E-Learning System for Visually Impaired University Students

Abstract

In these days Information and communication technology is playing a considerable role in our education system of Sri Lanka as well. Distance learning facility and e-Learning is getting a common feature of process of learning becoming the most demotic and diverse method of learning. Therefore almost every university in Sri Lanka is using an e-learning system for their academic activities. There are no institutes which are fully functioning through eLearning but they are using it in a construable manner. Providing balanced and equal learning experience for each and every student is a responsibility of each educational institute. Any education system is necessitating to the objective of providing best process of education to their students. Unfortunately they are facing a methodological issue which those learning management systems which supports the needs of sighted users are not accessible and reach the needs of visually impaired students. The interface and content are not supported for the need of visually impaired. There are not or very few of the systems support screen readers, screen magnifiers and there are no interfaces support familiar colors of font type and font sizes of half blinded students. The system was design to be used by visually impaired students for their day to day online learning activities. It is completing the gap between physically normal students and visually impaired when accessing virtual learning environment for learning and preferring learning materials. Providing online learning facility to visually impaired students the system can improve the knowledge of them and make their lives easy while studying in the university. Those students who have special needs may cannot attend the lectures each and every day as same as other normal students. The system supports them with distance learning. The lecturers can guide them via the system. In order to develop this website numbers of technologies were used such as PHP, HTML, JavaScript, MySQL and CSS. Although the PHP, JavaScript and HML are more features full, the developer is more comfortable with PHP and HTML as he had previous experience and more interest on those web languages than other web development languages in coding those languages and also, Apache server 2.4.4 was used for the PHP coding support. The project was finished meeting the user expectations. User feedback was positive and they found the system easy to use and extremely helpful for both visually impaired students and their lectures and also beneficial for the institute when reaching their ultimate goals.