Adult Education

Paulo Freire


Malcolm Knowles

Barcodes and QR Codes as Assistive Technology

As smart phones become more widely used, the ability of people to access media in a quick and easy way could be used to provide assistance to those with low literacy.

QR(Quick Response)Codes are small square blocks of data which a smart phone can scan
this directs the phone to a website or file on the net.

QR Code

Barcode

QR Codes are being adopted by the Property Sales sector in the US and currently some Irish Newspaper Property advertisements carry QR Codes which when scanned bring the user to a page with information on that particular property.

TESCO have developed a shopping app for phones which allows users to scan products at home. This creates a list of products and also gives a total price. The shopper scans the barcode on the back of the product to add it to the list.

ALDI now use QR codes on their flyers to bring people to their website.

This technology could be used to bring a user to an audio file of the page which contains the QR Code.

The technology is easy to use, each smart phone has a camera and scanning software, the user opens the scanning app, points the camera at the QR Code it scans it, the user is then taken to the audio file where they press play to listen to the audio.

Tutors can make use of this technology to create audio files to support a student’s reading and there are many other assistive and learning applications of this technology.

While most people in Ireland do not yet possess a smart phone the numbers are increasing all the time and the price of the handsets are becoming affordable. This means that most people will be carrying mobile internet in their pocket within the next few years.

Where they could be used:

Public Signs



Bills

Shopping

Tesco mobile app

Books made QR: