B. E-accessibility for students with visual impairment: comparison with the overall situation at the university

1. Tools used by students to interact with the university

Modern technology (and digitization in particular) has improved education quality, as digital learning tools and platforms have enabled students to interact remotely with university teaching and administration. According to the survey responses, the university website has made students’ lives easier: “We find it fairly easy to find the university registration site, access our results and use the timetable, especially at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences where you can download resources from the online platform, unlike the platform of the Faculty of Judicial, Economic and Social Sciences, which is still unavailable, most of us can’t log onto it”.[1]

To acquire knowledge in an academic setting, one must not only have a certain level of desire to learn, but also commit to a long course of study. According to the interview responses, each student with visual impairments had their own idea of what studying and university degrees meant to them. This is because, according to Amartya Sen[2], students’ personal and social lives are closely connected to their studies and each person needs to learn using methods that accommodate their individual characteristics and develop their own specific skills. To enable this, efforts must be made to facilitate the learning process and place education within their reach. According to one of the interviewees, one of the main challenges for students with disabilities is, “a lack of ongoing care and attention by the university institutions which were created for that very purpose”.[3] A key way of providing that care is through the use of technology.

Below are a number of assistive tools, including IT software and applications, that can help students with visual impairments to access digitized materials.

2. Ways to include students with visual impairment: e-accessibility and access to services

To improve access to digital education, specialized applications for students with visual impairments have been developed to help them use the internet, access global libraries and databases, and consult theoretical studies and lectures provided by the university in digital format, thus giving them a great deal of independence. The interviewees reported that lessons were made available in PDF, Powerpoint and doc.x format, as well as some on video. Volunteers or family members assisted them by recording lessons and books in Arabic, and lessons in English were easier to read. The national digital library provided access to the EBSCO website, but no access was given to the university libraries.[4]

Students with visual impairments engage with university learning differently and have a different learning experience to other students; for example, most students with visual impairments follow their lessons at home and only attend university in person to sit exams.

According to one of the students in the sample, education means, “the ability to advance in intellectual, social and financial terms”.[5] Studying is an effective way for individuals and families to improve their financial circumstances and sociocultural standing. However, viewed from a purely economic standpoint, education does not appear to offer students with visual impairments the ability to improve their life circumstances as much as they might hope, because they lack certain qualifications that are not related to their level of education, but rather to their health.

With that in mind, one must question the part played by society in constructing the concept of disability, since the social model of disability takes into account not only medical and biological factors, but also society’s perception of persons with disabilities. Thus, society as a whole – including persons with disabilities themselves – is involved in building disability as a social construct, which can form a barrier that prevents them from fully exercising their rights and participating in social life. Solutions must therefore be sought to prevent persons with disabilities from being excluded and marginalized; while various educational and institutions and training centres are doing so in theory, in practical terms these individuals still face significant hurdles that impede them from achieving their goals on multiple fronts.

With regard to barriers to e-accessibility, one of the interviewees reported that students with visual impairments at Cadi Ayyad University struggled to access information because they had not received sufficient computer training.[6] To address this problem, all students – without exception – should be offered equal opportunities in education and training. According to contemporary educational sociology, inequalities in teaching are mainly the result of how education programmes are structured, since they focus on exclusion resulting from the educational institutions’ approaches, rather than from external factors.[7]

Families play a key role in supplying students with visual impairments with the necessary financial means to pursue their studies and access education opportunities. Entering into academic culture may require students to distance themselves from their original culture in order to fully adopt the culture and values associated with education; this makes education a type of acculturation.[8] When done positively, this allows universities to perform their essential function of helping students to increase their earning potential and achieve success in their personal, professional and marital lives.[9]

One of the main factors contributing to unequal access to digitization is the lack of an effective and well-developed services structure incorporating advanced digital technology. These insufficiencies make it difficult for persons with disabilities to access transport services, public spaces and other facilities, as highlighted by many academics, activists, and disability rights defenders.[10]

3. Tools and technologies for students with visual impairments

Specialized IT tools, including mobility and communication apps, can help students with visual impairments improve their daily lives, strengthen their social connections, support one another and become better included in educational institutions. Large companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Whatsapp have been endeavouring to use modern technology to help improve many aspects of these individuals’ lives.

