Designing Accessible Educational Services: A Human-CenteredFramework from Sub-Saharan African Student Communities

Abstract

The study used an embedded netnographic methodology to explore the lived experiences of students with epilepsy across twelve Sub-Saharan African countries. This was done to develop a humancentred assumptions map to guide the creation of sustainable technological solutions like small language models aimed at solving education challenges in low resource contexts. Through systematic analysis of some digital narratives collected during a one-yearperiod of embedded fieldwork as a communications officer with the International Bureau of Epilepsy (IBE) African Region, the re-searcher analysed a total of 24 digital narratives from WhatsAppgroups, podcast interviews, and organizational reports. The study highlights several key themes which can be summed up in one major overarching theme of the cascade effect of missed learning opportunities by students with epilepsy. Firstly, the study found that academic failure amplifies the stigma these students face in classroom settings. Secondly, parents and carers of children with disabilities are forced by different factors to make difficult trade-offs when determining their child’s educational path. Thirdly, the students themselves create communities which help them adapt especially using digital technologies. Based on these findings the researcher has proposed some design recommendations for future technological interventions which seek to counter the effects of epilepsy and other neurological disorders in education by specifically focusing on these existing digital resilience networks. Our proposed design framework considers the low resource setting and the challenges that other educational technological interventions have faced as highlighted by other authors. The study brings more attention to the nuances from the human experiences angle which are informing the technology design methodology