GUIDL as an Aiding Technology in Programming Education of Visually Impaired

Programming education is of vital importance because of growing needs for programming professionals. Even though efforts have been made in order to improve the quality of knowledge and acquired programming skill of computer science students the educational systems are still confronted with rather high failure and dropout rates. There are several possible approaches that can be taken in education of programming novices which are described and discussed in this paper. The problems in programming education are even more prominent in the case of programming novices who are visually impaired. Some of educational problems are similar to general problems in programming education and some are specific in the case of visually impaired students and require a suitable approach in order to be resolved. Several existing aiding tools and approaches are presented in this paper and a new solution in the form of GUIDL (Graphical User Interface Description Language) system is proposed as a suitable mean for aiding visually impaired in their programming education. The results of conducted research about the effectiveness of proposed solution are also presented and discussed.