The Role of Multimodality and Technology in Teaching EFL to Visually Impaired Lower-Level Learners

Abstract

The era of postliteracy suggests development of language proficiency in multimodal ways creating equal opportunities for all learners including those with disabilities. Despite contemporary technological advances, certain special needs, such as blindness, make most online courses difficult to access. We propose a set of presuppositions and principles behind online EFL course development for blind and visually impaired learners, which are based on the multimodal nature of input during language learning and teaching of blind people to activate other senses during this process. The preliminary results of the study based on empirical data are to be published shortly.