Due to the limitations in the perception of graphical information by blind people and the need to substitute the sense of sight with other senses, the correct use of multimedia in the presentation of graphics is particularly important. The aim of the authors was to correctly present visual information in the tactile and audio form and to provide contextually selected information to reduce the existing cognitive barriers. In this article, the authors decided to research the method of exploring a tactile picture by a blind person and providing contextual and semantic information about the touched image elements using the developed tool for multimodal presentation of interactive audio-tactile graphics supporting the perception of blind people. The use of multimedia should improve the perception of the conveyed content. Therefore, the effectiveness of interpreting the information contained in the tactile image is verified by analyzing the tactile, audio, and contextual perceptions during the experiments. The following issues were considered in detail from the point of view of the blind and visually impaired: the recognition of shapes of image elements depending on their size and properties, the optimal width of elements displayed on the tablet screen, the time intervals between taps on an image element, and the acceptable length of graphic element audio description. The results from this study suggest the need to select the image presentation parameters in various perception channels to the user's needs. The findings of our research on tactile shape perception of geometric figures indicate potential problems in recognizing the shapes of figures in the case of wrong preparation of tactile pictures. In the case of a small difference in the proportions of the length of the sides of the figure or a slight difference in the measures of the angles of the figure sides, we have noticed that most blind people fail to recognize its shape. Considerable progress in improving such perception can be achieved by increasing the proportions in the lengths of the sides and the measures of the angles between the sides of the figure. Further steps concern introducing an alternative audio description of the properties of the figure so as to improve the interpretability of the figure shape. For most users, the width of a virtual line in a digital image displayed on a tablet should be around 5 mm for a corresponding 1 mm tactile line. The configuration of the time intervals defining the user's gestures (two-taps, three-taps) should be about 340 ms. Applying audio descriptions to tactile picture elements improves the understanding and interpretation of the information presented on it. Most participants in the test group accepted 5 to 10 seconds of voice prompts. Longer messages were incomprehensible, and details were hard to remember. In the proposed solution, the audio description can be divided into two or three different descriptions available to the user after tapping two or three times on an image element. It allows the user to decide on the amount of contextual information needed about the touched tactile picture element. The research attempted to show the typical values of various image presentation parameters and their ranges of values and indicated effective methods of their selection for a specific system user.

Nowadays, the math learning is an important step in developing professional carriers in technical and economic sciences. Increasing the number of e-learning tools used in universities courses can reduce the potential barrier of access to mathematical knowledge, but most of them are not accessible for impaired students. Moreover, classical printed math books include little explicit instructional information about structural information interpretations. Taking into account these barriers the article presents the developed method used for creating interactive steps of decomposed math’s exercise solution and alternative description of math formulas accessible for the blind. The elements of proposed methodology: generation of state machine, design and presentation of transition conditions, generating the presentation layer and a typical usage by a blind user are presented. A set of rules for describing mathematical formulas were proposed after consultation with mathematicians and teachers of blind people. The application was developed as web application. The graphical interface of presented application was designed using PHP and JavaScript technologies. The collection of prepared exercises include about 240 prepared exercises from different areas of mathematics and 60 selected exercises including alternative description layer. About 1000 students and about 40 impaired students, from 6 faculties of the university use this platform during math courses for both self and class learning. The defined rules were used to read aloud mathematical formulas to the visually impaired people with a different level of mathematical knowledge. The results confirmed good understanding of mathematical formulas by using prepared alternative description.

One of the problems faced by people with blindness is access to materials presented in graphical form. There are many alternative forms of providing such information, but they are very often ineffective or have certain limitations. The development of mobile devices and touch sensors enabled the development of new tools to support such people. This study presents a solution called an accessible tutoring platform, using audio-tactile graphics for people with blindness. We aimed to research the influence of the developed platform for the alternative presentation of graphics information on better memorizing, recognizing, and learning. Another goal of the research was to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for the alternative presentation of audio-tactile graphics. The effectiveness of the proposed solution was verified quantitatively and qualitatively on two groups of blind students from primary and secondary schools with the use of a developed platform and prepared materials for learning mathematics. The obtained research results show that the proposed method of verifying students’ knowledge and auto-selecting exercises with adapted audio description positively influences the improvement of learning effectiveness.

Teaching mathematics to blind people is a challenge of modern educational methods. This article presents a method of preparing the adapted material and its usage in the learning process of mathematics by blind people, as well as the results of evaluating the proposed approach. The presented results were obtained based on a mathematical analysis course conducted in two classes—with and without using the developed method. The developed method uses the conceptualization of knowledge as a graph. The learning process is supported by feedback processes that consider the mechanisms of knowledge and error vectors, on which a personalized adaptation of the learning path is made for each particular student. The evaluation process has shown a statistically significant improvement in learning results achieved by blind students. The average final test score in the group working with the platform during learning increased by 14%. In addition, there was an increase in cooperation between blind students who had the opportunity to take on the role of a teacher, which was observed in 27% of the participants. Our results indicate the effectiveness of the developed approach and motivate us to evaluate the method in a broader group of students. The engagement of students indirectly indicates overcoming the barriers known from the state of the art: uncertainty, poor motivation, and difficulties in consolidating the acquired skills.