed few issues.
- Tests with vision impaired subjects and the results from the available accessibility tools, show that iNetSim is accessible and simple to use, allowing vision-impaired users to complete selected CCNA 2 laboratories.
5. CONCLUSIONS
- Assistive design choices made in the early stages of development lead to a better quality product.
- The constraints imposed by the screen reader required a well-designed graphical user interface.
- Having a representative user assist with prototyping, development and evaluation provided insight into usability issues for the vision-impaired.
- INetSim is a fully accessible network simulator that allows vision-impaired CCNA 2 students to complete network topology laboratory sessions.
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Citations
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References
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