Inclusion in an Electronic Classroom

Disability Group: BLIND

ID 2005

Summary of problems observed in each of the various observational protocols and the corresponding sources of these problems for this participant.

This participant did not encounter serious accessibility problems with any of the modules with the exception of two items in Virtual U. There was also one item in Top Class which was left unranked. This will also be discussed.

Top Class

Item 23 (Return to the Home Page by accessing the Home Button in the footer).

1. The participant was able to move back to the Home page but could not find a Home Button in the footer of the Help Guide (this is where he was after completing Item 22). This item was not ranked because although the participant was able to move back, he was forced to implement this move with the use of another icon and not one located in the footer.

Virtual U

Item 6 (Send an email to the instructor)

Found two possible links to sending an email to the instructor but both of them connected to Netscape browser and resulted in an error message. Hence this is a problem due to the faulty connection of the courseware.

Item 23 (Go to the "Campus: Test" Conference and join the conference)

The participant had a bit of trouble finding the "Campus Test". He thought that moving back out of the conference page would somehow take him to the correct icon. However, once he left the conference area, he became very confused and disoriented about what he should do next since he did not know where to find the Campus Test. Instructions were necessary to locate the list of conferences. The participant expressed that the list of conference option was not very clear and also that he did not listen very carefully to the instructions that were given.

Overall Summary of Problems experienced in Virtual U

The first of the two problematic items was due to a fault with the connection of the courseware’s email. Hence difficulties with this item were not a result of specific characteristics of the participant but rather were a direct limitation of the courseware itself.

The problems with the second item was due to a compound of a few factors:

1. Inattention to the instructions given.
2. The instructions were also a bit vague and might have been misleading.
3. The feature of joining more than one conference was not explicitly understood by this participant. Although this participant is a frequent Internet user, he admitted to having never used a chat-room. Hence lack of experience was also an issue here.
4. The list of conferences was in a pull down menu format. Hence it was not an obvious choice on the screen but rather was more hidden. The user would have to explore all possible links on the page, both hidden and obvious, in order to find this selection.

Recommendations:

1. Email connection needs to be fixed.
2. Option of joining more than one conferences should be made more explicit for users who might lack experience. The list of conference selection should be placed on the screen and not hidden.