Evaluation of 3DOHA enhanced Virtual Edutainment Application for Visually Impaired Users: A Pilot Study

Abstract

E-learning or virtual learning is one of the popular ways in learning for young learners and varieties of technology assistive tools are available. Besides, e-learning or virtual learning has benefited for visually impaired (VI) learners. There are several studies confirmed that VI learners acknowledge the potentials and advantages of e-learning or virtual learning systems. However, not like sighted learning, VI learners face several challenges in using e-learning materials which are available on the shelf. Most of the virtual learning environments are designed for sighted learning and rich utilization of images and interactivities result the restrictions for the VI to use learning platforms in a virtual environment. Most of the VI learners are relying on screen reader to translate the contents from screen or documents. Thus, careful consideration is important in designing the learning environment for VI according to their requirements and accessibility to provide engaging virtual learning environment for them. Hence, this paper proposes a 3D enabled olfactory, haptic and audio (3DOHA) enhanced application for visually impaired learners to use in a virtual learning environment and evaluates the proposed application by conducting a pilot testing. Based on the study conducted, all the participants in this study agreed that the proposed system is fun to use and they would recommend it to their fellow friends to use in learning. Besides, the results show that the proposed 3DOHA is easy to use, easy to remember the steps to be taken to use the application and users would like to have 3DOHA application for learning.