1. ABSTRACT
The act of note-taking is a key component of learning in
secondary and post-secondary classrooms. Students who
take notes retain information from classroom lectures better,
even if they never refer to those notes afterward. However,
students who are legally blind, and who wish to take notes in
their classrooms are at a disadvantage. Simply equipping
classrooms with lecture recording systems does not substitute
for note taking, since it does not actively engage the student
in note-taking during the lecture. In this paper we detail the
problems encountered by one math and computer science
student who is legally blind, and we present our proposed
solution: the CUbiC Note-Taker, which is a highly portable
device that requires no prior classroom setup, and does not
require lecturers to adapt their presentations. We also present
results from two case studies of the Note-Taker, totaling
more than 200 hours of in-class use.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.1.2 [Models and Principles] User/Machine Systems; I.4.1
[Image Processing and Computer Vision] Digitization and
Image Capture K.3.1 [Computers in Education] Computer
Uses in Education
General Terms
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors
Keywords
Note-Taker, assistive note-taking, automatic note-taking,
blind, lecture, lecture notes, low-vision, meeting, note-taking,
notes, student
2. INTRODUCTION
Overhead projectors, digital projectors, whiteboards and
chalkboards are often used to convey information in
educational environments, such as classrooms. However,
these visual display methods are not inherently accessible to
individuals who are legally blind, and may put them at a
disadvantage, compared to their peers. Several methods have been proposed to make classroom
presentations more accessible to students who are legally
blind. For example, lectures might be recorded (for later
review) or a human note-taker might be hired to take notes,
which are then provided to the student. However, these
approaches do not engage students who are legally blind in
the process of understanding and participating in classroom
presentations, and might even encourage them to skip class.
To improve accessibility of classroom lectures for students
who are legally blind, and to encourage them to take notes,
we have developed the Note-Taker. This device requires no
existing infrastructure or prior setup in a classroom, and does
not require the lecturer to adjust the presentation. However,
it makes classroom presentations accessible to many students
who are legally blind.
In developing the Note-Taker, we investigated the usability
and the shortcomings of current assistive technologies that
might be used by students who are legally blind in the
classroom (Sections 3 and 4). Based on these findings, we
prototyped a solution that addressed these shortcomings
(Section 5), and conducted two case studies (Section 6). In
the first case study, the first author (who is himself legally
blind) used the Note-Taker for an entire semester; in the
second case study, another student (who is also legally blind)
used a second Note-Taker prototype in classes for one month.
3. PROBLEM STATEMENT
The Note-Taker project was born out of necessity when the
first author, David, found that traditional methods of notetaking
were proving unsuccessful. In his own words,


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