Towards supporting skills of making columnar layout operations by visually impaired students

Dariusz Mikulowski, Grzegorz Terlikowski

Abstract: One of the essential math skills that every student should master is the ability to perform columnar-layout operations, sometimes called “operations under the line”. It is challenging, particularly for the blind students, for technical reasons because they are not able to perform such activities using pen and paper. Instead, blind students usually perform these operations using a plastic board and cubes called cubarithms. However, this method is a time-consuming and painstaking activity. To make a step forward to solve this problem, we propose an electronically supported method for performing columnar-layout operations by students with visual impairments. It was implemented as a simple web application designed for students and teachers. In addition to the standard functionality consisting of the possibility to perform operations and checking their correctness, our tool allows grading the difficulty of tasks and collecting them by the teacher and students. A solution was successfully tested by several blind students who performed operations faster and more comfortable than using traditional cubarithms.