the world as the only ones that matter.
Rather than focusing on improving
short-term test results, Brulé and Bailly
[ 6] sought to understand how it changed
the learning experience by analyzing
students’ and teachers’ discourses
and interactions before, during, and
after the learning activity. Taking and
bridging multiple perspectives was
useful in understanding the type of
knowledge each party yielded from the
design intervention: For instance, when
teachers listened to children’s accounts
of using the prototype and the audio
material they recorded, they realized
it could be useful to understand how
students construct meaning, which
in turn influenced the researchers’
understanding.
Long-term evaluations, however,
remain difficult. Many (HCI)
prototypes are not robust enough to
be tested over prolonged periods of
time, and few devices so far have been
steadily commercialized (e.g., braille
notetakers). Workshop participants
outlined that going forward would
require developing a strong set of
qualitative evaluation approaches,
using different points of view and
assessing technologies more holistically.
Generally, they advocated for closer
collaboration with learning scientists,
highlighting methods from this research
field that proved useful, alongside
multimodal analysis and design-based
research with iterative evaluations. In
either case, the aim is not generalization
but rather to provide explanations for
the phenomenon observed, espousing
the complexity of learning contexts
rather than reducing it.
CONCLUSION
Through the discussions and examples
outlined here, we are advocating that
truly supportive and inclusive learning
environments should prioritize and
foster social connections with others.
This is best achieved when people with
VI are supported as creative agents and
become teachers and leaders of inclusive
technology design and research. We
are also advocating that designers
and practitioners should develop
approaches that promote and evaluate
understanding and augmenting peoples’
unique abilities and their ways of making
sense of the world. Readers will notice
overlap between accessible co-design to
create inclusive education environments
and accessible inclusive classrooms
T
exchange was the participants’ natural
tendency to move toward balancing
the asymmetry engendered by the
“accessible” artifacts.
What this example illustrates is
that accessibility should not mean
enforcing dominant metaphors and
ways of relating to materials onto
people with disabilities. Instead, we
suggest starting with people’s lived
experiences and abilities to inspire
inclusive and comfortable design
activities for everyone.
EFFECTIVELY ASSESSING
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES
Finally, we need to encourage the
research and study of educational
technology within their context of use.
Still today, we rarely find examples
of AT being studied outside the lab in
real-world educational settings; hence,
we are failing to understand how they
(re)shape classroom relationships. This
is all the more important considering
that successful inclusion at school is
multifaceted. Schooling is more than
the acquisition of knowledge and
skills: It enables socialization and the
acquisition of cultural norms and social
integration, as well as social placement
toward different professional careers
[ 6]. Yet the majority of technology
evaluations rarely account for these
other functions of schooling.
Discussing challenges for evaluation,
workshop participants further
described: the inaccessibility of many
standard academic skills tests; the
complexity of in-the-wild studies
that involve triangulating multiple
stakeholders’ perspectives; and the need
to better acknowledge heterogeneity in
schooling experiences. The workshop
focused on the first two aspects, with
discussions about how to achieve a
more nuanced, empathic engagement
with students’ progress in learning that
may be achieved through qualitative
and longer-term evaluations. For
instance, Emeline Brulé and Gilles
Bailly [ 6] adopted a comprehensive
evaluation to understand whether and
how technologies could help establish
students with visual impairments’
expertise in learning about geography
through the sense of hearing. They
postulated that bringing attention to
this embodied knowledge could change
the teacher’s perceptions of their
students’ skills, as well as students’
perceptions of tactile representations of
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