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Creating an Effective Learning Environment for Visually Impaired Students: Assessing their Perception of Audio Books

Author Affiliations

  • 1Department of Education in Social Sciences, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi, INDIA

Res. J.Educational Sci., Volume 3, Issue (1), Pages 1-5, January,1 (2015)

Abstract

Education for the visually impaired is made available through the medium of sound and touch. In India educational resources for visually impaired are not many and most of the available materials are not actually accessible to them. The vast majority of visually impaired students are thus excluded from the mainstream. With a view of helping the visually impaired students have access to knowledge and information, a project was undertaken by the National Council of Educational Research and Training(NCERT).The intention was to make the textbooks accessible to these students and by converting the printed textbooks into audio books. Some organisations working in this area in India have already converted textbooks including NCERT textbooks for higher classes from IX to XII, while textbooks in Braille are available for all classes. Since audio books were not available for the Upper Primary classes, conversion of the NCERT textbooks for classes VI-VIII into audio books, was taken up for enhancing the learning abilities of the visually impaired students which can be used along with the books in Braille. Because audio books for this stage were developed for the first time and unlike other audio books these are providing explanation of selected visuals and providing navigational facility, it was felt necessary to try out these audio books before finalisation with its actual users. An effort was made in this try out study to investigate the perception of visually impaired students of these audio books.

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