Guidelines of Assistive Courseware (AC) for Hearing-Impaired Students

The increasing number of Person With Disabilities (PWD) in Malaysia is very worrying especially to Ministry of Education because this population, eg: hearing impaired people remain disproportionately uneducated, untrained, unemployed, and poor. Accordingly many researchers work together with Information Technology (IT) experts to design and develop varieties of Assistive Technology (AT). So, AT is one of the technologies used to help this population in gaining knowledge and fortunately bridge the gap between PWD with normal people. This study defines the disabilities and technologies suitable for the disabled which is called assistive technology (AT). Two types of AT are hardware-based and software-based. In this study, the software-based is focused, specifically in the form of courseware which is referred to as assistive courseware (AC). With concerns to develop an AC for hearing-impaired people, proper guidelines should be followed. The aim of this study is to propose guidelines for developing AC for hearing-impaired people. Adapted model, Jakob Nielson Usability Guidelines, and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 were based on as guidance in proposing the guidelines. In accomplishing this study waterfall methodology was adapted. IntView methodology was also adapted in developing the prototype of AC and proposed guidelines were followed. Focus groups and experts tested the prototype of AC and Heuristic Evaluation was adapted. The results of this study concluded that guidelines proposed must be followed and were important in developing AC for hearing-impaired people