Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities

chapter ONE

Creating a Level Learning Space

The emergence of information technology has changed the education process for everyone, and it has transformed most people’s personal lives as well. This truth is even more important for people with what, for the purposes of this book, I will call print and audio disabilities. Those with print disabilities need special help to surmount the obstacle posed by books and other printed materials. Lectures and other audio content present a similar barrier for those with hearing impairments.

Digitized information has been a major breakthrough for these people. Because it is display independent, it can be rendered in different modes for various purposes. In the past, traditional textbooks froze information in a single format: it was stored as print and a human intermediary or translator was needed to output it into any other form. Digitized information, however, is stored as numbers and this allows it to be printed out, displayed on a computer monitor, or even projected onto a screen so that it can be seen from the rear of a lecture hall. Specialized assistive software can render the same information in even more formats, thus providing students who have disabilities with timely and effective access to the information and creating the potential for a more level learning space for all.

This chapter has three main topics: assistive technologies, universal design, and laws and guidelines relevant to online instruction. People with disabilities often use special software—generally called assistive technology or adaptive technology—in conjunction with computers. These technologies assist the user and at the same time adapt the computer’s input and output systems to accommodate a wider spectrum of people’s needs. The universal design movement takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on making accommodations for people with special needs, it urges designers to create devices and content to include the broadest segment of the population possible. Finally, the chapter gives an overview of the laws and official guidelines in effect mandating that products and content be created in ways that will not discriminate against people with special learning needs or unique working styles or both.

HOW PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES USE COMPUTERS

As a provider of online course content, you may not really need to know how people access your content. It may not matter, for example, whether an individual is using a smart phone, a laptop computer, or a desktop computer in a college computer lab. But if you found out that a significant proportion of your students were accessing your lessons from a phone, you might design some content differently based on that knowledge.

Similarly, although it’s not absolutely essential that you know about the assistive computer software used by students with various disabilities, that awareness can help you design your online content in ways that won’t create needless barriers to their learning. And the good news is that you can employ universal design features while still using the standard content authoring tools you already use. Let’s look at the assistive technologies most commonly used by students in accessing online course content. These technologies are available for a variety of computer platforms: Mac, Windows, and Unix-based operating systems. You’ll also meet some typical users to get an idea of how some of your students are experiencing your course material.

Voice Recognition Technology

Voice recognition software allows the user to control the computer by speaking commands aloud and to dictate to input text into documents. Users of this type of technology are those who cannot—or cannot easily—use a standard keyboard because of motor function, visual, or certain types of learning disabilities. People with dyslexia, for example, can use a keyboard, but because they frequently jumble the sequence of letters both in reading and writing, dictating permits them to bypass this hurdle.

Penny, an auto mechanic, was in her twenties when an accident left her a quadriplegic. Thanks in part to voice recognition software, she now holds a staff position in a Pennsylvania community college, where, among other tasks, she trains faculty on how to better serve students with disabilities.

On-Screen Keyboards

People with motor impairments that prevent them from using a standard keyboard frequently use an onscreen equivalent. The computer cursor moves across an image of a keyboard at the bottom of the monitor. When it reaches the desired letter or symbol, the user triggers a single switch to input that letter into the computer. For people with little or no use of their hands and arms, the computer can track the user’s eye movement so no muscle movement is required to trigger the switch. To speed this process, the onscreen keyboard can be combined with software that predicts the desired word based on the first few letters.

As a daring teenager, Grant dove off a cliff into too-shallow water. His neck was broken, but Grant did not let that end his active life. He used an on-screen keyboard to attend college in California, earn his bachelor’s degree, and move on to productive employment.

Screen Magnification Software

Although most software applications permit the user to enlarge the screen interface and content on the monitor, the amount of enlargement allowed is limited, and often the image is degraded. Commercial screen magnification software, however, will maintain the integrity of the image while permitting enlargement from two to sixteen times normal. Obviously, this benefits people with visual impairments. Advanced screen magnification software also has the ability to use a synthetic voice to speak text, although this capability is not robust enough to meet the needs of someone who has very little or no sight.

Screen magnification software combined with speech output can also benefit people with visual and cognitive processing disabilities. Although they don’t need the larger image, a by-product of enlargement is that less information appears on the screen at one time. For some students with learning and cognitive disabilities, a computer display packed with information can be overwhelming, so simplifying it increases their ability to read and learn the content. The software will also highlight the word being spoken by the synthesized voice. This provides dual sensory input for the user, reinforcing learning and helping the user to focus on the content.

At a university in Wisconsin, Dick was a student whose poor sight required him to wear strong glasses to read. But as his sight further degraded, the glasses no longer worked well enough. With the aid of screen magnification software Dick was able to do his assignments through the computer, which enabled him to finish his college degree.

Dick had a work study job training students with disabilities on assistive technology. Lora, one of his students, had dyslexia and struggled to keep up with all the reading required for her courses. Screen magnification helped her to better decode the text and understand the lessons. Having the text that was being spoken highlighted made it easier for her to concentrate.

Screen Readers

Screen reading software uses synthetic speech to tell the user (usually someone who is blind) what is on the monitor and to confirm that the key is being pressed when writing. This enables the student to both write and proofread class assignments. Universities are now providing books in electronic format, which is accessible to this software, thus enabling the student to work independently whenever it is convenient.

Screen reader software essentially looks at the document displayed on the computer monitor, hunting for anything that is coded as text. In simple terms, when it locates text, it uses a complex logarithm to come up with the sounds for each letter. Next it looks for any further language rules that modify what sound it should make. For example, it has rules telling how to pronounce the letters ough in different ways for the words bough, cough, dough, rough, and others.

John was a successful science professor at a major university when, due to a rare condition, he lost vision in both eyes in a very short time. Instead of surrendering his dreams and hopes, he learned about the assistive technologies that could enable him to continue functioning as a professional. The computer was already a basic tool he used in his work, and he quickly became a proficient screen reader user. Not only did he continue university teaching, but John also became the principal investigator on several grants from the National Science