Development and Accessibility Automatic Assessment of ADA Blocks: A Virtual Assistant that Supports the Choice of Block Programming Tools
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5753/rbie.2025.4630Keywords:
ADA Blocks, Virtual Assistant, Accessibility, Automatic Evaluators, Block ProgrammingAbstract
Currently, personalized learning is sought to encourage 21st Century skills and competencies in students, such as logical reasoning and computational thinking. Block programming can support this process. However, it was noticed that teachers, such as those in high school, have difficulties in choosing programming tools depending on their context of use. Therefore, the ADA Blocks virtual assistant was developed to assist teachers in choosing block programming tools. The ADA Blocks development methodology includes systematic mapping study, preliminary and feasibility studies, and accessibility automatic evaluation. As a result of the feasibility study, the usefulness, ease of use, and limitations of ADA Blocks were identified.
The automated accessibility assessment, performed with tools such as AccessMonitor and ASES, identified technical and content issues. Based on these findings, the assistant was improved, with adjustments such as hierarchical text organization and the insertion of textual references in images for assistive technologies ('alt' attribute). After the improvements, a new automatic evaluation showed a significant increase in accessibility scores, rising from 61.57% to 88.41% on ASES and from 5.2 to 6.9 on AccessMonitor. Finally, ADA Blocks demonstrated positive accessibility results in its new version.
This work fills a gap in the literature, being the first to evaluate the accessibility of virtual assistants for recommending block programming tools. Future prospects include evaluation with users with disabilities and experts, eventually identifying usability issues and refining the assistant based on user feedback.
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Derechos de autor 2025 Ana Paula Juliana Perin, Deivid Eive Santos Silva, Natasha M. C. Valentim
Esta obra está bajo una licencia internacional Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0.
