Volume 8, Issue 1, January – 2023 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology

ISSN No:-2456-2165

Visos an Assistive Computer Based Testing (CBT) in

The Examination of the Visually
Impaired In Nigeria
Famuyide A. Johnson 1 Olugbenga G. Akindoju 2
Department of Science and Technology Education, Department of Science and Technology Education,
Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria. Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract:- The purpose of this study is to develop differences such as the extension of time and the use of
VISOS, an online computer-based testing platform for scribes (the person that reads) for the blind by an exam body
the examination of the visually impaired in Nigeria. The like Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in
visually impaired have not been so fortunate to be Nigeria.
reaping the benefits that come with the utilization of
computer-based testing for examination in Africa and Manoharan (2019) alleged that the current system of
Nigeria. The mode of doing their exam has always been assessing the visually impaired has been the using of scribe
paper and pencil with the help of a scribe or examiner to support the student throughout the exam-taking process
reading to them and helping them to put down their which maybe cumbersome for the scribes. Thus, there have
responses or the students put it down via typewriter and been the challenges of lack of scribes. Many people are not
braille. Many pieces of literature were reviewed but willing to be a scribe even if the requirement for recruiting
narrowed down to a few contributions in Africa and them may not be so stringent in some part of the world.
Nigeria. Incorporated into VISOS are Voice recognition Therefore the students may end up with a scribe that is not
and Text-to-speech technology which aid the visually reliable which can lead to mix-up and inability to matchup
impaired to do the exam on their own without any with their fellow students. (Khan et al., 2015).
assistance. An earpiece and the activated microphone of
the engaged computer are needed for quality interaction. The Bharadwaj et al. (2019) suggested that in a
technological and globalized world filled with people with
Keywords:- Assistive Technology, Voice Recognition, Text- more aspirations in life, computer technology which is user-
To-Speech, Visually Impaired Examination friendly, exact, and multitasking is an effective tool in
achieving whatever goal that is specifically set by any
I. INTRODUCTION person or organization. Thus, it will be more appropriate to
adjudge computer-based testing or online examination or e-
The disabled are in special schools where the students exam as a tool set out to achieve educational goals. Alabi et
are engaged in learning based on their potential and ability. al. (2012) and Onyesolu and Chimaobi (2017) explained that
The needs for introduction of technology in the education of the process of Computer-Based Testing (CBT)/e-
the blind cannot be overemphasized since there is a great exam/online exam is that the student reads questions from
increase in the numbers of persons affected with blindness the computer screen and inputs answers to the questions via
and other visually impaired all over the world (Khan, et al., the mouse or keyboard for purpose of evaluation or
2015). Although, the non-disabled have really enjoyed the assessment.
many benefits that come from technology in education we
cannot say that for the physically challenged especially the Computer-Based Testing has become a force to reckon
visually impaired. (Chowdary et al., 2019). Çoban et al. with in examination world in both formal and non-formal
(2021) expressed their frustration by describing that the setting since organizations, schools and examination boards
world is designed for the sighted because the visually are finding it more apt and adequate for what they want to
impaired have a lot of hurdles to cross in their education, examine. They also have seen that it advantages
especially in writing exams. tremendously outweighed its shortcomings. Onyesolu and
Chimaobi (2017) opined that is the reason agencies and
The blind are faced with the task of being assessed like exam bodies are using it to achieve their set out goals to the
their sighted counterpart to determine what they have learnt maximum. Thus, most conventional paper-based exam
over a certain determined period. Opara et al. (2015) added conducted by these examination bodies and agencies now
that the Examination/Test items are developed by the Test has their replicate in a computer-based testing mode of
development and item writers of the various exam bodies in delivery.
the countries for both the blind and the able in compliance
with international standards. Noticeably is also that the
administration of the test from the commencement of the
exam process to its end is also the same with a few

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Volume 8, Issue 1, January – 2023 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
The visually impaired cognitive ability should also be the scribe helped to put down the answer dictated by the
assessed like the sighted by employing CBT platforms. In students to them. This examination process is costly,
some cases where the CBT platforms were used for their stressful for both the examiner and the students and time-
assessment, they would have to still make use of a scribe consuming.
who reads to them and enters the answers dictated by the
candidates. This confirmed what was also observed by Thus, there should be a platform which reduces the
Khare et al. (2020) that the fear of Migrating to the CBT cost implication of the exam process, lifted the examination
platform for the blind may also be a challenge since they burden from the examinees and the examiners and limit the
would have to still depend on the use of scribes. Therefore time of administering the examination. These and more are
there is need for a CBT platform that empowers the visually what VISOS is out to fix.
impaired to confidently do examinations without doubt on
their performance. B. Specific Objectives

Chowdary et al. (2019) proposed that an online  The Objectives of the Study are to:
Examination system for the visually challenged should be a  Develop a CBT platform that catered for the inability of
software solution with facilities for the visually challenged the visually impaired students in writing examinations
students to interact with the system easily without  Develop a CBT platform that incorporated text-to-speech
assistance. Such a system should allow the examining technology within it.
bodies to input questions, administer and manage  Develop a CBT that integrated speech recognition
examinations on connected computer systems on the technology within it.
Internet or Local Area Network. Khan et al. (2015) added  Develop a CBT platform that can be used by both
that the application should aid in constructing an atmosphere visually impaired and sighted students.
that affords same chances for all the students in taking up  Encourage and build the confidence of the visually
competitive exams. Naik et al. (2015) described it as an impaired in writing any exam.
Online-Examination for visually impaired that does not
overrule the rules and regulation of examination. II. LITERATURE REVIEW
There have been several studies on CBT platform that Kanimozhi et al. (2017) affirmed that for the visually
accommodates the visually impaired students. Most of these impaired to be involved in e-examination like normal
platforms are from other continents in the world but few are students, there must be an innovative technology that would
from Africa and Nigeria. Thus, this study is on an assistive allow them to express their ability. The integration of the
CBT platform called VISOS (Visual Impairment Students screen reader and voice interface technology with the
Online Examination System) that catered for the inabilities normal CBT examination platform will help to ameliorate
of the visually impaired so that they can write examinations the problems or challenges faced by the visually impaired in
on their own. e-examinations.
A. Statement of Problems There have been several platforms proposed to help the
The sighted students have really been advantageous in visually impaired in doing examinations either on a stand-
all ramifications of education, especially in the aspect of alone computer because it is a desktop application such as
assessing what they have learnt either in a short period or a was seen in the study by Vats et al. (2016) or over a
long period. They are either tested by conducting a paper- network/internet because its web-based as found in Breja,
based test (which is reducing drastically) or computer-based (2015), Naik et al. (2015), Onyesolu and Chiomaobi (2017),
test (as a result of advances in technology) on what has been Azeta and Daramola (2017) and Osewa, and Bibu (2019)
learnt. In contrast, the paper-based exam delivery mode is among others.
what is still predominant in the assessment of visually
impaired students on what they learnt over time. The As most studies were done outside Nigeria the study
examination is done with the help of a scribe dictating the narrowed down on the studies done in Nigeria. However,
questions to them while the students put down the answers some of the foreign works reviewed are:
by themselves using braille, a typewriter or a computer or

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Volume 8, Issue 1, January – 2023 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
Table 1: Showing Literature Reviewed Outside Nigeria
Proposed Study Types of Input and Output Authors
Online Examination System for Blinds Voice as output and limited keyboard as Shanmuga et al. (2014)
input
E-blind examination system Voice as output and output Naik et al. (2015)
Voice operated tool-examination portal for Voice as output and output Vats et al. (2016)
blind persons
Online examination for visually challenged Voice as output and limited keyboard as Kanimozhi et al. (2017)
people input
E-blind exam portal Voice as output and Input Bharadwaj et al. (2019
Voice based online examination for voice Khan et al. (2015)
physically challenged
Computerized examination for visually Voice as input but keyboard as output Deepika et al. (2017).
impaired students
Voice Recognition and its Application in Voice as input only Jamunkar et al. (2014).
online exam for P.H People

A. In Nigeria, Some Studies Carries Out were: prototype before the second phase of testing. According to
 Chukwuemeka et al. (2021) the data, users were pleased with user logins, the
In a paper titled "Development of an Examination convenience of selecting keys on the keyboard, examination
Based System for the Visually Impaired Persons" in which instructional materials, and the suitability of exam time.
they developed a voice-based desktop application Finally, Osewa and Bibu (2019) concluded that scribes
examination platform using voice synthesiser, photonic would no longer be in use.
analyzer, and filters techniques technology to enable
visually impaired students to write exams without the  Onyesolu and Chimaobi (2017)
assistance of scribes. The system was built with universal Study titled "Design and Implementation of JAMB
modeling diagrams, MYSQL, and the Visual Studio tool. Computer-Based Test System with Voice Command"
They said that using an earphone decreased the noise they spurred by a desire to see the visually impaired take the
encountered while testing. UTME exam on their own. They created a CBT system that
allows the visually impaired to take exams like their peers
 Zeta et al. (2017) by speaking their replies after the questions and options are
Study titled "Developing e-examination voice interface read aloud and controlling the activities with their voice
for visually impaired students in open and distance learning rather than a mouse or keyboard. Object oriented analysis
context," where they proposed a framework for guiding the and design methodology (OOADM) were employed in the
development of voice-based online examination for visually system's design and implementation. According to the
impaired in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) because conclusions of this study, using this platform will improve
they assumed previous studies lacked adequate assessment the performance of visually impaired people.
quality. The technologies included in the planned
development were system design, server side scripting, III. PROPOSED PLATFORM
voice-based system development, data administration, and
rule-based reasoning. On a usability scale of 5, the VISOS is a web-based online examination system that
platform's 'average usability' result value was 3.48. They allows visually impaired or sighted students to access exams
claimed that this platform would provide better quality through the internet or intranet using computer systems. It
accessibility to visually impaired students who wanted to was developed using PHP - (Hypertext Pre-processor),
take exams on the ODL platform. Google automatic speech recognition (ASR), Google speech
service and MySQL as the database.
 "CBT Plug-in:
Towards Inclusive Computer-Based Testing for the A. Overview of Speech Recognition Process
Visually Impaired" by Osewa and Bibu (2019). A CBT Speech recognition procedures include feature
plug-in that was purported to work with any CBT platform extraction, acoustic modeling, pronunciation modelling, and
that was available was developed with the goal of including decoding. The end user interacts with the application by
both sighted and visually impaired in the same examination utilising a suitable input device, such as a microphone.
environment, eliminating scribes, suppressing the noise Because sound waves travel in the form of analogue signals,
created by voice input, and lowering the cost of testing blind the recognizer first takes them as analogue signals and then
students. The plug-in can read aloud the questions and transforms them to digital signals. Speech signals are then
options to the candidates via a Speech Application translated to electrical impulses. Feature extraction removes
Programming Interface (SAPI), but it can only receive numerous sources of information, such as pitch periodicity,
responses via the computer's limited customizable amplitude of excitation signal, and fundamental frequency,
keyboards. The system undergoes usability evaluation twice. among many others. The decoder makes the real judgement
The first phase included eight targeted consumers, the regarding speech recognition by merging and optimizing
findings of which were used to make improvements to the information. This is as shown in Figure 1.

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Volume 8, Issue 1, January – 2023 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165

Fig 1 Speech recognition Process Model for the Assistive CBT

Google Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) is a Figure 2 depicts a simplified depiction of the
form of ASR that converts speech to text using an API physiological reading process using a computer-imitated
powered by the best of Google's AI research and TTS system. A TTS synthesizer, like a human reader, has a
technology. natural speech processing module that translates the input
text with the desired intonation and speech rhythm into the
 Speech Service output text. The digital signal processing module turns the
The ability of a device or computer to convert incoming text's symbol data into natural-sounding speech.
orthographic text into speech without the assistance of a The natural speech processing module gives the text a
human is referred to as speech synthesis (Mihkla, 2007). phonetic description and determines the speech prosody.
The Text-To-Speech System (TTS) is a computer-based Text processing is often described at various levels:
system that turns text into simulated human speech phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
automatically. That is, it can read aloud any text, whether it A screen reader program for its Android operating system is
was typed into the computer manually or scanned and Google Speech Services. It enables program to speak (read
uploaded to an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) out) text displayed on screens in a number of different
system. 1997 (Dutoit).Additionally, text-to-speech synthesis languages.
(TTS) can be defined specifically as an automated procedure
that turns unrestricted natural language written phrases into B. Overview Of The VISOS Operation
spoken versions that closely resemble the spoken versions of The Google Speech Service and Automatic Speech
the same texts by a native speaker of the language. Recognition (ASR) provided a Text-to-Speech and Speech-
to-Text technology service in the platform, respectively. The
It carried out this operation by analyzing and questions on the screen can be read aloud using the Google
processing the text using Natural Language Processing speech service, and the selected options from A to D can be
(NLP) and then converting this processed text into a recorded using Google automated speech recognition
synthesized speech representation of the text using Digital (ASR). These embedded technologies can access the exam
Signal Processing (DSP) technology (Isewon, et al., 2014) database's questions and the storage for answers. The
as represented in figure 2 headphone/earpiece/headset connected to the computer
system, as shown in figure 3 creates the interface between
the student and the system.In other words, the exam is
attempted and responded to by the system reading out the
test questions and the students replying to it by saying the
option to the headset from the start to the end of the
allocated time for the test.

The students were individually registered using the

provided registration forms, and for each student, a unique
examination number was generated. This number was used
to log in to the platform and attempt the course(s) or
subject(s) for which the student had registered. The
examiner who is not blind does the login process. The
admin/examiner determines the exam length and time, and
the questions for each subject or course are pre-loaded using
the given excel template. The final result is reported.
Fig 2 Generalized Text-to-Speech Synthesis Model
(Adapted from Mihkl, 2007, modeling speech temporal
structure for Estonian text-to-speech synthesis).

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ISSN No:-2456-2165

Fig 3 Assistive CBT Model

(Adapted from Thajun and Samsudee, 2021)

The platform has two parts: the Admin and Student using a generated number and their surnames, as well as
part. Each of the part has its own different module. activating the speaker and microphone. Alternatively, by not
enabling the computer's microphone or speaker, the same
 Admin Module: platform can be used for able bodies' exams.
 Login
 Exam Scheduler and Question Bank The visually impaired candidate interacts with the
 Exam Question Template system via any earphone or headset. Immediately, the
 Upload Eligible Student student login, the system says "Welcome 'Studentname',
 Add Course read instructions of the exam to him/her and it moves to the
 Upload Question first question. The computer reads the question and its
 Exam Results possibilities A, B, C, D to the learner, then asks him to
choose his response by saying "Answer 'option'". The
 Delete Submitted Answers
system asks "is option your final answer?", the student
 Find Exam Result
replies "Yes" and the system states "'option' submitted". The
student says "load question 'number'" or "read question
 Student Module:
'number'" or "Next question" to proceed to the next question.
 Login This process continues until the last question and the system
 Exam Question prompts "You are on the last question". If the examinee is
still within the time limit for the test, the system will prompt
C. Operations of VISIOS "do you wish to submit all your answers" after the last
The administrator/examiner logs in to create a question is submitted else the system submit the full answers
subject(s)/course(s). He/she enrols students in the generated and log the student out saying "You have exceeded the time
subject(s)/course(s) using the unique downloaded excel limit and your exam is finished".The model is shown in
sheet template or CSV file, uploads the questions, and sets figure.
the timing and duration of the exams/tests using the unique
downloaded excel sheet template or CSV file. The
invigilator assists visually impaired students in logging in

Fig 4 Operational Flowchart Model for the Examinees

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The administrator/Examiner can obtain all of the
results in whatever format he wants from the accessible
formats, which include pdf, excel, and csv files. A student
can only take a course/subject exam once. As a result, unless
the administrator grants permission, the student will not be
permitted to retake the exam.

 Current System
Scribe reads each questioncandidates
listenedScribe asks the Candidates to supply answer
Scribe moves to next questionExam ends when questions
are exhausted.
Fig 7 Screenshot of the Sample of the Passive Exam Portal
 New system for the Student
Automated Scribe reads each questioncandidate
listened Automated Scribe asks the Candidate to supply
answer Automated Scribe moves to next questionExam
ends when questions are exhausted.

 Screenshot of Student Login

From the Landing page of student, the invigilator click
“Get started button” or Exam portal and the student is routed
to the Exam Login Portal.

The student/invigilatorsupplies the Examination

Number and Surname in the available boxes respectively
and click on proceed buttonas shown in figure 5. The page
that shows the enrolled subject(s) comes up and the Fig 8 Screenshot of the Sample of the Active Exam Portal
student/invigilator clicks on “Take exam” to proceed to for the Student.
exam portal as shown in figure 6.
The test instructions are read to the blind student via
the earpiece as soon as the exam portal opens, and the
student enters the answer using the same device as shown in
figure 7 & 8. The system notifies you that you are
attempting the final question whenever it is about to be
attempted. The system will either log the student out when
the allotted time has passed as shown in figure 9, or the
student must complete the test within that time. The system
reads out the remaining time if the student is still on
schedule, so that he/she knows how much time is left for the
test. When a student says submit button after finishing the
task on time, the system asks if they want to submit all of
their answers and log out.If YES the system responds by
Fig 5 Screenshot of the sample of the Student Login page. saying all option have been submitted successfully and you
have now been logged out of the system.

Fig 6 Screenshot of the Sample of the Subjects Enrolled for Fig 9 Screenshot of the Sample of the Active Exam Portal
the Student for the Student

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IV. CONCLUSION [10]. Jamunkar, V., Sawankar, A. A., & Buradkar, P.A.
(2014). Voice recognition and its application in online
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students’ confidence and produces such enthusiasm that (2017).Online Examination for Visually Challenged
could affect their performance positively. The platform People. Asian Journal of Applied Science and
functions were basically controlled by the human voice Technology 1(3), Pg 40-42.
interacting with it during examination with the help of [12]. Khan, S., Verma, S., Agarwal, S., Krishnatrey, P., &
earpiece to prevent any unwanted noise such that the voice Sharma, S. (2015). Voice-based online examination for
of the examinee alone was captured. Fluctuation in the physically challenged. MIT International Journal of
internet service was one of the major challenges Computer Science and Information Technology, 5(2),
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internet connectivity is advised to make VISOS perform [13]. Khare, N., Sharan, O., & Manikandan, J. (2020,
optimally. October). Design and Development of a Digital Scribe
for Visually Challenged Students. In 2020 IEEE
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