List of acronyms and abbreviations
Chapter 4: Results
4.1 Response rate for the three categories of respondents
4.2.2 Respondents’ information needs
The questions (six to eight) were asked in order to find out about the students information needs and the various factors that influence their information behaviour.
4.2.2.1 Information seeking situations
The respondents were asked to describe instances where they needed information to solve a problem or make a decision. To enable the respondents to remember their information needs, the critical incident technique was used.
The study revealed that the most commonly held need was related to academic issues.
That is, all the respondents (100%) had academic needs at the top of their list. This, in essence is indicative of the fact that although students‟ needs are varied, academic
information needs form a fundamental part of every student‟s life, as alluded to in the first chapter of this study (Section 1.2).
All the nine respondents revealed that their critical incident was related to a need for academic information including where to find relevant sources to do their assignments. For example, one of the students said:
The lecturer gave us an assignment and to most sighted students the first stop was the library and for me it was the DU, where my assignment sheet was read to me... then I tried to figure out what to do next… you see this is unfair… by the time I start writing the others would have submitted.
Where other students accessed the information immediately and decided what was important, blind respondents had to first scan an article, for example, before it could be edited and then emailed to them so that they could access it through JAWS.
Three other students alluded to the same concern and added that „unfortunately one was expected to submit on the same date as the sighted students… extension of time for submission was the only option for us, but then it meant putting up with a backlog as the assignments are not from one module‟. When the students take their work to the DU, the students indicated that most of the time their work had to be read by student assistants who work on shifts „and one has to get used to [a] different accent‟ as it is not always possible to find the same student assistant every time they need their work to be read to them. The problem of having only two student assistants, who work for four hours per day at the DU, was cited as one of the contributing factors in the delay of information in time to meet their needs or write the assignments.
The other five respondents pointed out that when they were given the assignments they decided to consult their classmates and they brainstormed together about how to address that particular assignment: „After the brainstorm session, my sighted friends would go to the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) and I would go to the Subject Librarian with at least a picture of what was needed for the assignment‟ one student added.
Three of the respondents who were blind added that they needed lecture notes
handouts for the same. The three blind students did not receive the notes like the rest of the students. One of the students reported that in lectures, where there was continuous reference to visual aids, such as transparencies, graphs presentations all of which were not effective for him. The other two blind students added that „some lecturers forgot that some of us could not see, they kept on saying as you can see this and that, pointing at something, maybe a chart… one felt lost and definitely not benefiting anything‟. On the occasion of lecture notes being provided in an inaccessible format, the students felt that they would like the lecturer to be assistive in ensuring that they had access to the notes in advance or at least soon after the lecture.
4.2.2.2 Format of information needed
The student respondents were asked to specify the format of information they needed to meet their needs or solve the problem they had. The majority (six) of the respondents needed information in an electronic format to access and use to write their assignments and three respondents mentioned a need for information in print or Braille formats, in addition to electronic information. That is, six of the students needed electronic information while three needed both electronic and print. The students‟ choice of information was greatly influenced by the degree of sightedness.
That is, the partially sighted students were comfortable with both electronic information and print formats because with electronic data they could use ZoomText, which increases the font size, and print information could be scanned and converted to a suitable format, such as increasing fonts for easier use. Some of the partially sighted students pointed out that the only limiting factor when accessing electronic information was when the Local Area Networks (LANs) rooms were full and the few computers that had the ZoomText option were used by sighted students. Some of the students‟ comments in this regard were:
„The computers in the LANs that have the ZoomText are not demarcated… so any one can use them… even sighted students who might not need the ZoomText option...‟
„It is most of the time by sheer luck that one would walk into the LAN and find a computer to use… but then time and again there is a need for someone with [an]
eyesight problem to rest his/her eyes for a few minutes… by the time one returns…
that computer is being used by somebody else‟.
The blind students needed electronic information because they could use JAWS and, if desired, a print-out in Braille. One of the respondents said „although electronic information supersedes any other format of information for me, if I am looking for an article that is in PDF format… then I am in trouble because JAWS cannot read it‟. In a nutshell, most, if not all the formats of information needed by the respondents had some shortcomings, but then they devised strategies of putting up with those short- comings because as the student stated „one had to use what was locally available‟.