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Accessible Blockly: An Accessible Block-Based Programming Library for People with Visual Impairments

Published: 22 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

The visual and mouse-centric nature of block-based programming environments generally make them inaccessible and challenging to use by users with visual impairments who rely on assistive technologies to interact with computers. This prevents these users from participating in programming activities where these systems are used. This paper presents a prototype of an accessible block-based programming library called Accessible Blockly that allows users to create and navigate block-based code using a screen reader and a keyboard. This is an attempt to make the famous Blockly library accessible through a screen reader and keyboard. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of Accessible Blockly. We also discuss the evaluation of the library for block-based code navigation in a study with 12 blind programmers. Analysis of the study results shows that Accessible Blockly effectively aids users with reading and understanding block-based code. Participants found Accessible Blockly easy to use and less frustrating for navigating block-based programs. The participants also expressed enthusiasm and interest in using the keyboard and screen reader to navigate block-based code and in the accessibility of block-based programming.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (demo video.mp4)
Demo Video

References

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Designing for Tinkerability and Accessibility: Developing the OctoStudio mobile app to engage blind and visually impaired learners in creating with codeProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3659411(882-886)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
  • (2023)Towards iVProg4All: An Accessibility Test with Blind2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343224(01-05)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        ASSETS '22: Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
        October 2022
        902 pages
        ISBN:9781450392587
        DOI:10.1145/3517428
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part 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 components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Published: 22 October 2022

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        Author Tags

        1. Accessibility
        2. Blind Programmers
        3. Block-based programming
        4. Blockly
        5. Keyboard Navigation
        6. Screen Reader
        7. Students with Visual Impairments

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        ASSETS '22 Paper Acceptance Rate 35 of 132 submissions, 27%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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        • (2024)Designing for Tinkerability and Accessibility: Developing the OctoStudio mobile app to engage blind and visually impaired learners in creating with codeProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3659411(882-886)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
        • (2023)Towards iVProg4All: An Accessibility Test with Blind2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343224(01-05)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023

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