Accessible App Design in Education
Every single child has the right to education, as stipulated in the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Education is closely associated with higher-paying jobs, a healthier life, social security and opportunities for full participation in society. However, until this day, there are children whose right to education is still denied. In the following paragraphs I will be speaking about one of the most marginalised and excluded (willingly, or not) groups in society: children with disabilities.
Teaching students with special needs
Estimates suggest that there are at least 93 million children with disabilities in the world, but numbers could be much higher. They are often likely to be among the poorest members of the population. They are less likely to attend school, access medical services, or have their voices heard in society.
In the US alone, the number of students ages 3–21 who received special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was 7.0 million, or 14 percent of all public school students. Among students receiving special education services, 34 percent had specific learning disabilities.
Figure 1. Percentage distribution of students ages 3–21 served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), by disability type.
Physical and learning disabilities
Physical disabilities encompass a wide range of challenges. Any of these can be a partial or total impairment and may have been present at birth or acquired. These include impairments in hearing, vision, and mobility.
A learning disability is a disorder that inhibits the ability to process and retain information. Numerous mental processes affect learning – as a result, learning disabilities can vary dramatically. Students with learning disabilities can have trouble in many areas. These include reading, writing, spelling, reasoning, recalling and/or organizing information.
Autism spectrum disorders are the most common developmental disability in the classroom. Related disorders include attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia (a developmental disorder of the brain in childhood causing difficulty in activities requiring coordination and movement), executive functioning, and memory challenges.
Beyond the numbers
Now, after diving head-on into this matter, allow me a moment of total honesty. I spent about a week reading everything that I could find on this subject: numbers, facts, laws, you name it. And then I got to real-life cases, real people, their story and their struggle. It hit me like a ton of bricks. You don’t feel their pain when you try to gather up statistics and look up on Google percentages of children with disabilities. It’s the story that they tell, the way they have to adjust their day to day life to be able to do the things that we take for granted. Take a look at a few examples:
“My son knows every car brand. He has astonishing geographical memory. He knows two Mozart operas by heart. But special gifts like this are not regarded in schools, because they are not useful. If you are not among the 95 percent of children that develop normally in terms of reading, writing, calculating, you have a massive problem.”
—Maria, the mother of a boy with an intellectual disability
“There are two situations: either the children are thrown out, often because they are failing at school. Or they are isolated, not supported until they decide to go themselves. It's ‘sink or swim’.” —Claire, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She ended up removing her son from the European School and said all but one of the children who were receiving educational support in her son’s class dropped out.
Breaking the barriers
The challenges faced by students with special needs bring opportunities for educators to explore new techniques for engaging learners, finding creative methods of modifying curriculum, and employing a range of materials – including technology tools – to help students succeed. The age that we live in allows us to combine creativity and technology to produce stronger, more inclusive communities.
In today’s world, this is more than just a “nice-to-have”. Incorporating accessible design features is essential if you want to promote inclusivity, reach a wide audience, and build positive brand perception. Providing relevant learning technology is but one way of respecting the personal needs, desires, and interests of special needs students. These students must be seen as individuals with unique points of view who are capable of participating in determining the ways they might use technology to enhance the quality of their lives.
There are many ways of how technology can help students with special needs. For example, some kinds of disabilities don’t allow students to use handwritten text that is an integral part of "traditional" education. By using technical tools intended for human speech recognition and synthesizing, you can avoid the necessity of paper and pen during the lessons. Such technology would also be helpful for students with disorders that don’t allow them to process visual information correctly.
The adaptive computing technology allows using digital devices to bypass challenging tasks. Screen reader applications make it possible for visually challenged students to use the computer. Take for example JAWS (“Job Access With Speech”) – a computer screen reader program for Microsoft Windows that allows blind and visually impaired users to read the screen either with a text-to-speech output or by a refreshable Braille display.
Augmentative communication systems help students with speech problems to overcome the communication barrier. Such systems use picture charts, books, and specialised computers providing functions of word-prediction for more effective communication.
Accessible mobile applications
Accessible mobile application design is the practice of designing mobile applications that are usable and inclusive for people with disabilities. Accessible design ensures that everyone, regardless of their abilities, can use and benefit from the features and functionalities of an application.
There are several design considerations that are important to make a mobile application accessible, such as:
Text alternatives for non-text content: Providing text descriptions for images, videos, and other non-text content enables visually impaired users to understand the content.
Color contrast: Using high contrast between text and background colors ensures that users with color blindness or low vision can read the text clearly.
Consistent layout and navigation: Consistent and predictable layouts and navigation help users who rely on screen readers or other assistive technology to easily navigate the application.
Keyboard accessibility: Ensuring that all features and functionalities can be accessed using a keyboard rather than just touch or mouse input allows users with physical disabilities to use the application.
Clear and concise language: Using clear and concise language that is easy to understand helps users with cognitive disabilities or limited literacy to comprehend the content.
By incorporating these and other design considerations into the development of a mobile application, designers can ensure that their applications are accessible to the widest possible audience.
Our contribution
BookRoom! for CCC is an iOS and Android app that allows the reader to load a book into the device by scanning the barcode on the back cover. It caters to a kid’s unique learning style, as it grants students easy access to the book at all times. It also allows them to change the print size, which benefits children with special educational needs like dyslexia or visual processing disorders.
A library wherever you go, BookRoom! enables you to load and remove books over and over, to your heart’s desire.
The X2 Mobile team has been working on another project in collaboration with CCC that is yet to be released. It is a decoding program for beginning readers based on comprehension and decoding skills which differ in both nature and pace of acquisition. As such, each area requires distinct instructional approaches for teaching skills.
This program is committed to teaching decoding in a way suited to each child's needs and abilities, including effective reading instruction for students with dyslexia. As a result, the app developed by X2 Mobile will encompass an alternative font designed to mitigate some of the common reading errors caused by dyslexia.
The above-mentioned numbers tell us that there can’t be a single technological solution that would suit the needs of all students with special needs. Due to the high diversity of types of disabilities, the best possible outcome can be guaranteed by the use of custom-made solutions designed according to the requirements of a particular group of students.
The message that we are trying to convey is that there is still much work to be done. However, we are here and we are up for the challenge.