Torino: A Tangible Programming Language Inclusive of Children with Visual Disabilities

Abstract

Across the world, policy initiatives are being developed to engage children with computer programming and computational thinking. Diversity and inclusion has been a strong force in this agenda, but children with disabilities have largely been omitted from the conversation. Currently, there are no age appropriate tools for teaching programming concepts and computational thinking to primary school children with visual disabilities. We address this gap through presenting the design and implementation of Torino, a tangible programming language for teaching programming concepts to children age 7-11 regardless of level of vision. In this paper, we: 1) describe the design process done in conjunction with children with visual disabilities; 2) articulate the design decisions made; and 3) report insights generated from an evaluation with 10 children with mixed visual abilities that considers how children are able to trace (read) and create (write) programs with Torino. We discuss key design trade-offs: 1) readability versus extensibility; and 2) size versus liveness. We conclude by reflecting upon how an inclusive design approach shaped the final result.

Robots for Inclusive Play: Co-designing an Educational Game With Visually Impaired and sighted Children

“…Building on work on inclusive co-design [39,35], we aimed to emphasise inclusion, both in terms of the design process and its outcomes. We achieved this by bringing together children with and without visual impairments, alongside their educators, in a series of activities that provided opportunities for learning about a robot technology, and about design, accessibility and inclusion.…”

Ressignificando o pensamento computacional na perspectiva inclusiva

“…O desenvolvimento das habilidades do pensamento computacional junto a estes estudantes se insere nesse contexto, na medida em que é importante que professores conheçam os recursos disponíveis para tal, bem como as especificidades desse tipo de prática pedagógica. Morrison et al (2020) colocam que por mais que venham sendo criadas políticas em todo o mundo para promover o engajamento de crianças na programação de computadores e no desenvolvimento do pensamento computacional, atualmente não existem ferramentas para ensinar conceitos de programação e do PC para crianças do Ensino Fundamental com deficiência visual que sejam adequadas à idade. Já Riazy, Weller e Simbeck (2020) analisaram dezessete ambientes introdutórios de programação, bem como sua usabilidade para pessoas com deficiência visual, concluindo que nenhum deles era adequado para pessoas com esse tipo de impedimento, na medida em que utilizavam estruturas baseadas em arrastar e soltar blocos, não apresentavam texto alternativo ou demandam a utilização do mouse.…”

TIP-Toy: a tactile, open-source computational toolkit to support learning across visual abilities

“…A notable example of a TUI-based computational toolkit for VI children is Torino developed by Microsoft Research [52]. Torino features a series of instruction beads, which can be recognized by sight or touch.…”

“…Torino features a series of instruction beads, which can be recognized by sight or touch. Beads represent different programming instructions such as play, pause and repeat that can be combined to explore computational concepts through the creation of music and stories [52]. Torino has shown great potential to stimulate collaboration between children with mixed visual abilities and, since its initial development, has been trailed in schools around the UK and India [25,52,68,69].…”

“…One approach is to increase the accessibility of block-based GUIs through audio feedback or a simplified navigation interface based on consistent spatial organization [34,46]. Another strategy is to use tangible user interfaces (TUIs) in the form of objects that children can manipulate and arrange to create programming sequences [33,52]. None of these strategies is or aims to be universally superior to the others, but researchers recognize that a variety of approaches should be used to meet the diverse needs and preferences of young learners with mixed visual abilities [33].…”