Disability and Moodle

Disability and Moodle

by S. Hussain -
Number of replies: 8

Hi,

I would like to say thanks to every body, who brought to my attention the issue of the Disability and Moodle. There are two types of the disabilities, which affect the Learners. The first one is the sight and the second is the hearing. In regards to the disability in the sight, I observed during my visit to our Central Public Library in Birmingham UK as follows: I saw a man used a public library's pc and he was a partial blind. When this person pressed the keyboards at the pc, this pc started to give a loud sound of the letter or the word, which he was typing it. I found this great invention so I asked Mr Francis Firth a librarian from University of Central England in Birmingham about the new technologies for helping the learners with sight disabilities. Mr Firth responded kindly to my question as follows:

The best-known (and industry standard) software for reading to VIP people is JAWS by Freedom Scientific but it is quite expensive. One of the better-known for those with dyslexia is TextHelp, which will help spell words. For word processing, etc, a well-known package is Dragon Dictate but another is called Naturally speaking. One of the best-Known screen enlargement packages, which also reads the screen out is called Supernova from Dolphin (this software has been used in our Central Public Library). For scanning text and converting it to a text file to be read out loud the industry standard is Kurzweil. I am very optimistic in the future that one or more of these software will be integrated into Moodle.

In regards to the help the learners with disabilities in their hearing. I would like to comment on this issue as follows:

I have some background on this matter because I worked on a project about voice recognition. Non technical speaking, all you have to do is to speak through small microphone connects into pc and then your words, which you have already spoken will appear as a text on the pc. These words can also be converted into a sign language. This project has great application and now is in very advancing stages.

Also there many research institutions are working to integrate the voice recognition software into Moodle. Finally I would agree that the scientific researchers are doing too little to help those learners with disabilities. However I am again optimistic in the future.    

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In reply to S. Hussain

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Other forms of disability:

mobility - where they can't use a mouse and need to rely on keyboard-based input methods to move around sites (perhaps not even using fingers, but tongue etc).  This effects form design etc.

intellectual - where complicated layouts and overuse of words causes problems.  This can mean a need for bigger/better/more icons.
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In reply to S. Hussain

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Oksana Pas -

I am a teacher from Ukraine. We are starting a project of providing distance education to children who do not go to school because of the health problems. Those are children in hospitals, or centers of special education (cerebral spastic infantile paralysis), for children with hearing and visual disabilities.

My question is - how the education is provided to such children in your country?

Here they do not attend the regular schools at all and are separated from the society. They are taught in special centers (if they are lucky to get there), and basically do not have contacts with the "real world". Of course there are modern centers that try to get them back to the society, but the general situation is far from beign inclusive. So we'll be dealing not only with the educational problems, but also with the fact, that these children just do not know how it is - to communicate with others.

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In reply to Oksana Pas

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Art Lader -
My question is - how the education is provided to such children in your country?

Hi, Oksana,

I live in South Carolina (Southern USA). In my school district, teachers visit the "homebound" students to instruct them. Far from perfect, I would say.

-- Art
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In reply to S. Hussain

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Alistair McNaught -
There are plenty of people who benefit from text to speech software - ie words on the page being read out loud to them through the system. If you use PDF documents, this facility is automatically enabled in the latest version of the free acrobat reader (v7). Otherwise you can download free text to speech software - look for NaturalReaders.com or UltraHal (an open source one). If you want a free text to MP3 convertor you might also look at SayPad which can be a bit clunky but actually produces more reliable output on machines I use than Read and Write Gold.
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In reply to Alistair McNaught

回复: Re: Disability and Moodle

by hua peng -
I'll try these software.For a health person,they're good for learning a second language.
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In reply to S. Hussain

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Frances Bell -
This made wonder about changes to Moodle (I am out of touch). Has this specification been implemented I wonder http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_Accessibility_Specification?
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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Vincent Short -
hi Frances

in my sunday afternoon Moodling....

our students who use "Jaws" have no problems with our Moodle site

does this help?
vin


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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Disability and Moodle

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Yes, that was mostly implemented in Moodle 1.8.
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