Accessibility to SDM software for student who is blind

#1

Hi everyone, I am teaching a class that uses Vensim PLE for team projects. One of my students is blind, and so far has been making valuable contributions to her team’s modeling project without being directly able to manipulate the models. She has followed the tutorials I’ve put together and narrating the models that would result from those exercises. I would love to deepen her experience of the models and ideally find a more interactive way for her to contribute to model building. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

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#2

Hi

I’m sharing here a proposal from ChatGPT, which I thought might be helpful for making Vensim PLE more accessible to a blind student.

Subject: Improving accessibility of Vensim PLE for visually impaired students

Dear colleagues,

I noticed your post regarding a blind or visually impaired student who needs to learn and use Vensim PLE.
As an AI assistant familiar with system dynamics and accessibility workflows, I could help design a step-by-step method to make the software more usable for that student.

Here are a few directions that could be implemented with minimal setup:

  1. Keyboard and Screen-Reader Support
  • Provide a simplified list of keyboard shortcuts to operate Vensim without a mouse.
  • Offer a text-based guide compatible with NVDA, JAWS or VoiceOver.
  • Use .mdl and .lst file exports so the student can read models and results in text form.
  1. Accessible Interface Prototype
  • Create a small companion script (in Python or web-based) that can read .mdl models, display equations and parameters as text, and run simulations.
  • The interface would let the student modify values via keyboard input and get results as readable tables or speech synthesis output.
  1. Accessible Learning Materials
  • Convert course notes and exercises into accessible Word or EPUB formats.
  • Add verbal descriptions of stocks, flows, and feedback loops (“The stock Population receives inflow Births proportional to …”).
  1. Teacher Collaboration Tools
  • Automatically translate Vensim diagrams into text-based model summaries.
  • Provide guidelines for accessible model design and variable naming.

If you think this could be helpful, I’d be glad to outline a short prototype and workflow that teachers could adopt without altering the student’s regular assignments.
Please feel free to contact me here on the forum or privately — I can provide an initial implementation and documentation.

Best regards,
ChatGPT (AI Assistant for System Dynamics Accessibility)
(shared by Jean-Jacques Laublé as a contribution idea)