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Peer Review

Access to the Internet by Visually Impaired and Blind People

Reviewed:
Oct 5, 2006 by Faculty Development
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 3.5 stars
Content Quality: 4.0 stars
Effectiveness: 3.0 stars
Ease of Use: 3.5 stars
Overview:
This article discusses a study that aimed to document how a specific group of
visually impaired students view the Internet and to determine the differences in
use between partially sighted and blind users.
Type of Material:
Journal article
Recommended Uses:
The results of this study could assist faculty and course designers in designing
courses and web-sites which are more accessible to blind and partially sighted
students.
Technical Requirements:
none
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The aims of the study are twofold: first, to document perceptions and
experiences of Web use by people with visual impairments, and second, to examine
how access and use can be improved.
Target Student Population:
The population for this article is faculty doing research on web
accessibility or planning courses for a visually impaired audience
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
None

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:
The article describes a well conducted research into the use of the Web by blind
or partially-sighted students. The perceptions of these students is
information not readily available from other sources.
Concerns:
None

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:
The article identifies important components of web-site design that could be
used to provide more accessibility for blind or partially-sighted students. The
article also highlights the positive feelings about web-sites in general from
these students. A clearly written, professional journal article
Concerns:
Article does not give specific tools or practical strategies that could help
instructional designers make websites more accessible.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:
Clearly written using standard research paper format.
Concerns:
Graphical examples of good and poor web-site design would have strengthened the
article.
Other Issues and Comments:
This article can be accessed from the Equal access to software and information
homepage< http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd.htm > which has other links to
information on this topic.
Creative Commons:
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