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The Saudi government pays great attention to the usability and accessibility issues of e-government systems. E-government educational systems, such as Noor, Faris, and iEN systems, are some of the most rapidly developing e-government systems. In this study, we used a mixed-methods approach (usability testing and automated tools evaluation) to investigate the degree of difficulty faced by teachers with visual impairment while accessing such systems. The usability testing was done on four visually impaired teachers. In addition, four automated tools, namely, AChecker, HTML_CodeSniffer, SortSite, and Total Validator, were utilized in this study. The results showed that all three systems failed to support screen readers effectively as it was the main issue reported by the participants. On the other hand, the automated evaluation tools helped with identifying the most prominent accessibility issues of these systems. The perceivable principle was the principle most violated by the three systems, followed by operable, and then robust. The errors corresponding to the perceivable principle alone represented around 73% of the total errors. Moreover, further analysis revealed that most of the detected errors violated even the lowest level of accessibility conformance, which reflected the failure of these systems to pass the accessibility evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda involved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to achieve a better and more sustainable world for all. The fourth Sustainable Development Goal called for "ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all". Despite international efforts to achieve such a goal, many students with vision impairment (VI) who wish to pursue a degree in computer science face significant challenges and must overcome social and technical obstacles. One challenge is learning how to program as a key skill for pursuing a degree in the field of computer science. This paper explores practical issues in teaching students with VI the basics of programming and presents recommended practices based on a suggested workshop setup. The workshop ran for three weeks, for a total of 60 teaching hours, and involved designing and implementing complete curricula and multi-modal activities to simplify the acquisition of basic programming concepts. Workshop data was collected using several data collection methods—i.e., interviews, observation, questionnaires, performance records, and daily journals. The results indicated an improvement in participants' programming skills, which was detected through their performance records and final project evaluations. The participants also showed a high interest in learning programming and positive attitudes towards the experience. However, the participants' experience also involved some challenges such as understanding abstract concepts, code navigation, and some technical issues. The study is hoped to contribute to the literature on education inclusion and to bridge the digital divide in our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]