Abstract:
Every individual, irrespective of race, gender, nationality, ethnic or social origin, religion or
political preference, age or disability has an equal right for education. Vision impaired
students are no exception. In this Information Age, use of computers as assistive technology
in education has become vital. Even though this is true for the developed world, In the Sri
Lankan context most of the vision impaired students are not in a position to use Information
Technology for their educational purposes due to many reasons.
This study focuses mainly on the process of developing a Learning Management System
(LMS) for vision impaired university students in order to enhance their quality of education.
This study focuses on How a Learning Management System with Digital Accessible
Information System (DAISY) technology, Sinhala Digital Talking Books and a Sinhala Text
to Speech Convertor can be developed to facilitate the teaching and learning problems of
vision impaired university students. Finally developing a Framework that can be used as a
guide to develop such advanced LMSs for vision impaired university students is presented.
The main objective of this study is to develop a framework to guide the designing of Learning
Management Systems for Vision impaired students. First the researcher designed a model
based on 3 stages, Firstly the objectives of a Learning Management System, secondly
qualitative characteristics of the Learning Management System for vision impaired students
and components of the Learning Management System for vision impaired students. Based on
these 3 stages the researcher identified 32 characteristics and grouped these into 3
categories (System Design, Content Design and Service Design). The overall success of
vi
Learning Management Systems initiatives depends on the attainment of success at each of
these stages of Learning Management Systems development. This research study attempts,
what is trying to be done is to underline the importance of each aspect of a Learning
Management System which directly effects the overall success and learner's satisfaction. The
developed Framework can be used as a guide in developing such advanced LMSs for vision
impaired university students.
