AUTHOR=Doore Stacy A. , Dimmel Justin , Kaplan Toni M. , Guenther Benjamin A. , Giudice Nicholas A. TITLE=Multimodality as universality: Designing inclusive accessibility to graphical information JOURNAL=Frontiers in Education VOLUME=8 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2023.1071759 DOI=10.3389/feduc.2023.1071759 ISSN=2504-284X ABSTRACT=
Graphical representations are ubiquitous in the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, these materials are often not accessible to the over 547,000 students in the United States with blindness and significant visual impairment, creating barriers to pursuing STEM educational and career pathways. Furthermore, even when such materials are made available to visually impaired students, access is likely through literalized modes (e.g., braille, verbal description), which is problematic as these approaches (1) do not directly convey spatial information and (2) are different from the graphic-based materials used by students without visual impairment. The purpose of this study was to design and evaluate a universally accessible system for communicating graphical representations in STEM classes. By combining a multisensory vibro-audio interface and an app running on consumer mobile hardware, the system is meant to work equally well for all students, irrespective of their visual status. We report the design of the experimental system and the results of an experiment where we compared learning performance with the system to traditional (visual or tactile) diagrams for sighted participants (