FOCAL
Description
FOCAL is a diagnostic tool for assessing how well a STEM educational technology for blind and visually impaired (BVI) learners fits a given pairing of learning objective and educational context. It is built on a 4×34×3 matrix derived from a thematic analysis of 25 empirical studies, and applied through a 5-step decision protocol — the fourth step is deliberately eliminatory: a single missing essential feature is enough to flag a pedagogical risk, regardless of how strong the rest of the system is.
Main features
- Pedagogical diagnosis — identifies the primary learning objective (procedural fluency, conceptual understanding, analytical reasoning, or creative expression) and any secondary objectives.
- Context mapping — situates the technology within one of three educational levels (elementary K–5, secondary 9–12, postsecondary) based on the dominant institutional constraint.
- Automated matrix lookup — surfaces the essential features and adoption barrier specific to the selected objective–context cell.
- Eliminatory evaluation — checks each essential feature; any single absence triggers a risk verdict.
- Barrier mitigation check — independently evaluates the deployment plan (training, compatibility, funding) to ensure the identified barrier is actually addressed.
- Diagnostic report generation — a full summary of every step, with a green/orange/red verdict and PDF export.
Status
Version 1.0 is publicly available. The tool was calibrated on the four illustrative cases from From Diagnosis to Instrument (Sadallah & Encelle, 2026). A phase 2, pending ethical approval, plans anonymous telemetry to empirically validate the matrix's theoretical [T] cells.