Teaching spreadsheets to visually-impaired students in an environment similar to a mainstream class

Abstract

Inclusive education at all levels, as required by the UN General Assembly, will increase the heterogeneity of classes noticeably. Computer science education has to change in order to ensure equal access and equal opportunities for all. In contrast to previous research, we developed and tested teaching methods suitable for both normal and visuallyimpaired / blind students using standard handicap-specific equipment (e.g. laptop and screen reader). Our results show that no additional software and hardware is necessary to reach a fair level of handling spreadsheets when the proposed teaching methods are used.