EATT
Equal Access to Technology Training
A project aimed at increasing computer literacy among people with vision impairments.
EATT is part funded under the
EU Leonardo da Vinci Programme
Download PDF version for printing (135KB)
A Braille printer version is available on request from your local EATT partner.
Summer 2003 - In the year 2000, five organizations working with blind and partially sighted people in Europe began a project partly funded by the European Union's Leonardo da Vinci programme. The project was called Equal Access to Technology Training (EATT).
The use of computer technology has been increasing in everyday life for many people in the sighted community, both at home and at work. Now with the development of assistive software, such as screen-readers and magnifiers, Windows-based PCs and the most popular applications are becoming increasingly available to people with vision impairments.
Research has established the need to promote computer literacy among people with vision impairments, especially among those aged 35 and over. EATT aims to help meet that need.
The EATT project set a number of goals. One of them was to develop and pilot an Introductory IT Course for people with vision impairments. This Teacher's Book is part of the course material for use with the ZoomText screen-magnifier.
While well-structured books, audio material and discussion web sites are all useful training tools, they are not enough to train people with vision impairment. The most effect way is through face-to-face interaction between motivated students and teachers who are experienced in working with the vision impaired and who can operate assistive software.
Consider this material as an agenda for a series of meetings between students and teachers. The items listed in the agendas constitute what we think are minimum skills for a user to be able to communicate using a PC and assistive software.
We hope that in time many other vision impaired students in different countries will benefit from this course.
The overall aim of the EATT project is to make it possible for participating students to become computer literate, even if they have little or no vision and even if they have never worked with computers before.
One of the aims of this project is to produce an IT course for people with vision impairments aged over 35, motivating and enabling them to use a PC at a basic level using assistive software. The content and structure of the course is based on the experience gained from a pilot project which was run in autumn 2002.
People with vision impairments in Ireland, the UK, Italy, France and Denmark took part in piloting the first edition of this course. After attending the course, students were asked what they thought of it. Replies to this survey showed that the participants
One of the students was happy that she could help with her child's schoolwork again. Another student wrote: "I never thought it was possible to learn - but it was".
We recommend you form small classes of two or three people. Students with the same assistive software - JAWS or ZoomText - should work together.
Being part of a class stimulates and motivates the participants and it's possible to create real communication among the group by having students send each other letters and e-mails.
The course is comprised of eight sessions. Each session is planned as follows:
The class should meet once a week. It's important that students can revise between sessions either at home or at the training centre. For those students who have access to PCs at home, the software and the PC configuration should be as close to the one used in class as possible.
The course is divided into two parts, each consisting of four sessions.
This is the motivating part, the "see what you can do" part. The aim is to show the students that they can communicate using a PC with assistive software despite vision impairment. Part 1 deals with the following items:
The students are not expected to be able to master specific topics after each session. Success and motivation are keywords in this part of the course.
The experience of people with vision impairments who have taken part in other IT courses sometimes shows that teachers tend to rush through the material. This can leave the students more or less helpless after the course finishes.
Teaching people with vision impairments involves
This is a more thorough investigation of the assistive software and the PC in general. The aim of Part 2 is to get the students to a point where they can use ZoomText to work on their own and to qualify them for further IT training.
Students are required to master the keyboard before taking Part 2 of the course.
There are three different ways of passing user instructions to a PC:
Partially sighted people are often able to use the mouse. But others with a greater degree of vision impairment may find it difficult. In such cases, keyboard shortcuts should be used instead.
In this course we want the students to be able to carry out some basic tasks on the computer as soon as possible. Therefore, Part 1 introduces a few keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks for opening and closing programs, printing documents and so on.
In Part 2, however, it's important for students to be able to perform tasks using menus. This gives them an understanding of Windows applications as a set of choices that they can make. It also allows them to investigate the program even if they have forgotten the shortcut.
The use of shortcuts is a compromise in order not to scare people from the very start. Once they have the motivation and the courage - which in the pilot project happened during Part 1 - the understanding part can be introduced.
In deciding the level of this course we have borne in mind the findings of the pilot project.
The course explains what it takes to manage a PC as a minimum. It deals with the basic skills needed to communicate using a word processor and e-mail and to seek information on a PC. It also outlines the basics of the ZoomText screen-magnifier.
Although software is constantly evolving, we believe this course will prove useful, no matter what new software versions emerge in the future. That said, you should keep abreast of significant updates to the interface and keyboard shortcuts in any of the software used in the course.
The overall aims of the course are to
Touch typing is a great advantage for all people with vision impairments wanting to use a PC. For people who are blind or have low-vision is essential.
Mastering the keyboard is an essential item in this course. If a student has not mastered the keyboard after Part 1, we recommend that they take a touch typing course before proceeding to Part 2.
The Introductory IT Course comprises one set of materials for ZoomText users and another for JAWS users.
Each set is divided into teacher's book and student's book.
This is a description of expected aims and outcomes for the students for each session. In addition, we make some suggestions for methods and materials that you can use. You may choose to change the sequence of the sessions according to the needs of your class.
This describes the content of each session from a student's point of view. It describes the topics to be covered in each session and includes an exercises section where the students can practise their newly acquired skills on their own. Each session ends with a frequently asked questions (FAQs) section on the material just covered.
Invite the students for a chat before the course starts. During the pilot course, teachers took time to meet with each student a few days before the course started. Details gleaned from those conversations helped make the course as personal as possible.
