Health Education for the Blind: Evaluation of Accessibility of an Inclusive Online Course

Aline Tomaz de Carvalho, Andréa Soares Rocha da Silva, Ana Fátima Carvalho Fenandes, Lorita Marlena Freitag Pagliuca

Universidade Federal do Ceará/PPGENF/UFC, Fortaleza, Brazil.

DOI: 10.4236/ce.2014.516172                

Abstract

This article provides a presentation of the method used to guarantee the accessibility and usability of an online course for blind women. The course discusses breast cancer with a focus on early detection, with a view to granting these women a new form of learning about breast cancer. In this paper, the evaluation of the accessibility of HTML pages was presented by the use of specific software. In addition, it presents the accessibility and usability for blind women in a course in a virtual learning environment. The accessibility evaluation using the software revealed 21 errors. When the blind women accessed the virtual learning environment, sporadic barriers were identified, such as difficulties for registering and using the forum. These were bypassed and the participants defined the access to the online course as satisfactory. This study aims to bring awareness to online education and health professionals about the accessibility of online courses. With regard to health promotion, the importance of this study is clear owing to the lack of educational resources in health for visually impaired people, in addition to the importance of the timeliness of the topic owing to the magnitude of the issue of breast cancer around the world.

Keywords

Nursing, Blind Persons, Internet, Accessibility, Usability

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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