AI Tutor to Help Visually Impaired Scholl Students Prepare for Russia’s Unified State Exam
A new online platform enables visually impaired students to prepare for exams using an AI tutor and assistive technologies.
Russian school students with visual impairments can now prepare for the Edinyy gosudarstvennyy ekzamen (Unified State Exam) using the Yandeks Uchebnik (Yandex Educational Platform) online assistant, Yandex said in a statement. Blind students can study advanced mathematics with the built-in AI Tutor. To interact with the system, they use screen readers - software that converts text into speech or outputs it to a Braille display.
Adapted Informatics
The platform’s interface and tasks have been redesigned to accommodate accessibility needs, including structured page markup, labeled buttons and fields that can be recognized and read aloud by assistive technologies.
The platform was tested by students at Boarding School No. 1 for the Education and Rehabilitation of Blind Children in Moscow. According to the school’s director, Ivan Vishnevetsky, the system proved effective. Step-by-step explanations provided by the AI Tutor help students understand the logic behind problems and grasp their underlying concepts.
Yandex said the platform was developed in collaboration with 150 experienced teachers. Yandeks Uchebnik has also adapted its informatics curriculum for blind students, with the company estimating that up to 85% of graduates use the platform.
