SBIR Phase II: An Accessible Platform for Engaging Children with Motor Impairments in the Classroom Environment

该SBIR第二阶段项目专注于开发一个可访问的教育平台，该平台结合了移动界面和自适应教育平板应用程序(Apps)，以支持有特殊需求的儿童的需求。众所周知，平板设备提供了一种互动体验，彻底改变了儿童的学习方式。不幸的是，虽然这些平板电脑设备使用起来直观，对许多儿童来说也很容易，但由于难以做出手指划动的手势，残疾儿童在很大程度上被忽视了。因此，该项目解决了我们社会的直接需求，提供了一种综合教育体验，侧重于满足儿童不同需求的数学教育，同时为他们在残疾中发现的各种变化提供了解决方案。该项目的贡献包括1)设计了可供K-12残疾儿童和非残疾儿童使用的无障碍数学应用程序；2)设计了适应教育内容并基于实时分析向家长和教师提供反馈的应用程序。鉴于全世界有9300多万残疾儿童，而且在美国，残疾儿童有权免费接受适当的公共教育，因此很有可能在这一领域产生商业和社会影响。SBIR第二阶段项目通过开发一种创新的解决方案，使运动障碍儿童能够使用移动设备和应用程序，使他们能够完全融入教育系统，从而解决了一个未得到满足的需求。这一解决方案充分利用了普及技术的可用性，将可访问的平板电脑界面与适应每个儿童-S能力的教育应用程序相结合，以提供可访问的移动解决方案。众所周知，平板设备提供了一种互动体验，彻底改变了儿童的学习方式。不幸的是，虽然这些平板设备使用起来很直观，对许多儿童来说也很容易，但那些运动受限的孩子往往会因为互动所需的精细运动技能而遇到困难。

This SBIR Phase II project focuses on developing an accessible educational platform that combines mobile interfaces and adaptive educational tablet applications (Apps) to support the needs of children with special needs. Tablet devices are known to provide an interactive experience that has revolutionized learning for children. Unfortunately, while these tablet devices are intuitive to utilize and easy for many children, those with disabilities are largely overlooked due to difficulties in effecting pinch-and-swipe gestures. This project thus addresses a direct need in our society by providing an integrated educational experience, focused on math education that addresses the diverse needs of children, while providing a solution for variations found in their disabilities. The contributions of this project include 1) the design of accessible math Apps usable by K-12 children with and without disabilities and 2) the design of apps that adapt educational content and provide feedback to parents and teachers based on real-time analytics. Given that there are over 93 million children worldwide living with a disability and, in the United States, children with disabilities are entitled to a free appropriate public education, there is a large potential of making both a commercial, as well as a societal, impact in this space. This SBIR Phase II project addresses an unmet need by developing an innovative solution to enable children with motor disabilities access to mobile devices and Apps that could engage them fully into the educational system. This solution capitalizes on the availability of pervasive technologies by combining an accessible tablet interface and educational Apps that adapt to each child?s abilities in order to provide an accessible mobile solution. Tablet devices are known to provide an interactive experience that has revolutionized learning for children. Unfortunately, while these tablet devices are intuitive to utilize and easy for many children, those with motor limitations tend to have difficulties due to the fine motor skills required for interaction. As such, to address the growing utilization of tablets in the classroom environment, the specific research objectives of this effort include the design of methods that enable the embedding of educational math content into accessible tablet apps for training and evaluating cognitive skills, the design of methods that enable adaptation of the educational content based on real-time analysis of interaction data and correlated performance of the child, and the hosting of interactive design sessions with teachers, parents, and children to evaluate the usability of the system.