Research and Development

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The Mwangaza Project inABLE has partnered with the Georgia Institute of Technology and local organizations in Kenya on a research and development project to make Math & Science more accessible to blind students by use of assistive technology. This effort aims to impact the achievement standards and self-worth of students by bringing new models of education to them. "Mwangaza" is a versatile Swahili word that means light, but can also mean solution (to a difficulty), education, and enlightenment.

In October 2010, Dr. Bruce Walker and his team from the GA Tech Department of Psychology traveled to Kenya with the inABLE team to evaluate the needs of the blind and visually impaired students in Kenya. This visit helped identify some baseline and on-going assessments on how to better measure the areas listed below. Ultimately, this research will help identify the most effective ways of using assistive technology to accelerate the progress of visually impaired students in academics and other arenas of life.

The areas of focus for the research will be:

• Measuring academic achievement
• Psychosocial constructs and measures
  • Attribution style/locus of control
  • Personality self-efficacy
  • Social support network measures
  • Measures of career aspirations or expectations
  • Quality of life
• Cognitive and abilities measures
  • Verbal abilities tests
  • Non-verbal abilities tests (e.g., tactile versions of IQ performance tests, etc.)
  • Perceptual abilities tests (not hearing tests, but tests of perceptual abilities
    such as frequency and tempo discrimination, etc.)
  • Measures of attention
• Technology adoption and use measures
• Technology use (amount and type)
• Technology acceptance
• Technology expertise/aptitude
• Outcomes from the use of technology