Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

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Electronically - Mediated Education: Challenges of Accessibility

 Professors Sarah Rule, Cynthia Rowland, Jared Smith,
Martin Blair, Heather Mariger, & Charles Salzberg
Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA

Sarah.rule@usu.edu

Inclusion is an increasingly-accepted value in societies world wide. Where this value is embraced, many sectors of society are affected including commerce and consumer services. Inclusion may not be foremost in the minds of most members of the public. However, where it is embraced, its influence is often visible; for example, curb cuts and automatically opening doors that permit access for people with mobility limitations are readily apparent. Such examples of universal design probably reinforce the value itself; that is, inclusion becomes accepted as a matter of course.

Multiple factors motivate societies to adopt inclusive practices. Two prominent ones in many western societies are legislation and economic benefit.   In these societies, legislation—with the threat of sanctions for noncompliance— has been associated with changes in both public and private sectors. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States and the Disability Discrimination Act in the United Kingdom prohibit many barriers to full participation by people with disabilities in areas such as employment, commerce, transportation, and public services.   The economic benefit to those who develop, produce and sell accessible products and services may be another motivating factor. The aging of the population in many western societies brings an associated increase in the incidence of disabilities; this offers a competitive edge to those who market accessible products and services. Large corporations such as IBM (http://www.accessify.com/2005/04/ibms-easy-web-browsing.asp) and Microsoft have taken advantage of this market opportunity.

As changes evolve in the design and delivery of goods and services, the ways that inclusion is addressed must also change. If goods and services are to be accessible, designers, developers, vendors, and consumers must be informed about how to design, recognize, and use them. It is always preferable to incorporate principles of universal design before goods and services are brought to market than to wait for someone with a disability to point out after the fact that a service, product, or place is not accessible and to seek legal remedies. However, as we attempt to illustrate in this paper, implementing design changes in the spirit of inclusion requires concerted effort in both the public and private sectors.

Technology and inclusion . Generally, inclusion has been widely embraced in the realm of education. Educating students with disabilities in classrooms with their typically developing peers is an increasingly accepted practice. Unfortunately, even as inclusive classrooms become the norm in many education systems, other less visible-- but no less significant-- challenges are being overlooked as educational systems evolve. Among these are the barriers associated with the pervasive adoption of technologies to deliver electronically-mediated education.

Electronically mediated education, to the extent that it is accessible, promises to enhance inclusion for students with disabilities.   Electronically mediated education can overcome barriers of geography and, in the case of asynchronous distance education, time. Using personal computers, students may take courses at home instead of traveling to campuses; this avoids barriers to physical access. Also, electronically-mediated education may offer alternatives to printed course materials, increasing their accessibility. For example, students with vision loss may access textual materials in alternative formats such as large print or they may use screen readers.

There is a potential downside to technology in education, however.    In the absence of careful planning of course management, curriculum development, and delivery systems, electronically mediated education may also create barriers of access for people with disabilities. As might be expected, different barriers are associated with different functions. These are illustrated below.

Administrative functions . As schools rely increasingly on electronic means to manage functions such as course registration, payment of fees, and reporting of grades, unintended barriers of access may be created for students with disabilities. Often— perhaps most often-- management systems are not designed for students with sensory impairments (such as those who rely on screen readers to navigate text) or with motor impairments (such as those who use adaptive devices).   As a result, these students are not able to independently enroll in classes. Since students at the postsecondary level are expected to independently manage their own education functions, these barriers are not only exclusionary but stigmatic. Action both within and outside of the educational system is needed to address these barriers. School and university administrators who purchase systems need to be educated about accessibility in order to avoid making decisions that exclude students with disabilities (as well as faculty and staff). Likewise, software developers and vendors need to understand and honor the principles of access as they develop systems for use in education. They are likely to do so only if they market to knowledgeable administrators who demand accessibility in the systems they purchase.

Course management .   The increasing prominence of World Wide Web in the delivery of education presents unique challenges for students with disabilities. For example, if course websites are not accessible, students with disabilities may not even be aware of programmatic offerings.

Faculty members rely increasingly on the World Wide Web for course enhancement, if not total delivery. When faculty members post syllabi, readings, and other course materials, they are often unaware of the need to—much less how to-- format the materials to permit access by students with disabilities. If they incorporate functions such as chat rooms to promote student and faculty interaction, students with disabilities may be left out unless the courseware has accessibility features and faculty members know how to use those features.

