Needs assessment of requirements in training equipment design for children with math learning disabilities

Mathematical disability is one of learning disorders which affects some of students. These children, despite having a normal IQ, are weak in skills such as reading and writing, or math. This weakness sometimes leads to the failure of these students. As according to official annual statistics in our country, 85 billion Tomans are spent for failure of these students and, of course, the psychological damage is far more than this. The purpose of this study is to identify the needs of the children with math learning disability during the period of occupational Therapy; also, to extract the principals which can be used at designing of an educational assistance product in order to meet these needs. As a sample, 58 students have been chosen (48 students with Mathematical weakness and 10 students with math learning disability). 3 therapists have been observed and interviewed and 48 parents of these children have been answered to the proposed questionnaire. Also 20 children’s taste in choosing the educational assistance products has been examined. The reliability of the survey was approved by intra-rater reliability (correlation coefficient=0.784) and Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient (0.812). For analyzing the data, we used Chi-squared test by SPSS22. The results showed that while using the educational assistance products has been emphasized by the therapists, %79.17 of the parents never used these products and %16.67 used them rarely, and instead of this, they have imposed a binary pressure on the child (p < 0.05). In this study, 10 features of training equipment were extracted in order to optimize mathematical learning (for LD children) and applied strategies for using them in design of such a product. We found that there must be visual attraction in form and shape, so the colors should be warm and bright. The product should create a desire for play so rounded and polished forms should be used. How the product works should be understood so transparent materials should be used as much as possible. The therapist needs to teach mathematical expressions; therefore, it is necessary to train addition and subtraction through the product. The tool should not be decentralized so it should have a simple structure. It should have ease of use for teachers and therapists so it should be easy to install. The product must create the desire to reuse so it should be fun. Also, it should enhance visual and perceptual skills so it must have a color distinction in the product body. This product should enhance eye and eye skills too, so it is imperative that the process of the game requires the use of hands and fingers and also the ability to handle the child. This tool should not hurt the student’s body so anthropometrical data of 6-8 years old children is required.