Multimedia platform for mathematics’ interactive learning accessible to blind people

Abstract

Nowadays, the math learning is an important step in developing professional carriers in technical and economic sciences. Increasing the number of e-learning tools used in universities courses can reduce the potential barrier of access to mathematical knowledge, but most of them are not accessible for impaired students. Moreover, classical printed math books include little explicit instructional information about structural information interpretations. Taking into account these barriers the article presents the developed method used for creating interactive steps of decomposed math's exercise solution and alternative description of math formulas accessible for the blind. The elements of proposed methodology: generation of state machine, design and presentation of transition conditions, generating the presentation layer and a typical usage by a blind user are presented. A set of rules for describing mathematical formulas were proposed after consultation with mathematicians and teachers of blind people. The application was developed as web application. The graphical interface of presented application was designed using PHP and JavaScript technologies. The collection of prepared exercises include about 240 prepared exercises from different areas of mathematics Multimed Tools Appl (2018) and 60 selected exercises including alternative description layer. About 1000 students and about 40 impaired students, from 6 faculties of the university use this platform during math courses for both self and class learning. The defined rules were used to read aloud mathematical formulas to the visually impaired people with a different level of mathematical knowledge. The results confirmed good understanding of mathematical formulas by using prepared alternative description.

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