These issues can be addressed at various levels—including teaching faculty how to use accessibility features, making administrators aware of how to verify accessibility features when purchasing course management software and, perhaps as a last resort, teaching faculty and students about accommodations when accessibility features are not available. While accommodations may suffice to permit inclusion, they are not optimal to promote independence for students with disabilities. The preferable solution is to teach faculty to incorporate accessibility into their course designs.

Currently, many universities are undertaking major programs to teach faculty to participate in electronically mediated education.   Often, however, accessibility is overlooked in these programs. For example, at North Carolina State University in the United States, administrators recognized that faculty needed support to learn how to create online courses. Thus, they developed an extensive faculty development curriculum. For the 2004-05 academic year, the Department of English adapted approximately half of its professional writing course offerings in online delivery (Covington, D., Petherbridge, D., & Warren, S.E. [2005]. Best practices: A triangulated support approach in transitioning faculty to online teaching. http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/spring81/covington81.htm). Information about this successful faculty professional development effort is posted on the website. Unfortunately, a search of this site suggests that although it is an exemplary support to help faculty engage in online course delivery, it does not address electronic accessibility for students with disabilities. Moreover, electronic access is not mentioned in the web description of University policies that address students with disabilities.

At a summit of leaders in business, education, and government convened in Washington, D.C. in May 2005 by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education, participants addressed three issues pertinent to electronically-mediated education: (a) direct accessibility of hardware and software, (b) accessibility of content presentation and use, and (c) education of people who use technology (Rowland, C., Burgsthaler, S., Smith, J., & Coombs, N. [2005]. Issues in accessing distance education technologies for individuals with disabilities. http://www.ncdae.org/papers/technology.htm). Apparent from the dialog, addressing these issues will require concerted effort in the public and private sectors. Government plays a prominent role in assuring that legislation and policies addresses electronic as well as physical accessibility. The private sector plays a prominent role in the development of hardware and software that incorporates features of accessibility. Consumers need to be made aware of accessible products so that they can make informed decisions about purchases. The need for continued education and dialog among leaders in business, industry, education, and government was emphasized.

Whether the market for accessible products is strong enough to motivate their production is a major concern. If it is not, legislative mandates will either stimulate production of technology-mediated curriculum and administrative systems or they will simply stifle developers. For example, a favorable response was received from 489 respondents to a survey about a policy proposed by the European Commission requiring that, if information and communication technology goods and services are purchased through public procurement contracts, they must be accessible (http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=publicprocurementm1112360336&area=news). However, how such a policy would be embraced by most developers, how it would be enforced, and whether the survey respondents were representative of the larger public is not clear.

Encouraging accessibility.  Various organizations—both public and private—are working to promote electronic access. Internationally, the World Wide Web (W3C) Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative has developed detailed web content accessibility guidelines as well as guidelines for web browsers, media players and other technologies. These are described at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components#guidelines. These guidelines can help assure that both policy and practice support access.

Help is available to educational institutions in making electronically mediated education accessible. For example, technical assistance is available from projects and organizations such as WebAIM at Utah State University. Staff members conduct online training to help educational institutions and developers create accessible websites. This is described at www.webAim.org .   Electronic access is discussed online in a variety of forums. For example, the Access Matters website invites dialog on this issue (http://www.accessify.com/2005/03/access-matters-seeking-best-practices.asp). Also, developers themselves may discuss features of accessibility in their products. For example, Bob Regan addresses Macromedia Flash at http://www.markme.com/accessibility/archives/007344.cfm . Finally, the National Center on Disability and Access to Education reports regularly on such topics through it RSS feed at www.ncdae.org.

Stimulating the development and distribution of accessible products requires collaborative efforts. Public and private associations may be formed to address specific business and commerce sectors. In the UK, the Department of Trade and Industry funded a Centre for Inclusive Technology and Design as a pilot project to assist businesses in the development of accessible products and services. The project is intended to offer training to managers (http://www.eetuk.com/tech/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60403788). In the U.S., organizations such as Assistive Technology Industry Association address product design and showcase vendors of technologies that foster independence and inclusion for people with disabilities. In these ways, inclusion as a value is translated into supports that permit people with disabilities to function as equal members of society.

Clearly, inclusion will never be a fait accompli because dynamic changes occur in the ways that societies conduct commerce, services, and government. As these evolve, so must the measures to provide access to people with disabilities. Public education about access and universal design will certainly play a major role in promoting societal development that includes all citizens.

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