The majority of interviewees reported using screen-reader apps such as TalkBack and VoiceOver on their smartphones (both Android and iPhone), and NVDA and JAWS on computers (using either Windows or Mac operating systems). Three of the interviewees used an iPhone, and eleven used an Android smartphone. Half of the interviewees used a computer, and some used Moovit transport app.

Some students at Cadi Ayyad University have difficulty travelling to university since they do not have access to these transport and mobility apps. According to one interviewee, “it’s difficult to get to the faculty, we have to get there by ourselves, using smartphones and digital maps, for example we use Moovit which tells us where to find the bus stop, but there are other much more accurate apps, like Lazarillo, which we can’t use”.[11]

To overcome these problems, the university must do more to meet the expectations of students by tackling linguistic inequalities, drawing attention to the challenges faced by students with visual impairment (and other students) and providing them with the tools and services they require. Currently, the university has neither the relevant specialized language services nor the necessary structures and teacher training to use them, with the excuse that the group concerned is only a minority.

4. What students with visual impairments expect from the university

As a key component in development, education is a priority for the State. However, a number of barriers stand in the way of equal opportunities for students in the higher education sector, including at Cadi Ayyad University. These factors include overcrowding, inadequate basic facilities and a lack of access to modern technology to help students engage in academic knowledge and research.

Despite the existence of facilities and support services for students with visual impairment, these students still face numerous difficulties that must be investigated and addressed. For example, the university could provide paid subscriptions to apps such as @Voice Aloud Reader, Envision AI, and Kibo, all of which use AI and optical character recognition (OCR) technology to help students read and learn, by analysing images and converting them into sound files and easy-to-read texts. These apps, which are not currently provided by the university, could help to bridge the gap between students’ expectations of the university and what the university provides in reality.

While the university has made attempts to reform and modernize, there remains a clear lack of equal opportunities between students with visual impairments and other students at the university, which hampers their empowerment and impedes their access to education. This has damaged the relationship between students and the university, undermined their trust in the institution and depleted their energy. Access to digital learning at the university’s institutions should therefore be reviewed.

If one considers that development involves expanding the availability of education and training and providing the means to access it without discrimination among students on the basis of gender, disability or other factors, as stipulated by the CRPD, then the university is still failing to meet this requirement.

[1]       Interviews 1, 2, 3 and 4, field research, February 2022.

[2]       Sen, Amartya (1985). Commodities and Capabilities, p. 3. The concept of human capital, which refers to “the sum of a worker’s innovative and productive capacity and acquired abilities”, is used in the broader sense as it covers creative ingenuity, technical expertise and general knowledge, among other types of knowledge. Human capital is thus a stock that must be built, expanded, utilized and created so that it can grow. Teaching must be geared towards learning different skills in order to meet individuals’ needs and aspirations and fulfil their potential for thought and reasoning. Methods must be adapted and implemented to enable interactive participation. This cannot be achieved without promoting access to education.

[3]       Interview 3, field research, February 2022.

[4]       Field research, February 2022.

[5]       Interview 8, field research, February 2022.

[6]       Interview 10, field research, February 2022.

[7]       https://www.uca.ma. Mentioned in a lecture by Professor Khadija Zahi, Lectures in Educational Sociology, fourth year, 2019–2020.

[8]       Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude (1970). La reproduction: Éléments pour une théorie du système d’enseignement (Le sens commun), p. 19.

[9]       Interview 10, field research, February 2022.

[10]     Filiatrault, Jean-François, Théories sociologiques du Handicap: Débat et renouvellement, master’s thesis, University of Quebec in Montreal, 2016, p. 123.

[11]     Interview 11, field research, February 2022.