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

该SBIR第二阶段项目的重点是开发一个无障碍教育平台，该平台结合了移动的界面和自适应教育平板电脑应用程序（App），以支持有特殊需要的儿童的需求。众所周知，平板设备提供了一种交互式体验，这种体验已经彻底改变了儿童的学习方式。不幸的是，虽然这些平板设备直观地使用并且对于许多儿童来说很容易，但是那些残疾人由于难以实现捏和滑动手势而在很大程度上被忽视。因此，该项目通过提供综合教育体验来满足我们社会的直接需求，重点关注满足儿童不同需求的数学教育，同时为儿童残疾的变化提供解决方案。该项目的贡献包括：1）设计可供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。鉴于全世界有超过9300万残疾儿童，而在美国，残疾儿童有权获得免费的适当公共教育，因此在这一领域产生商业和社会影响的潜力很大。 该SBIR第二阶段项目通过开发一种创新解决方案来满足未满足的需求，使运动障碍儿童能够使用移动的设备和应用程序，使他们能够充分参与教育系统。该解决方案通过结合可访问的平板电脑界面和适合每个孩子的教育应用程序，充分利用了普及技术的可用性。的能力，以便提供可访问的移动的解决方案。众所周知，平板设备提供了一种交互式体验，这种体验已经彻底改变了儿童的学习方式。不幸的是，虽然这些平板设备直观地使用并且对于许多儿童来说很容易，但由于交互所需的精细运动技能，那些运动受限的儿童往往有困难。因此，为了解决课堂环境中平板电脑使用率不断增长的问题，这项工作的具体研究目标包括：设计能够将教育数学内容嵌入到可访问的平板电脑应用程序中以培训和评估认知技能的方法，设计能够根据交互数据和儿童相关表现的实时分析调整教育内容的方法，以及与教师、家长和儿童举行互动设计会议，以评估系统的可用性。

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.