Designing a Universal Design-Informed Augmented Reality Learning Tool for Inclusive IT Education

Information technologies are increasingly embedded in interdisciplinary education, yet learners without technical backgrounds may avoid hardware-oriented tasks because they fear damaging components, making mistakes, or exposing limited competence. This paper presents ViewAR, a mobile augmented reality learning tool that applies Universal Design for AR heuristics to introduce hardware components for IT students, through low-risk, multimodal, and tangible interaction. ViewAR combines printed image-marker augmentation, a cube-based tangible augmentation, handheld and head-mounted interaction. A mixed-method study with 17 diverse participants evaluated interaction preferences, perceived educational value, AR-induced issues, and perceived anxiety reduction. All participants completed the supported tasks. Participants positively rated onboarding as highly intuitive and reported substantial perceived reduction in initial technology-related anxiety. Tangible interaction was preferred by most participants, followed by printed image markers. The paper contributes a UD-AR design case for low-risk hardware inspection, a practical account of UD implementation, an argument that technology anxiety is a psychological accessibility barrier, and exploratory implications for marker-based and tangible AR in inclusive IT education.