Development of adapted electronic foreign language learning courses for blind and visually impaired students of a pedagogical university

According to the results of a large-scale national survey carried out in 2017 by the Pedagogical University of Nizhniy Novgorod, visually impaired young adults are under-represented in colleges and universities. One of the major challenges they face is mastering a foreign language. Since creating an inclusive learning environment suitable for teenagers and young adults with visual disabilities is one of the priorities in contemporary education in Russia, this article is dedicated to developing and testing adaptive online English language courses for visually impaired students. For this purpose, our article reviews previous studies in this area and describes two online English courses based on the Moodle educational platform developed by a team of English for Professional Communication Department teachers at Herzen University in terms of their suitability for visually impaired students. In order to achieve this aim, the students were asked to fill in a questionnaire where they could give their feedback on the course. Previous studies in this field describe a number of challenges while teaching schoolchildren and students with visual disabilities. One of the essential issues to be taken into consideration is time management as completing the majority of learning activities, especially writing exercises, takes longer than with students who have no health problems. Besides, since visually impaired students cannot rely on visual memory, extensive revision of foreign language grammar and vocabulary is required. Another vital point is using the appropriate technology and providing students with suitable screen-reading and printing tools. According to the results of the questionnaire filled in by the students with visual disabilities who completed the English language online courses on the Moodle platform in the academic years of 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 at Herzen University, most online courses' content, such as reading materials, glossaries, grammar and vocabulary tests and listening exercises, was quite accessible to them provided that the texts were in html, rtf or doc formats. Some obstacles pointed out by the students were associated with participating in the Zoom web conferences and viewing the whiteboard or other types of shared content by other participants, which was not always accessible for the screen-reading programs they used. One of the ways to solve this problem could be working with students who have visual disabilities in breakout rooms, which would require the help of a tutor or an assistant. Another obstacle described by the students participating in the questionnaire was designing presentations. This problem, however, can be solved by using alternative forms of activities. It should be noted that academic performance of visually impaired students is comparable to that of their group mates with no health problems. We therefore conclude that these online English language courses can be successfully used by visually impaired students provided certain adjustments are made.

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