Towards an Accessible Electronics Simulation Tool for Blind or Low Vision (BLV) Learners

Recent national initiatives have increasingly focused on the issues faced by underrepresented and marginalized communities in STEM, especially those with disabilities, in having equitable access to engineering education. Although the latter has great potential to give blind or low vision (BLV) students the making and electronics background needed to explore different engineering fields, academic majors, and opportunities to bring their own technology ideas to life, the accessibility of electronic hardware education to students who are BLV remains a significantly underexplored field of research.

Our research efforts focus on improving the learning experience of BLV students who want to explore electronics-focused engineering. Our focus is on developing educational tools to make electrical engineering more accessible to BLV learners. That being said, our work is in collaboration with the BLV community in the Bay Area and is informed by prior research conducted by BLV researchers and allies.

Introduction

Research Question

Our primary goal is to answer the following question: How can we make electrical engineering education more accessible to students who are blind or have low vision (BLV)? In particular, can we employ the human- centered design thinking process to co-design and build an accessible electronics simulation educational tool?

Design Process

We adopted the ability-based design framework and the human-centered design thinking process to inform our preliminary tool design process. We prioritized the replicability and ability to open source our tool online for educators, disability service officers, and researchers, by using affordable and widespread electronic components and prototyping hardware platforms. We also leveraged basic makerspace tools for practicality. Our prime focus lied in creating an all- encompassing electronics simulator for the BLV community, meticulously addressing diverse facets to enhance its effectiveness and usability. We designed four main elements that make up our simulation tool.

Tactile Blocks

We ventured into physically representing foundational components for circuit design and assembly. We crafted Braille tactile schematics, embossed with the support of the Stanford Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Furthermore, our 3D printed blocks with pocket fingers improve portability and ease of movement, simplifying circuit exploration and creation.

Grid Board

The functionality of our grid board was enhanced by incorporating acrylic walls for stability and a multimodal feedback system that combines tactile and audio cues. We also designed an electronic backend with soldered Adafruit components and protoboards to provide audio recordings as feedback on spatial information. We added a convenient backend-protection compartment below the board, as well as Braille labels for columns and rows to streamline tactile interaction.

Reference Guide

Drawing inspiration from the grid board design, our reference guide incorporates analogous design principles to provide multimodal information of the different electronic components represented by the available tactile blocks (e.g., full component name, schematic symbol, etc.). We selected 19 electronic components, relying on the introductory electrical engineering curriculum at Stanford.

Digital Simulation Interface

In progress is the development of a dynamic simulator to complete the haptic-digital simulation process. Our research team is actively engaged in finalizing the implementation of the accessible digital interface for this purpose.

Symposium Presentations

Featured in Stanford Report

Engineering accessibility

Mouallem spent this past summer building prototypes of the circuit simulation tool with undergraduate researcher Mirelys Mendez-Pons. Now she and the LightHouse team are planning a session for members of the blind and low-vision community to give feedback about the tool, as well as meet blind students and allies at Stanford.