Joyce Branaman
Director of Academic Support for Students with Disabilities,
University of Southern
Maine
Portland, ME
Because Mariel prefers high-contrast colors, the text in the professor's notes, her textbook and all other text-based information is presented in an 18-point yellow font on a dark blue background. Mariel has also set her courseware preferences to include an expanded glossary (word definitions for any selected text), and she has text-to-speech enabled to aid her pronunciation of course-specific vocabulary. Her roommate, An Ling, uses the courseware's text-to-speech support to read aloud unfamiliar sentences, a process that supports An Ling's English language acquisition.
The scenario above is hypothetical, but the technology it is based on is real. During the past two years the number of commercial and non-commercial "courseware" products &emdash; web-based course delivery systems combining course schedule, resources, assessments, communication, and, more recently, textbooks and core curriculum &emdash; has exploded. (For an up-to-date overview of the commercial offerings, go to www.filename.com/wbt; for a comparative analysis, see www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline.)
These systems provide easy-to-use tools and resources that allow an instructor to put a course online. In most circumstances the construction of the web pages is completed "behind the scenes" and no knowledge of HTML is required. This functionality means that across a few evenings or in the space of a weekend an instructor can design, compile and publish a web-based course with all the bells and whistles. For a number of students, including those with disabilities and limited English proficiency, the availability of core materials and course resources in a malleable and customizable format may not only be preferential, it may mean the difference between success and failure.
In addition to courseware products that combine both course architecture (syllabus, instructor notes, access to TA's, etc.) with content, a number of publishers are producing individual versions of textbooks online. Students can download digital textbooks from WiseUp and browse the material from within the WizeUp text viewer. This application lets students highlight important information, attach notes, link to web addresses, and magnify the onscreen display. Allyn & Bacon Interactive Editions are CD-ROMs that accompany the traditional print textbooks. These discs contain not only the entire print edition, but web links, tests & quizzes, and audio and video clips. For research publications and primary source material, the National Academy Press offers over 1500 books online in both HTML (Web) and browsable formats.
These publishers and others see the value in the online distribution of core learning materials, even though there is no agreement as to how these materials should be marketed. Some are item-priced (WizeUp); others paired with print versions (Allyn & Bacon), while others are free (National Academy Press). From a distribution perspective, the digital environment allows publishers to create one version and sell, distribute and even update it many times, and this should result in a precipitous drop in development and packaging costs compared to print distribution.
At most colleges and universities, the web has become an essential (and often required) element for the presentation of course-related content. With the web increasingly integral to course participation and delivery, most postsecondary institutions have taken steps to insure that their online presence is consistent, easy to navigate and feature-rich. What many institutions have not done is insure that their sites are accessible to students with disabilities or other learning needs.
The means by which postsecondary institutions provide education-related information falls under federal regulations: the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 - and more recently &emdash; Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. These statutes are designed to guarantee access to higher education opportunities for all students, regardless of their ability to see, hear, speak, manipulate ,or organize information. As the web presence of colleges and universities expands, it is important that all digital information is presented in formats that meet the needs of these students. Guidelines designed to meet federal accessibility requirements have been developed, and tools that provide institutions with the means of checking existing web pages exist. (For an overview of the existing legal issues consult http://www.aasa.dshs.wa.gov/access/waddell.htm, and for information on checking web page accessibilty, go to the Bobby website).
Using Web-based technology to deliver digital versions of core curriculum holds the promise to combine the flexibility of the new medium with the curriculum design expertise of the old. For most students, the availability of course material online expands their options for course participation. For many students with disabilities, easy access to digital content can provide them with "automatic" accommodations - modifications to the format or delivery of course-related information - that otherwise would have to be provided on a student-by-student basis. What the commercial publishers have not realized is the relative ease with which online versions can be customized for students with a range of learning needs by harnessing the power of the digital medium.
Digital information is not fixed, and can be presented in text, graphic, audio or video formats, or any combination of these media types. This transformational quality has enormous implications for students for whom one media type presents a barrier (e.g., text for visually impaired students). If the text is digital, it can easily be magnified, or even read aloud.
For example, synthetic speech is readily available on most Macintosh and Windows computers, or it can be added for no cost. On the Macintosh, the freeware control panel HearIt! takes advantage of the system level text-to-speech capabilities (Plaintalk 1.5) to speak any selected text. On Windows machines, the freeware program Speech10 provides similar system-wide functionality by speaking aloud any text copied from the clipboard. In order to be spoken aloud by either of these utilities text needs to be selectable (i.e.; able to be highlighted): if online text is delivered in a "locked" proprietary format synthetic speech support cannot be easily used.
From a usability perspective, this means that digital courseware and textbooks need to offer selectable text in order to take advantage of this "assistive" technology. From a design perspective, if synthetic speech support is so easily effected and freely distributed, why isn't it simply built in to the courseware systems and digital textbooks?
The process of building in (rather than adding on) accessibility and support for diverse learning needs is known as "Universal Design". In learning environments, Universal Design means making the goals of learning achievable by students regardless of their physical, sensory, organizational or linguistic abilities (for a more detailed overview, reference www.cec.sped.org/osep/udesign.htm or the Fall 1999 "Research Connections" at http://ericec.org/osep-sp.htm#recon). This approach to the presentation of instructional strategies and materials assumes that students with varying needs will be involved in learning, and that the materials themselves need to be able to adapt to this diversity. With digital media, this adaptation is possible.
Accommodations requested by students with disabilities often emphasize the inaccessible format and method of delivery of course materials. Efforts to transform these materials into more accessible formats usually account for a major portion of the budgets and staff allocations of disability support services offices.
Among postsecondary students with disabilities who have requested program modifications, the following accommodations have been among the most prevalent (http://www.acenet.edu/About/programs/Access&Equity/HEATH/) :
|
Alternative Exam Formats or Times |
81% requested |
|
Notetakers, Scribes, or Readers |
80% requested |
|
Learning Center Lab |
70% requested |
|
Adapted Equipment |
69% requested |
|
Taped Texts |
65% requested |
Three of the five accommodations listed above directly address inaccessible instructional materials: alternative exam formats, notetakers/scribes/readers, and taped texts. Adapted equipment can also be assumed to be used to gain access to transcribed, recorded, or digitized course materials.
As colleges and universities increase their reliance on online offerings, Universal Design features should be built in. From a practical perspective, the effort required to retrofit thousands of web pages to upgrade their accessibility is not only daunting but startlingly inefficient, especially when the techniques and tools to insure compliance are so readily available. Achieving a strong Universal Design presence will require collaboration, however, and DSS personnel, administration, department heads, adaptive technology specialists, and web designers will have to work together. When previewing courseware and digital core materials, postsecondary sites should hold commercial publishers to high Universal Design standards, a process that is far easier prior to adoption than as an after-effect of possible litigation.
As the flexibility of online materials expands and the speed of its delivery increases, the potential for providing students with automatic accommodations becomes more and more of a reality. With increased awareness and careful planning everyone - the colleges and universities, the publishers, and most significantly, the students - will gain.