Accessible E-Learning Through Story-based Participatory Design for Persons with Vision Impairments
Authors: Huff Earl 
Published: October 2023

Online learning (or e-learning) has seen a significant rise in popularity and ubiquity, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the convenience and flexibility for learners and cost-effectiveness to institutions. Advances in e-learning technologies, such as learning management systems (LMS), provide teachers and students with new modalities and formats for engagement in teaching and learning, respectively. However, there are growing concerns surrounding the accessibility of such technologies, especially LMSs, for learners with disabilities (LWD). Issues such as navigation, information access, and non-descriptive web graphics present barriers that severely impact the learning progression of LWDs. While past work has examined solutions for improving existing LMS accessibility, there are still barriers present that limit the complete online experience for LWDs, such as working with complex user interfaces (UI). We argue for more research that looks at design and interaction requirements from the perspectives of both teachers and learners to fully understand what it would take to design more usable and accessible LMSs. Our work details a participatory design (PD) study conducted with two user groups: one for teachers and one for students with vision impairments (i.e., blindness, low vision). Since we are working with blind and visually impaired (BVI) participants, we utilized a method called co-constructing stories that combines verbal storytelling with PD. This approach allows us to 1) gain a better understanding of the experiences of using LMS technology from our design groups and 2) provide a more accessible experience in collaborative technology design. Each group participated in three design workshops. The first workshop included developing a story where the participants were the main characters in a scenario using a conceptual LMS that they would imagine and come up with initial features and design requirements. In the second design workshop, the groups collaboratively refined the initial features and designs and developed additional design ideas. The third workshop was done in one-on-one sessions where participants would engage in a think-aloud session, navigating and using a prototype LMS we developed with their input.The teachers brought up their experiences teaching online courses to BVI students. They desired the ability to customize the course pages, such as typography, font size, UI control sizes, and color. Students wanted better semantics of the UI for improved translation of the web page components from their screen readers and a more simplistic layout. The think-aloud sessions yielded satisfactory results as both groups found the initial prototype to be accessible, easy to use, and an improvement over existing LMSs. While there were some suggestions for improvements, our work showed the effectiveness of empowering teachers and LWDs to co-design technology. We believe this work may benefit instructional designers, researchers, and educational technology developers looking to design more accessible e-learning systems to accommodate a broad range of disabilities.