A pre-course interview allows you to estimate the participant's
The interview also allows you to tell the student about the course and to help demystify the PC.
The following is a list of topics that you should try to touch on during the interview. Don't ask each question as if you were ticking off items on a list. Try to keep the atmosphere informal and relaxed.
The more recent versions of Microsoft Windows and Office allow for "personalized" menus that only display basic and frequently used options.
This can be an advantage for sighted users, but for people with vision impairments it can be confusing. We suggest that you configure Windows and Office to display complete menus all the time.
We recommend that students work in only one document, e-mail or browser window at a time.
Managing several Windows at once requires an overview that vision impaired beginners might find difficult. Make things as simple as possible and avoid multiple windows.
The first session focuses on the following topics:
Going into this course, some students may be nervous of computers, so session 1 is an opportunity for them to become familiar with their machines.
Allow lots of time for practising the keyboard and for getting used to the mouse.
After each session the students should leave the classroom feeling that they have achieved something.
The objectives of session 1 are as follows:
To introduce
To ensure that the student can scroll with the mouse and use the mouse buttons.
To explain
To demonstrate and practise turning the PC on and off.
To demonstrate and practise
Here are some suggestions for how you can teach this session.
This session deals with the following topics:
The objectives of session 2 are as follows:
To explain
To enable the students to find the position of the following keys and remember their names:
To have the students master
To show the students how to
To demonstrate and practise how to change display modes in ZoomText.
Here are some suggestions for how you can teach this session.
ZoomText allows the following different zoom windows:
Don’t go too deep into the explanations at this stage. Show the students how to change between windows. Consult the ZoomText Help for the keyboard shortcut that allow them to do this - it varies between versions.
Let them try out the different display modes and discuss which modes might be best suited to different tasks or degrees of vision impairment. For example, some may prefer to write in a full screen window, but prefer the V split when making corrections.
Many people with vision impairments change the colour settings in the Windows display.
Experience from the pilot shows that many students find this difficult, so we have not included it as a topic here. We suggest that you do this for them.
However, if you feel your students are capable of changing the Window colour scheme, you can include it in Part 2 of the course.
All users get confused when their PC crashes or hangs, so it's important to give the students the tools to solve this problem should it occur at home.
Let the students try a regular reboot from the Start menu. Also, try to provoke a crash. Teach the students to escape the Scandisk program if it starts running.
Avoid the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keyboard combination. It tends to conflict with the ZoomText keyboard shortcut Alt + Delete, used to disable ZoomText, and can cause the machine to crash completely rather than reboot.
We leave it up to you to decide which e-mail program to use. You might use web mail or an e-mail application such as Microsoft Outlook. Choose the one you find easiest to work with. We suggest Outlook Express as you can simplify its layout.
Here's one way of teaching the e-mail topic:
10) Analyse an e-mail address, for example somebody@somewhere.com
Have the students practise opening Notepad from the Start menu, using both the mouse and the keyboard.
Show them how to close the program using the Close button and the Alt + F4 keyboard shortcut.
This session introduces word processing and explains the difference between the mouse cursor and the text cursor. It also discusses the title bar, menu bar and toolbar.
The aim of this session is to demonstrate the possibilities of word processing. The subject will be covered in more detail in Part 2. Allow the students to work on their own as much as possible but give lots of help and encouragement.
Watch out for students who are struggling with the mouse. Teach them the how to use the keyboard instead.
The objectives of session 3 are as follows:
To explain
To explain the following keys and their uses in a word processor:
To show how to
To practise
Here are some suggestions for how you can teach this session.
It is important for the students to know the difference between the mouse cursor and text cursor. Using large cursors can make the distinction more obvious.
Explain the difference between using the Enter key to execute a command and using it to create a new paragraph in a word processor or text editor.
Create some Word documents and bring them with you to the class.
Some students may find it difficult to correct text. Allow plenty of time for the students to practise moving the text cursor in a document.
People with vision impairments find being able to print out their documents in a format that other low vision people can read a huge advantage.
Have your students practise how to
Beginners can often find the toolbars in Word confusing - too many toolbars, too many icons.
Create a custom toolbar on your students' version of Word. It should contain the following icons only:
Figure 1: A custom toolbar
Enable large icons on the toolbar and hide all the other toolbars.
People with vision impairments often find selecting text on-screen difficult, especially when the document is too long to fit in the window.
Here are some ways to make selecting text easier:
The aim of this session is to demonstrate the possibilities of the Internet. The detailed knowledge needed to actually use the Internet will be provided in Part 2.
Part 1 will deal with how to open and read a web page. Doing a web search is more complicated and is best suited for demonstration only.
The objectives of session 4 are as follows:
To teach useful web browser keyboard shortcuts.
To help the students master
To help the students use ZoomText with the required magnification level.
It is difficult to specify an exact plan for this session, as the personalities and interests in the group will dictate a lot of what you cover. Here are a few ideas.
Focus on useful web browser keyboard shortcuts, such as:
Note that the normal shortcuts for navigating backwards and forwards - Alt + left and right arrow - are unsuitable for this audience as they are used as shortcuts in ZoomText.
Students should use the Back toolbar button or the Backspace key to navigate backwards and the Forward toolbar button to go forwards.
Scrolling Internet pages is a difficult process with ZoomText because it's hard for the user to get an overview of the page.
Encourage the students to scroll slowly.
