Effect of Tech Aided Grade2 Braille TAG2B Tutoring System for Students with Visual Impairment

Abstract

The present study entitled Effect of Tech Aided Grade2 Braille(TAG2B) Tutoring System for Students with Visual Impairment is related to designing and development of technology aided Grade2 Braille tutoring system. Grade2 Braille means English Braille in abbreviated format. The new version of Grade2 Braille has been developed using the software Visual Basic6.0. This tutoring system does not require internet as it has been designed on offline mode. Further the tutoring system has three modes viz Learning Mode, Practice mode and Evaluation Mode and thus involves complete instruction for learning Grade2 Braille. The important feature of the study has two stages. Stage: 1. Developing Tech Aided Grade2 Braille Tutoring system. The newly developed TAG2B tutoring system has 11 modules comprised of different configurations of Braille cells indicating 170 contracted English words in Braille besides 26 alphabets, Indicators (25) and Punctuation (25). The QWERTY keys of the regular PC have been converted into default set of keys: FDS JKL indicating six keys for Braille cells. When entering the system, main screen of TAG2B opens with two options: Alphabet and Grade2 Braille. After selecting any one of these options, it leads the user to three modes: Learning, Practice and Evaluative. The user can select any mode of his/her choice. These modes were developed in three build ups and combined together at the end. This helped the software to be single entity. Here the three Modes are Super class and Alphabet and Grade2 Braille inherit the properties and functions of super class and hence called child class. Stage 2: Study the Effect of Tech Aided Grade2 Braille Tutoring system by introducing the same to the students with visual impairment for its application and to Special Education Student Teachers and Special teachers to overview the system and its effectiveness. A sample of 42 students with visual impairment from Grade VIII- XII studying at Inclusive schools in Coimbatore district was selected. TAG2B tutoring system was asses