Technology can leave students with disabilities behind
Christina Hamilton knows what it feels like to feel lost in a lecture.
“I feel more isolated sometimes,” said the sophomore majoring in theater education . “I don’t feel I’m doing as good as I could, and I really want to do my best.”
Hamilton, a full-time Utah State University student, has a hearing impairment which makes it difficult to participate in some classroom activities, such as watching a video.
While Hamilton often has an interpreter with her in class, she said during video or audio presentations it is easy to get left behind.
Hamilton isn’t the only one aware of the challenges technology can present to those with disabilities.
When Martin Blair first read the U.S. Department of Education’s recent plan to improve technology in education, he said it was apparent it could leave a large number of students behind.
While the National Education Technology Plan specifically addresses the needs of lower-income and minority students, the wording does nothing to ensure technology will be made accessible to the 10 to 15 percent of students in American schools who have a disability, Blair said.
“What happens if you have a kid who is paralyzed, or doesn’t have arms to use the mouse?” Blair said. “The technology is there and it’s available to protect those kids.”
Now Blair said steps are being taken to make sure those technologies are utilized.
Blair is the director of the National Center on Disability and Access to Education, an organization dedicated to improving the accessibility of technology in education. The center is located on USU’s campus, but is a national organization funded by the federal government.
The Department of Education received a lot of concerns about the plan’s inability to ensure access to the technology it is trying to promote, Blair said, so a response detailing how the plan could be more inclusive was requested from the center. Cindy Rowland, the technology director for NCDAE, is currently constructing the recommendations.
While Rowland said Susan Patrick, director of the Office of Education Technology, said there was no intention to leave out those with disabilities, Rowland says “words are vital.”
“Wording drives implementation and implementation drives policy,” she said.
The lack of support for those with disabilities was disappointing.
“I went into it with a lot of hope so I felt a sense of disappointment,” she said. “It wasn’t clear students with disabilities were included in the plan at all.”
Rowland said the document they are developing will specifically address each of the seven major action steps in the plan and better explain how each step can include all students. Steps range from making broadband access more available to improving teacher training.
The document will be linked from the Department of Education’s Web site.
“I’ve been working to make technology more accessible for 10 years and sometimes I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” she said. “There is a lot of emotion out there when trying to prevent kids from getting left behind in our society’s transformation to a digital world.”
Imagine being told you have to go through your entire high school and college career without ever having access to a computer or the Internet, Rowland said. Many of us would find the task impossible, but that’s exactly what millions of students asked when they aren’t provided with accessible technology, she said.
The changes needed to make technology accessible are simple if done upfront, Rowland said, and almost never require additional expense.
“It’s not rocket science,” she said, “and most of the changes are really very simple.”
Examples of changes include providing captions that explain graphics on an on-line course for someone who is visually impaired, or showing a teacher how to change the speed a computer screen refreshes itself.
“Make one switch and it’s the difference between a positive educational experience and a frustrating educational experience,” Blair said. “And that’s true as much for a third grader as it is for a graduate student.”
But accessible technology doesn’t just benefit those with disabilities, Rowland said. The touch screens we enjoy at ATM’s and other businesses are just one example of a technology originally developed for those with disabilities.
“The American Disability Act required curb cuts and wider stalls in the bathrooms,” she said, but are now conveniences most of us find “ubiquitous and convenient.”
Currently, Rowland said, the same technology being developed to assist those with visual impairments is the same technology that allows Internet access on palm pilots and cell phones.
Those companies looking at accessibility “are ahead of the game,” she said.
And yet reluctance from organizations ranging from schools to technology corporations still remains, she said.
“I think still think the biggest barrier is awareness,” she said. “The solutions are real easy, but if folks don’t know about it then it doesn’t get done.”
“We’ve been fighting for the civil rights of people with disabilities since the 1970s, and we still have a long way to go,” Blair said. “It would take care of 90 percent of the problems if people would just adhere to accessibility standards.”
And USU is among those schools still struggling to meet those standards, Blair, Rowland and Hamilton said.
Hamilton said many of the new projectors placed in classrooms don’t have to ability to display closed captions.
“It’s frustrating because I don’t get the same things other students do,” she said.
The frustration is especially acute when she comes to test questions on information she didn’t even know had been presented.
Blair said there is great concern among his colleagues about the new Banner system. If not made accessible from the beginning, Blair said, it will be an uphill battle to make the necessary changes and there is the potential for students to be cut off from being able to register for classes, pay for tuition or check their grades.
“Will that system be accessible to students who use computers in different ways?” he said, “We don’t have an answer for that yet.”
But making education accessible isn’t just limited to technology.
“I know two students [with hearing impairments] who wanted to take creative arts,” Hamilton said. “They didn’t know it was all about music. One was completely deaf – he struggled.”
Hamilton said while she is sympathetic to budget constraints the university faces, it is still frustrating to see students with potential struggle in classes when they shouldn’t have to.
Another student, Hamilton related, is taking a calculus class but there aren’t enough interpreters to go around and has to attend without one. That is especially frustrating for the student, she said, because the teacher often faces the board preventing him from reading the instructor’s lips.
Hamilton said she also finds herself at work as a campus peer mentor, without an interpreter sometimes.
“It’s awkward,” she said. “How am I supposed to do my job?”
Blair said when it comes to making education and technology accessible to everyone, it’s a goal “I don’t know will happen in my lifetime.”
Part of the problem is due to the rapid rate technology changes, Rowland said. But educating teachers about the technology available to them and their students can make a big difference.
“USU does excellent job training teachers, but even we, who are among the best in the country, are struggling,” Blair said.
Rowland said she encourages education students to learn as much as they can about the technology they are using, often the tools needed to make it accessible are already included, and push for school administrators to adhere to accessibility standards.
“We have one of the most prestigious colleges of education. We have a fabulous ranking and we are putting out a lot of great teachers,” she said. “The likelihood is great they will have a student with a disability. Wouldn’t they rather advocate technology that works for all kids?”
“That’s a much better solution than figuring out how to make it work.”
Rowland said it won’t be clear for awhile how much the suggestions they are making to the Department of Education will do to help improve the accessibility students like Hamilton have to technology. The next step the Department of Education has is implementing the plan into policy.
“If we’re able to help shape the implementation of a plan that includes all students then we’ll know we got it,” she said.
-bnelson@cc.usu.edu