Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Hello! I'm an EFL Teacher looking for some Accessible ideas for Online classes (self.Blind)
submitted by insomni666
Hi everyone, I hope it's okay that I'm posting here. I'm teaching English in Korea, and am running a university class entirely online. It's my first time teaching online - and also for university level. My first class, which is a small class of about 7 students (it's an early morning class, which is probably why haha) I asked students if they had their books yet. One student did not, and when I asked him why, he said "I'm waiting for the braille version to come." I did a double-take, because I did not know from looking at him that he was blind. I rolled with it and adapted my lesson on the fly, making sure I explained images as they came up, and I left out a review game on Kahoot that I had planned, because it had several questions based on photos (you know, for vocabulary).
This student is very clever and nearly fluent in English, which is great because I feel like he catches on well to what's going on in class. I also emailed him after the class asking him to use the "raise hand" function on Zoom if I ever forgot to describe an image while lecturing. I asked him to let me know if anything is unreadable for him.
I want to make sure the class is fair and enjoyable for everyone. I already post the Powerpoints for the class a couple days ahead - a variety of learning disabilities / mental health things make that a good idea anyway. I use a lot of video and audio clips already.
I'm looking for other ways I can keep the class accessible, especially for real-time collaborative activities. I read that Jamboard (by Google) does not work well with text-to-speech, so I don't think (?) I can use that. I've been trying to think if I can make a modified Kahoot that has no images and no text answers - I would read them out loud (but the options are ordered by color? So I don't even know if that would work.)
Do you guys have any ideas for me? I'd really appreciate it!
This student is very clever and nearly fluent in English, which is great because I feel like he catches on well to what's going on in class. I also emailed him after the class asking him to use the "raise hand" function on Zoom if I ever forgot to describe an image while lecturing. I asked him to let me know if anything is unreadable for him.
I want to make sure the class is fair and enjoyable for everyone. I already post the Powerpoints for the class a couple days ahead - a variety of learning disabilities / mental health things make that a good idea anyway. I use a lot of video and audio clips already.
I'm looking for other ways I can keep the class accessible, especially for real-time collaborative activities. I read that Jamboard (by Google) does not work well with text-to-speech, so I don't think (?) I can use that. I've been trying to think if I can make a modified Kahoot that has no images and no text answers - I would read them out loud (but the options are ordered by color? So I don't even know if that would work.)
Do you guys have any ideas for me? I'd really appreciate it!
CloudyBeep 2 points 2y ago
My #1 tip: Ask the student. Every blind person is slightly different in what techniques and technologies work well for them. Tell him what activities you've planned and ask him what adaptations to them he would like and would most benefit from.
insomni666 [OP] 2 points 2y ago
I emailed him to ask him, but the only response I got was "I'll let you know, thank you!" Honestly the poor kid might not even know of anything, because in Korea they LITERALLY don't make any accommodations at all for deaf or blind students in public schools. It's kind of sickening.
siriuslylupin6 1 points 2y ago
Sounds like you are going the right direction asking him is a good idea, I will usually say something as I am a fairly assertive person but yeah.
[deleted] 1 points 2y ago
[deleted]
zersiax 1 points 2y ago
Yeah ... this is a bit of a pickle. Interactive exercises like that can be tricky, and I'm unfortunately not at all familiar with the products you're describing here, so couldn't tell you how they work with a screenreader.
Would the students do the Kahoot game on their own, and compare their results afterwards? Or is it realtime where everyone does it all at the same time?
And ...forgive my ignorance, but what does Jamboard do? :) realtime collaborative assignments can indeed be rather tricky due to a lot of platforms just not being accessible enough to make it doable, which is incredibly sad. I think you are already doing a whole lot more than most teachers would, and I appreciate you trying to do right by this student :)
Would the students do the Kahoot game on their own, and compare their results afterwards? Or is it realtime where everyone does it all at the same time?
And ...forgive my ignorance, but what does Jamboard do? :) realtime collaborative assignments can indeed be rather tricky due to a lot of platforms just not being accessible enough to make it doable, which is incredibly sad. I think you are already doing a whole lot more than most teachers would, and I appreciate you trying to do right by this student :)
insomni666 [OP] 1 points 2y ago
Hello! Thanks for taking the time to answer :)
I'm looking for real-time collaborative stuff because it keeps students engaged during classes. I have to teach for two hours straight, so I like to break up the monotony. :)
Jamboard is an interactive whiteboard by Google. You can give anyone the link and they can edit, click, drag, etc. I like to make textboxes and have students click and drag to make matching exercises or sentences. However, when I looked it up, it looks like Jamboard doesn't work with TTS.
Kahoot is a realtime game where the teacher has the question up on the big screen, along with the answers (coded by colors - red, blue, green, and yellow) and students select the answer on their phone by hitting a color. If possible, I would like to modify it so all students could use it (read the question out loud, then read the answers and have them select) but since the selection is done by color.... And I'm not sure how accessible it is for blind users.... I'm not sure he'd be able to select the answer.
I'm looking for real-time collaborative stuff because it keeps students engaged during classes. I have to teach for two hours straight, so I like to break up the monotony. :)
Jamboard is an interactive whiteboard by Google. You can give anyone the link and they can edit, click, drag, etc. I like to make textboxes and have students click and drag to make matching exercises or sentences. However, when I looked it up, it looks like Jamboard doesn't work with TTS.
Kahoot is a realtime game where the teacher has the question up on the big screen, along with the answers (coded by colors - red, blue, green, and yellow) and students select the answer on their phone by hitting a color. If possible, I would like to modify it so all students could use it (read the question out loud, then read the answers and have them select) but since the selection is done by color.... And I'm not sure how accessible it is for blind users.... I'm not sure he'd be able to select the answer.
zersiax 1 points 2y ago
Hmmm ...I have not researched this, so take it as a suggestion off the top of my head, but have you looked into discord bots for that second scenario? :) There may be a bot that does this for English words, I know people in the language learning community at times use discord bots to retrieve the definition of words and play quiz games :)
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