M2M: Universally designed multimedia training and learning application for maternal health

Abstract

The figure of Maternal Mortality Ratio in the global south is worrying and requires a serious attention from all stakeholders. Despite the progress made on maternity healthcare in the last two decades, a huge effort is still required to achieve the SDG3 target. The effort includes capacitating the health professionals and local doulas through training and learning application platforms. Universally designed multimedia training and learning applications plays such a significant role in facilitating this effort. To design an accessible maternity training and learning application, the accessibility barriers of the target diverse user groups must be identified, and the impact of the barriers need to be quantified. In this research work, we have developed a prototype called M2M that comprises VR-based animation. We have used the prototype to identify the possible accessibility barriers of multimedia-based maternity training and learning application experienced by people with low vision through the combination of heuristic and barrier walkthrough methods. We studied the severity of the identified accessibility barriers and their impact which will serve as a benchmark to develop a fully-fledged maternity health training and learning application for the global south. We have shown the strong correlation between the number of UI elements and the prevalence of accessibility barriers that must be considered in designing the UI/UX of the fully-fledged maternity training and learning application. We have also observed that multimedia contents must be evaluated independently for any accessibility issues before integrating the contents to training applications.