Overview

LessonA11y is a web-based prototype designed to support blind teachers of students with visual impairments (TVIs) in planning lessons, making materials accessible, and staying informed about software/tools they rely on for teaching. This page summarizes the design goals, ideation, and implementation details.

  • Focus: Accessibility in lesson planning, material preparation, and technology updates.

  • Users: Blind TVIs and collaborators (e.g., TAs).

  • Approach: Storyboarding, low-fi sketches, and an HTML + Bootstrap prototype.

“Materials for visually impaired kids need to be carefully chosen to meet the needs of the student. That’s another piece of my job that a sighted person will have to do, but maybe not require as many steps.”
Okungu et al., 2019
“A lot of IEP stuff is now on the computer, and it’s not always compatible.”
Okungu et al., 2019
“[T]hey said, ‘Alice (pseudonym) is going to enter things for you. So, if you have anything, just email her what you want until you get it accessible.’”
Okungu et al., 2019

Insights from prior work: Okungu et al., 2019; Brewer et al., 2023.

Design Goals

From prior literature on challenges faced by blind TVIs (Okungu et al., 2019; Brewer et al., 2023), we articulated four design goals.

  1. Planning Lessons

    Provide an accessible interface to organize lesson plans and materials, recommend accessible tools, notify users about tool updates, and support collaborating with TAs when needed.

  2. Making Materials Accessible

    Automate accessibility support for learning documents and media: add alt text, tag PDFs, and assist with image descriptions via AI to reduce preparation time and cognitive load.

  3. Staying Updated on Tools

    Provide access to reviews and experiences from blind TVIs about software updates and new tools so teachers can anticipate issues and prepare accordingly.

  4. Communication with TAs

    Enable clear task-sharing and communication with teaching assistants, drawing from interdependence, including delegating tasks for upcoming lessons.

Ideation Process

We storyboarded a typical day for a blind TVI, explored multiple low-fidelity sketches, and synthesized ideas. We prioritized screen reader workflows now, leaving room for future voice features.

Storyboard frames illustrating pre-class review, TA collaboration, and proactive software update notifications.
Storyboard guiding our design process.
Sketch 1: multi-page layout for features navigated from a home screen.
Sketch 1: Dedicated pages for each feature.
Sketch 2: lesson planning focus with alert cues for accessibility or new software.
Sketch 2: Lesson plan with accessibility & update alerts.
Sketch 3: conversational assistant concept to answer questions based on prior inputs.
Sketch 3: Voice assistant concept.
Sketch 4: calendar-like list of lesson plans organized by date and time blocks.
Sketch 4: Time-block lesson planning.
Sketch 5: notes-style layout with auto-detected software mentions and updates.
Sketch 5: Notes-style tool & updates extraction.

Prototype Implementation

We prototyped LessonA11y with HTML and Bootstrap. The prototype demonstrates three flows. Explore the live site and demo video: cs7390.netlify.app, Google Drive.

  1. Lesson Planning

    Add and organize tasks with titles, descriptions, and associated tools/materials. Check for tool updates and accessibility needs (announced via aria-live) and optionally send plans to a TA.

    • Task creation: title, description, required tools/materials
    • Update & accessibility checks (aria-live announcements)
    • Share plan with TA

  2. Making Materials Accessible

    Generate accessibility reports, auto-create alt text, tag PDFs, or route items to a TA. The prototype uses a template flow to demonstrate interactions and outcomes.

    • Auto accessibility report (template in prototype)
    • Generate ALT text and PDF tagging (simulated)
    • Delegate inaccessible artifacts to TA

  3. Staying Informed About Software

    Read and write reviews from blind TVIs about software and updates to help teachers anticipate changes and adopt recent tools.

    • Browse peer reviews & experiences
    • Add a new review
    • Surface recent updates relevant to lesson plans