Teaching Programming to Students with Vision Impairment: Impact of Tactile Teaching Strategies on Student’s Achievements and Perceptions

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda involved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to achieve a better and more sustainable world for all. The fourth Sustainable Development Goal called for “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Despite international efforts to achieve such a goal, many students with vision impairment (VI) who wish to pursue a degree in computer science face significant challenges and must overcome social and technical obstacles. One challenge is learning how to program as a key skill for pursuing a degree in the field of computer science. This paper explores practical issues in teaching students with VI the basics of programming and presents recommended practices based on a suggested workshop setup. The workshop ran for three weeks, for a total of 60 teaching hours, and involved designing and implementing complete curricula and multi-modal activities to simplify the acquisition of basic programming concepts. Workshop data was collected using several data collection methods—i.e., interviews, observation, questionnaires, performance records, and daily journals. The results indicated an improvement in participants’ programming skills, which was detected through their performance records and final project evaluations. The participants also showed a high interest in learning programming and positive attitudes towards the experience. However, the participants’ experience also involved some challenges such as understanding abstract concepts, code navigation, and some technical issues. The study is hoped to contribute to the literature on education inclusion and to bridge the digital divide in our society.