Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

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An Inclusive Science Laboratory for Visually Impaired Students


Affiliations
1 Department of Electronics, Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110019, India
     

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Education is a powerful tool that has the potential to improve the social and economic condition of a person in a developing country like India. The greatest challenge for the Government is the accomplishment of quality education in inclusive and accessible arrangements for persons with disabilities. The teaching techniques adopted in traditional classrooms aren't usually designed to cater to the need of visually impaired students. Visually impaired students are usually held back from pursuing STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) education and are encouraged to take up humanities and commerce. The lack of resources is mostly responsible for holding back visually impaired students from pursuing Science along with other factors such as the incompetence and attitude of the facilitators. In this work, an inclusive science laboratory for visually impaired students is envisaged using assistive technology that can facilitate them in performing lab experiments. Assistive technology plays a crucial role in the shift of the education system for visually impaired students to an inclusive model. Low cost, easy to use and store, hardware modules with talkable features has been designed to measure temperature, time, to detect contrast and color using Arduino UNO. With the help of these modules, a visually impaired student can be assisted to perform laboratory experiments effortlessly, which otherwise is not made accessible to them.

Keywords

Arduino, Assistive Technology, Inclusive Science Laboratory, Visually Impaired.
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  • An Inclusive Science Laboratory for Visually Impaired Students

Abstract Views: 116  |  PDF Views: 0

Authors

Ritesh Raj
Department of Electronics, Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110019, India
Ravneet Kaur
Department of Electronics, Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110019, India

Abstract


Education is a powerful tool that has the potential to improve the social and economic condition of a person in a developing country like India. The greatest challenge for the Government is the accomplishment of quality education in inclusive and accessible arrangements for persons with disabilities. The teaching techniques adopted in traditional classrooms aren't usually designed to cater to the need of visually impaired students. Visually impaired students are usually held back from pursuing STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) education and are encouraged to take up humanities and commerce. The lack of resources is mostly responsible for holding back visually impaired students from pursuing Science along with other factors such as the incompetence and attitude of the facilitators. In this work, an inclusive science laboratory for visually impaired students is envisaged using assistive technology that can facilitate them in performing lab experiments. Assistive technology plays a crucial role in the shift of the education system for visually impaired students to an inclusive model. Low cost, easy to use and store, hardware modules with talkable features has been designed to measure temperature, time, to detect contrast and color using Arduino UNO. With the help of these modules, a visually impaired student can be assisted to perform laboratory experiments effortlessly, which otherwise is not made accessible to them.

Keywords


Arduino, Assistive Technology, Inclusive Science Laboratory, Visually Impaired.

References