“Before using the iPad, the whole assessment process was very precarious for blind people,” explains Suleyman Ari, a PhD student at Anadolu University who is totally blind. “You always needed an exam assistant on hand to read questions aloud to you, and also the answers you were required to choose from.
“Just like sighted students, blind people want to consider all or part of the questions several times over while thinking about their answers — but it’s difficult to explain that to the exam assistant, while concentrating on the exam. With the iPad, you can replay questions over and over through your headset. You get the kind of control and flexibility that a sighted person has. That is bound to help you achieve your best performance.”
“Anadolu University is very committed to its disabled students,” says Dr Özgür Yilmazel, IT Director. “The iPad gives blind people a real chance to improve their learning. It also solves a major problem: how we fund and source exam assistants who can speak the growing number of languages of our blind distance learner student community, and who help individuals with exams four times a year on average. An iPad can ‘speak’ 36 languages, and represents roughly the cost of providing one blind person with exam assistants during one year.”
“The iPad really helps us to treat all our students equally,” says Özgür Yilmazel. “In the past, blind students would not have been able to take exams in groups at a common centre, because of the need for an assistant to read individual exam papers aloud. Now they can work silently alongside sighted students without exam assistants, and the university will only have to employ a single invigilator for the whole group.”
Biggest podcast developer in the region
Anadolu University, based in Eskişehir in Turkey, is one of the world’s largest higher education institutions, with more than 1.7 million students. Although 25,000 of its students are based on campus, most are distance learners. The university’s goal is to educate Turks who live in rural areas and others “who do not have the time or resources to enrol in conventional schools”.
In recent years, the university has expanded to include students from outside Turkey’s borders. As well as Turkish, the university supports Arabic, English, French and German languages. Its open education learners also include people with a wide range of disabilities, attracted by the university’s commitment to equal opportunities. It has more than one thousand students from Turkey and Europe who are totally blind or severely vision impaired.
As a specialist in open education, the university pioneers cost-effective technology strategies for learner engagement. It offers TV and radio programmes, video conferences and seminars, and many e-learning initiatives. One of its innovations is an online examination facility.
Recognising the growing potential of mobile technology for enhancing distance learning, the university decided to extend its digital services to mobile device users. It joined Apple’s iOS Developer University Program (iDUP) to get resources and support to develop its own apps.
One of the priorities was to develop an app to enable online exams on mobile devices. The university chose to develop its online exam apps for iPad because of iPad’s suitability for entering and displaying information. During the development process, Dr Yilmazel noticed that iPad’s functions and accessibility features also offered an exciting new opportunity for a group that had so far been excluded from online assessment: blind students.
iPad VoiceOver is ideal for exams
“We quickly saw that the iPad is a unique device for giving blind and visually impaired students an exam experience much more like that of a sighted student,” says Özgür Yilmazel. “The VoiceOver screen reader is the key factor. No other screen reader offers such very high quality, and uses 36 languages — including all of those that our students need. It makes it so easy for the blind student to interact with the screen, entering multiple choice answers in the right places. The voice speed is also adjustable, which is ideal for exam conditions.”
Providing online exams for blind students also promised major logistical and cost benefits for the university. Each blind student taking exams in the traditional way had needed an assistant to read exam papers and potential answers to the candidate, as well as an invigilator to ensure security — often four times a year.
As the number of overseas students grew, the university was finding it increasingly difficult to locate exam assistants available in the student’s area, able to speak the right language. “Arabic was becoming our biggest challenge,” says Özgür Yilmazel. “Language skills were at a premium, so our costs were escalating.”
The development team worked with the Department of Distance Education to ensure the iPad app would provide a viable alternative to the old-style exam for blind students. The app was then tested with blind students on campus in sample exams. The students that used it were enthusiastic, believing iPad significantly improved their confidence and performance.
“The reading capability and accentuation is perfect from the iPad VoiceOver,” says Suleyman Ari, who helped to test the app. “The whole process is very easy. You connect to the Internet, enter your student ID, listen to the exam regulations, and then hear the questions and answers by VoiceOver at the speed you want.
“When you are ready to choose the answer, you move your cursor around the screen, and hear ‘A’ or ’B’ or whatever. You click on the answer you want, and your choice is taken automatically. At any time you can go back and check your answer. So you can control everything you are doing.”
Blind and sighted students are better integrated
The university began its rollout programme by inviting groups of blind students living close to Eskişehir to receive sessions of weekly training in using the app and iPad. They then took a sample test to ensure they were competent to use it in real-life exam conditions.
Özgür Yilmazel’s team plan to extend training to blind students across Turkey over a six-month period, and to other blind students in Europe during the six months after that. Training will be provided on iPads at the university’s local offices, which will then be used as exam centres.
“The iPad has given us the chance to transform our exam procedures, and integrate blind and sighted students in the assessment process. It is the only platform that would have made this possible,” says Özgür Yilmazel.
So far, the university is only planning for blind students to use the iPad app for internal department exams, which tend to be multiple choice and easier to manage online. As the students become more adept, and accessibility features develop further, the potential for online national and international exams will be revisited.
Özgür Yilmazel says he is not ruling out plans to develop apps for other forms of disability in the future.
“The iPad has fantastic features for the deaf and physically disabled people,” he says. “If the programme for the blind is as successful as we expect, we will certainly look at other potential ways we can use the iPad to enhance all our students’ learning experience.”
