DODO

Day by day there are so many technological advances and opportunities, but are they really inclusive? When we talk about programming we get into a mostly visual field. How can we talk about the future falling on technology when we are excluding a part of the population towards it? The facts don’t lie, blindness is considered as the second harshest disability due to the impediments it causes. We have to inspire the perspective of people with V.I. from a young age, we have to broaden the panorama and the tools to express themselves. This is why DODO is proposed, an inclusive-affordable solution that consists of a gaming-learning structure to encourage students to keep motivated to learn coding through different auditory mission levels with paper modules. If this proposal is scaled globally, we are talking about stopping excluding thousands of learners from technology and the advances they can bring to it.

Understanding computers and studying the basics of coding help students to grow an aappreciation of how things work, however, it becomes a challenge for visually impaired people because frequently, tools for programming are not suitable for them. Students have struggled, alongside their teachers, to reach an acceptable programming’s skill level (Konecki et al, 206). V.I students have a hard time remembering the programming context, professors are more concentrated on teaching a programming language and its syntactic details, instead of promoting problem solving using a programming language and to comprehend written code, and there is also the psychological side where V.I students are not motivated to learn, difficulties in programming learning have remained present and is considered a hard task (Konecki et al, 2016). In a world with 2.2 billion people estimated to live with vision impairment of some description globally, where 1.4 million are blind children and 89% of visually impaired people live in low income countries (LESH, 2020), it’s extremely important and urgent to develop an affordable proposal based on the student’s needs that not only allows students to clearly understand coding concepts but that also provides a dynamic alternative to increase their motivation.

DODO is a set constructed by different paper modules whose goal is to provide an affordable tactile-interactive way for visually impaired persons to learn computer coding. Each module has its unique paper texture and color. It is important to bring up that different yarns with different colours and textures are included, for the students to be able to make different connections through the paper blocking. The dynamic consists on the student listening to different activities as gaming missions, to then start creating and expressing the solution through the paper modules, the student will receive instant feedback through the professor or through the DODO program with real time object detection through a camera to move to the next level. The Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model is applied in this solution, which includes the preferable learning styles that Visually Impaired students prefer, such as (a) learn by trying things out, working on their own, (b) sensing learners (c) sequential learners (Konecki et al, 2016). DODO is a dynamic and affordable proposal that allows visually impaired students to learn coding according to what they want and need, learning through tactile gaming, increasing their interest and facilitating the understanding of coding thinking.

One niche market of DODO are visually impaired students from 6 to 18 years old starting in North America and Asia since they have four main characteristics: (a) VI community is underrepresented in computer science and under the Digital Literacy Exchange programme, Canadian government will provide nearly CAD30 million over 2018-2022 to support non-profit organisations that provide digital literacy training to people with disabilities (Euromonitor, 2020), (b) need different methods to learn things that depend on visual concepts (Alotaibi et al, 2020), (c) Top countries with the highest number of people with blindness can be found in these continents (LESH, 2020), and (d) only in the U.S, we are talking about 63,357 VI students enrolled in elementary and high school (NFB, 2017). The second niche market are students from 6 to 18 years old, because (a) Canadian government launched the CanCode initiative, allocating CAD110 million over 2017-2021 to equip students with digital skills including coding (b)The pre-, primary, and middle-school students are the core users of the current programming education curriculum in Asia and more countries are following this coding for kids trend (Khan, 2020).

The challenge is looking for technology-based solutions that ensure all primary and secondary school learners have access to quality, safe, and equitable learning environments and DODO’s target market are both primary and secondary school learners and an equitable learning environment is its main purpose and motive, because how can we talk about fair conditions without considering an inclusive approach? DODO not only raises the motivation of the students with visual impairments but also facilitates and inspires them to work independently.

DODO is in prototype stage, there are some paper module prototypes made, to deliver this solution it is required the development of the real time object detection through a camera program and the design of the different missions/challenges that each student will have to complete in order to move to the next level. This technology already exists, and is used for different purposes and because of it, it is feasible to apply it to a different usage. Also, there are different visual apps and platforms that teach through learning, creating different activities and missions to keep the students motivated, representing an existing visual dynamic technology that can be shifted in order to work mainly by audio. DODO is currently being tested in Mexico to see what do learners think about the interaction and dynamic with the modules. 

The trend indicates that more and more schools will include classes related to programming for primary and secondary school, we are moving in an era with too many technological advances and students should be taught with these skills from an early age preferably, that is why different solutions have been developed such as smart toys and dynamics to facilitate this learning, however these solutions are highly visual, which does not represent a viable option for students with visual impairments, this is why DODO represents an innovative solution since it is an entertaining dynamic for students with visual impairment that has not been addressed, and that in the same way can be used in students without visual impairment.