Return to search

Helping Students with Upper Limb Motor Impairments Program in a Block-Based Programming Environment Using Voice

Students with upper body motor impairments, such as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, ALS, etc., face challenges when learning to program in block-based programming environments, because these environments are highly dependent on the physical manipulation of a mouse or keyboard to drag and drop elements on the screen. In my dissertation, I make the block-based programming environment Blockly, accessible to students with upper body motor impairment by adding speech as an alternative form of input. This voice-enabled version of Blockly will reduce the need for the use of a mouse or keyboard, making it more accessible to students with upper body motor impairments. The voice-enabled Blockly system consists of the original Blockly application, a speech recognition API, predefined voice commands, and a custom function. Three user studies have been conducted, a preliminary study, a usability study, and an A/B test. These studies revealed a lot of information, such as the need for simpler, shorter, and more intuitive commands, the need to change the target audience, the shortcomings of speech recognition systems, etc. The feedback received from each study influenced design decisions at different phases. The findings also gave me insight into the direction I would like to go in the future. This work was started and finished in 2 years.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1985949
Date08 1900
CreatorsOkafor, Obianuju Chinonye
ContributorsLudi, Stephanie, Bryant, Barrett, Do, Hyunsook, Tarau, Paul
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Okafor, Obianuju Chinonye, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds