Universal Access and Visual Literacy

Universal design relates to all design issues that influence people as they learn and perform in life with it's goals focused on making information and learning accessible to all people (Lohr, 2008).
The graphic I chose represents universal design by representing a concept through related verbal and numerical visual clues. This graphic helps to create meaning for the learner using shape and color related to numbers and words. The color, word, and number together represent a part of the ratio. By showing the relationship of each part, a ratio is created through visual representation. This type of interpretive visual would help learners understand the difficult concept of ratios. The multimedia principle explains learners benefit from having both text, either spoken or written, and graphics included in instruction (Clark and Mayer, 2008).

I chose this graphic based on an experience I had teaching ratios to a second language student this week. The problem was written similar to the one below. There was a picture representation of the objects in the problem. However, since the pictures were not labeled, the picture did not help the student solve the problem. Simply adding either a label to the oranges and strawberries on the top or adding an additional graphic next to the words in the problem would have given more support to a second language student.

Resources

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction, 2nd edition. Pfeiffer: San Francisco, CA.

Lohr, Linda L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance, second edition. Pearson: Upper Sadle River, NJ.

Ratio Image. Retrieved from http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-12_u-208_t-573_c-2129/equivalent-ratios-/nsw/equivalent-ratios-/ratios-and-rates/ratios

Ratio Problem Image. Retried from http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/ratio.html