A study on the impact of ict among the visually impaired students in the higher educational institutions of tamilnadu

Abstract

The last decade of the twentieth century projected the Information and newlineCommunication Technologies (ICTs) to be the solution for the existing developmental newlineissues and considerations. At present, the Information and Communication newlineTechnologies have become irresistible to achieve higher learning goals with newlineinnumerable ventures to access the resources and information. Persons with newlinedisabilities are often discriminated and socially excluded from the mainstream. The newlineinformation and communication technologies bridge the gap and enable the persons newlinewith disabilities to venture and expose themselves to achieve greater heights than ever newlinein the past. Studies clearly reflect that neither the teacher nor the technology can stand newlinealone while assisting the visually impaired students. They have to complement to each newlineother to bridge the gap between the visually impaired students and the sighted newlinestudents (Carriere, 2012). newlineAt this juncture, it is indispensable to study the usage pattern of the newlineinformation and communication technologies by the visually impaired students of newlinehigher educational institutions of Tamilnadu. Before two decades, the higher newlineeducational institutions could hardly see visually impaired students especially for the newlinedegree programmes. There are a lot of special schools for the visually impaired newlinestudents in Tamilnadu. But there is no special higher educational institution. They are newlineincluded in the regular campuses. It is mandatory that such learning environments are newlinestudied and evaluated how the visually impaired students incorporate ICTs in their newlinelearning. Hence this study is aimed to measure the status of ICT usage among the newlinevisually impaired students of the higher educational institutions of Tamilnadu. The newlineassistive technologies are cost effective and the visually impaired students do not have newlinefinancial resources to access or buy the technology. newline