Blind, Deafblind and Partially Sighted Adult Learners Use Moodle in Ontario

Nancy Friday from the

AlphaPlus Centre, Toronto,

Ontario

www.alphaplus.ca

nfriday@alphaplus.ca

Lee Garrett from CNIB

Literacy Program for

Deafblind Adults

Hamilton, Ontario: Specialist

Deafblind Literacy

www.cnib.ca

Lee.Garrett@cnib.ca

Agenda

• Introduce our target audience and need for distance learning

• Customization of our Moodle site • Course development considerations

• Course delivery

• Challenges

• Research

• What we need from the Moodle community

• Our needs moving forward

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Partnership

AlphaPlus provides expertise to support adult educators in Ontario in their use of innovative learning technologies – what to use, how and when

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The CNIB Literacy Program for Deafblind

Adults provides individualized Literacy

and Basic Skills instruction for

deafblind adults

Nancy Friday Lee Garrett

Adult literacy • Four out of 10 adult Canadians, age 16 to 65 struggle with low

literacy (that’s 9 million people!) • Low literacy levels are tied to lower rates of employment, lower Economic status, lower physical and mental health status and lower levels of civic and community involvement • The Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities funds Literacy and Basic Skills programs under the Employment Ontario Umbrella of Services • Programs serve adults learners from basic level to GED prep level with goals of Employment, Further Education & Greater Personal Independence

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Program Participants

Blind: with no useable vision – Require sight substitution technology – may or may not be braille users Deaf blind: combined vision and hearing loss - Require different types of communication methods - May have: congenital deafness with acquired blindness,

congenital blindness with acquired deafness; congenital deafblindess or acquired deafblindness

Partially Sighted: have some useable vision - Require sight enhancement technology such as Zoom Text or other screen readers

Adults who lack the necessary Literacy and Basic skills necessary to be fully independent, seek or maintain employment or participate in further education and training

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CNIB Mission Our missions is to enhance independence for Canadians who are blind, deafblind or partially sighted and to be the leader in promoting vision health. The CNIB, recognizes the specialized literacy needs of deafblind clients and their limited access to community programs. A Literacy Program specifically for Deafblind Adults was established in 1986 and an accessible Moodle site in 2010.

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The CNIB Literacy Program for Deafblind Adults

• 5 sites across Ontario (London, Hamilton, Brantford, Toronto & Ottawa) • The only English Literacy Program of it’s kind in Canada (and 1 of only 3 in the world) • Supports Adult learners pursuing goals of Greater Personal Independence, Employment or Further Education • Provides individualized literacy instruction to deafblind adults in each learners preferred method of communication • Has specialized technology and instructors who are knowledgeable in operating and teaching with low vision devices • Program is free of charge to students

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Need for distance learning

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• Only 5 physical classrooms across the entire province of Ontario

• All located in major cities • Distances from their home to the program can be more than

50 km • Many Rural learners • Many learners don’t have private transportation (don’t drive) • May live in areas without ready access to public transportation • Disabled transit is limited in providing flexible scheduling • Many have mobility issues and can’t travel unattended

Quality Distance or “E-channel Learning” may be their only option for enhancing their knowledge and skills

Moodle training

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•AlphaPlus offers 2 levels of Moodle training to Ontario Deaf, Aboriginal, Francophone and Anglo educators funded by MTCU •MTCU provided special project funding to develop and make available online The Deafblind Curriculum Framework •Moodle training required development and delivery of a 3-week Moodle course and Lee developed her course on one of the Deafblind Curriculum topics: Manage Health Needs •AlphaPlus’ Moodle course site didn’t meet specific needs of Deafblind students •AlphaPlus worked with Lee to develop a Moodle site to meet audience needs and Lambda Canadian Moodle partner for the customization expertise

Site Development

http://cnib.alphaplus.ca

Site Development

http://cnib.alphaplus.ca

Site Development

http://cnib.alphaplus.ca

• 11 course categories

• Lambda customization

• Category summaries of text + image used • Defined category borders

• Importance of images

• Importance of alternate image text for screen reader

Course Titles: accessibility info.

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Course Development - theme

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Course Development - theme

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Course Delivery - Glossary

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Course Delivery Challenges 1. Live Chat pop-up screen

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• Individuals requiring sight substitution technology use a program called JAWS – a screen reading software

• JAWS is unable to access the pop up screen in the live

chat feature

Course Delivery Challenges 2. Video blogs

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• Partially sighted sign language users need to communicate through a video blog

• What is the best technology for this? • Resolution quality & display size • Speed control for the video – slow it down for greater

clarity

Course Delivery Challenge 3. Video Speed Control

• Low vision sign language users need to be able to slow down the

speed of video materials in order to read the signs clearly

• Low vision sign language users could benefit from a feature

which allows any video components to be enlarged to full screen

while maintaining a high quality resolution

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Other Challenges Ahead

• We haven’t updated to Moodle 2.0 yet • What will happen to our customizations? • Will the CNWL theme be compatible? • Will the Accessibility block plug-in work?

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• Will software programs like enounce that enables users to slow down video work with Moodle?

Research found

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• CANnect Report Sept 2009

• EU4All Open University has been using Moodle since 2006 and uses content personalization to make Moodle courses accessible to students http://www.eu4all-project.eu/

http://www.cannect.org/testing-moodle.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXPfFgivZk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Needs from Moodle

• Blind and Deafblind Forum separate from Accessibility Forum

• Incorporation of Video blogs

• Larger Resource and Activity icons with

clear resolution and can be size adjusted

• 3 ring binder format for Book resource set up

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Our Needs

• We would like to connect with others serving this user group?

• We would love to share access to Deaf and Deafblind Moodle sites

• We would love to work with Moodle developers interested in this user group

• We would love to access Moodle resource and activity icons that are a larger with high resolution

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Questions or Comments

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