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Physical Programming for Blind and Low Vision Children at Scale

Published: 02 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

There is a dearth of appropriate tools for young learners with mixed visual abilities to engage with computational learning. Addressing this gap, we present Project Torino, a physical programming language for teaching computational learning to children ages 7-11 regardless of level of vision. To create code, children connect and manipulate tactile objects to create music, audio stories, or poetry. Designed to be made and deployed at scale, Project Torino (along with a scheme of work) has been successfully used by 30 non-specialist teachers with 75 children across the UK over three months.

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References

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Sheryl E. Burgstahler and Richard E. Ladner. 2007. Increasing the participation of people with disabilities in computing fields. Computer 40, 5: 94--97.
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Stephen Cooper, Lance C. Pérez, and Daphne Rainey. 2010. K--12 computational learning. Communications of the ACM 53, 11: 27--29.
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Caitlin Duncan, Tim Bell, and Steve Tanimoto. 2014. Should your 8-year-old learn coding? Proceedings of the 2014 WiPSCE Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing Education., 60--69.
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Raymond Lister, Elizabeth S. Adams, Sue Fitzgerald, et al. 2004. A multi-national study of reading and tracing skills in novice programmers. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 36, 4: 119--150.
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Cecily Morrison, Nicolas Villar, A Thieme, et al. 2018. Torino: A tangible programming language inclusive of children with visual disabilities. Human Computer Interaction.
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Juha Sorva. 2013. Notional Machines and Introductory Programming Education. ACM Transactions of Computing Education 13, 2.
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S. Tanimoto. 1990. VIVA: A visual language for image processing. J. Vis. Languages Computing: 127--139.
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Anja Thieme, Cecily Morrison, Nicolas Villar, Martin Grayson, and Siân Lindley. 2017. Enabling Collaboration in Learning Computer Programing Inclusive of Children with Vision Impairments. Proceedings of the 2017 DIS Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 739--752.
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Ian Utting, Stephen Cooper, Michael Kölling, John Maloney, and Mitchel Resnick. 2010. Alice, Greenfoot, and Scratch -- A Discussion. Trans. Comput. Educ. 10, 4: 17:1--17:11.
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Jane Waite, Paul Curzon, William Marsh, Sue Sentance, and Alex Hawden-Bennett. 2018. Abstraction in action: K-5 teachers' uses of levels of abstraction, particularly the design level, in teaching programming. International Journal of Computer Science Education In Schools.
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Bieke Zaman, Vero Vanden Abeele, Panos Markopoulos, and Paul Marshall. 2012. The evolving field of tangible interaction for children: the challenge of empirical validation. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 16, 4: 367--378.

Cited By

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  • (2024)NoteBlock: Prototype Design of Music Learning Experience for Blind and Low Vision Children in Preschool AgesCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3677584(56-60)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Assistive Toolkit for Teaching Programming to Visually Impaired ChildrenHCI International 2024 – Late Breaking Posters10.1007/978-3-031-78561-0_12(119-127)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2024
  • (2023)Coding Together: On Co-located and Remote Collaboration between Children with Mixed-Visual AbilitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581261(1-14)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • Show More Cited By

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  1. Physical Programming for Blind and Low Vision Children at Scale

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '19: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2019
    3673 pages
    ISBN:9781450359719
    DOI:10.1145/3290607
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 02 May 2019

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    Author Tags

    1. accessibility
    2. blind
    3. computational learning
    4. computer science education (CSE)
    5. evaluation at scale
    6. inclusive learning
    7. mixed visual abilities
    8. tangible education technology

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)NoteBlock: Prototype Design of Music Learning Experience for Blind and Low Vision Children in Preschool AgesCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3677584(56-60)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Assistive Toolkit for Teaching Programming to Visually Impaired ChildrenHCI International 2024 – Late Breaking Posters10.1007/978-3-031-78561-0_12(119-127)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2024
    • (2023)Coding Together: On Co-located and Remote Collaboration between Children with Mixed-Visual AbilitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581261(1-14)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2022)Understanding and Addressing Accessibility Barriers Faced by People with Visual Impairments on Block-Based Programming Environmentsundefined10.12794/metadc2048605Online publication date: Dec-2022
    • (2022)Addressing Accessibility Barriers in Programming for People with Visual Impairments: A Literature ReviewACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/350746915:1(1-26)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
    • (2022)Sounds and (Braille) cellsProceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference10.1145/3493612.3520464(1-3)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2022
    • (2021)Non-visual composing and codingACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing10.1145/3458055.3458059(1-6)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2021
    • (2021)Understanding the Technological Practices and Needs of Music TherapistsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491075:CSCW1(1-25)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
    • (2020)TIP-Toy: a tactile, open-source computational toolkit to support learning across visual abilitiesProceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3373625.3417005(1-14)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2020
    • (2019)Making the Blockly Library Accessible via TouchscreenProceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3308561.3354589(648-650)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2019
    • Show More Cited By

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