[Blind-international-students] Studying online

[Alexandra]

Hello,

thanks for approving my membership to this group.

I'm a psychologist from Germany with a strong interest in
accessibility, human-computer interaction and of course computer
science in general. I'd like to get acquainted with the basics
of computer science, preferrably by using massive open online
courses. 

I already subscribed to a course on Udacity but couldn't use it
properly with Jaws 10 or NVDA and Firefox 21. At Udacity, you
are presented with short, educational video sequences and can
answer a multiple choice question before watching the next
video. After having answered a question, I wasn't able to
navigate to the next question. I could only skip back and
re-answer the question. So there is actually no way of gradually
taking the course. I wrote to Udacity but didn't get a valuable
reply. They don't seem to care for accessibility that much,
especially as I found an entry in the forum by another Jaws user
that wasn't able to use the site properly.

I also tried Coursera but couldn't even enroll into a course.


The combination of watching videos and answering questions is a
way of communicating knowledge I consider to be rather useful,
as you have a mixture of activity and passivity which makes
learning not as "boring" as just reading a book.

iTunesU also sounds pretty exciting, but the lectures I found
so far only allowed you to watch videos. There was no section to
test your knowledge. This is a real pity, as I'd definitely
enjoy an educational app for studying on the go. 

There's an app for the iPhone dedicated to Coursera, but it doesn't yet allow you to either answer questions or take part in exams. Anyway, I'm interested in your opinions if anyone tested it already.


Any information on MOOCs accessible with Jaws (10) / NVDA or
educational apps for the iPhone would be appreciated.

Looking forward to your replies.

Best wishes,

Alexandra