The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions yesterday urged education authorities to pay attention to the quality of online classes offered to students with disabilities.
The quality of learning for students with disabilities, specifically those with visual impairments, should not be compromised because of the COVID-19 situation in Taiwan, the union said.
As with in-person learning, students with visual impairments need audio descriptions when learning online, it said.
Photo: Su Ching-feng, Taipei Times
If the dialog boxes or images that pop up on the screen during a livestream do not come with any descriptions, the information that students with visual impairments receive would be fragmented and incoherent, it said.
This would affect the students’ understanding of the class material, the union added.
Someone needs to describe the images in the livestream in spoken language so that students with visual impairments can understand them, it said.
Schools could give special education assistants permission to access from their homes the online classes that the students they serve are enrolled in, the union said.
The assistants could then communicate with students with visual impairments through a separate platform, such as the Line messaging app, and provide them with the descriptions of images in real time, it said.
Separately, the National Federation of Education Unions said in a statement that it has received reports that many schools have adopted synchronous online teaching across the board regardless of the subject that is being taught.
This means that students must follow their schools’ original class schedule and stare at their screens until the evening, it said.
An increasing number of students have been reporting eye discomfort from looking at the computer screen all day, it said, adding that some parents are also worried that their children’s eyesight would worsen.
The Ministry of Education should require schools to reduce the impact of long-term use of electronic devices on students’ eyesight while carrying out online teaching, it said.
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