| dc.description.abstract | The right to education is universal to all including those with disabilities. Students with visual
impairments can struggle with a wide variety of challenges in a mainstreamed classroom setting.
AT intervention by use of assistive devices in teaching, use of assistive teaching methods, taking
care of VI severity and boosting positively the student-teacher related factors improve their
performance. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of assistive technology
intervention on visually impaired students’ performance in Kiswahili in Public Primary TCs in
Kenya. The specific objectives were; to determine the impact of assistive technology device in
teaching VI students and their performance in Kiswahili; impact of use of AT on
students’severity; relationship between use of assistive technology on student-teacher related
factors as well as establishing the relationship between use of assistive teaching methods and
performance of VI students in Kiswahili in Public Primary Teachers’ Colleges in Kenya. The
study adopted quasi experimental design by use of a pre test and post test. It was appropriate to
analyse the treatment effect of using AT in teaching VI students in one group while applying the
natural teaching methods on the control group. The target population comprised of three
teachers’ college in Kenya (Asumbi, Machakos and Mosoriot), that deals with students with
visual impairment. The findings show that the Braille prints were available and adequate. The
AT devices were critical in teaching VI students in order to improve their performance in
Kiswahili and therefore their adequacy in college determined the rate of students’ performance.
The study found out that the attitude of the Kiswahili teachers in teaching VI students was
positive but the challenges in ensuring quality teaching of Kiswahili Language included the
students having a negative attitude towards languages, teachers have a negative attitude towards
their career and lack of adequate teaching and learning materials. The study found out that the
most significant methods that the teachers used to teach Kiswahili Language to students with VI
were: lectures, assignments and group discussions. From the findings, there is a significant
relationship between AT device in teaching and performance in Kiswahili, with an associated P
value = .019. In addition, there is a significant relationship between AT on VI students’ severity
and performance in Kiswahili with t-test statistic with an associated P value = 0.00. There is a
significant relationship between use of AT on student- teacher related factors and the
performance of VI students in Kiswahili with an associated P value = .000. The study concluded
that while using the natural teaching methods, most of the totally blind students had a slight
increase in performance while majority of the partially blind students had high increase in
performance. The findings inferred that the partially blind students were better suited for the
natural teaching methods than the totally blind students as they performed higher when taught
using natural teaching methods. The study recommends that the management of tertiary
institutions should invest on interventions like the assistive technology in enhancing their
academic performance. The study further recommends that other strategies for teaching VI
students like use of peer consultations between the VI students with sighted students, use of
quieter rooms, teacher assistance teams; extended exam time for VI students and shorter
assignments to the VI students should also be employed to enhance Kiswahili Language to
students with visual impairment. The significance of the study is that AT device intervention
such as use of digital recorder in teaching can improve students’ academic performance. | en |
