Transcript Visible and Hidden Barriers for Students and Faculty

Visible and Hidden Barriers for Students and Faculty:
Impact of Lack of Accessible ICTs for Students with
Disabilities – An International Perspective
Dr. Cyndi Rowland
WebAIM; National Center on Disability and Access to Education,
Utah State University, USA
Enabling Access to Education through ICT
27-29 Oct, 2010 New Delhi, India
Prologue
 Assumptions we all share
 Access to ICT is key to participation in society, including
education and employment.
 Education exists to bring knowledge & skills to individuals
and assists them to become productive, participatory
members of society.
 Focus
 For Conference: How can accessible ICT and AT for those
with disabilities be best deployed in schools and universities?
 For my brief time: Picture of complex (visible and hidden)
problems using US examples (solutions to be shared on
Friday)
We want you to jump
over our mistakes
straight to solutions
The problem is complex
 Lack of AT in Schools
 Cost
 Availability
 Competing initiatives
The problem is complex
 Lack of teachers trained
in AT
 To teach student’s to
use proficiently
 To troubleshoot
The problem is complex
 Lack of system that supports AT
 In schools
 In community
 In family
The problem is very complex
(image of a complex set of gears with previous problems identified on each gear)
The complexities once students
HAVE and know how to USE
assistive technology to access
digital educational content
Web content is not developed to
be accessible to assistive
technology
Hidden Barrier:
Including the needs of all
 Those with visual disabilities - Yes
 Those with hearing disabilities – Yes
 Those with motor disabilities – Yes
 Those with cognitive disabilities – Not yet
 Individual needs not well predicted (advantage some
disadvantage others)
 Technologies do not evenly support users
US Data in Education
Primary & Secondary
 All US schools are connected to
the internet for instruction
 Mobile & handheld computing
for school is rapidly increasing
 A national sample of accessible
web content in K-12 US schools
showed only 6% of pages in
the sample would meet national
standards for web accesssibility
University
 By 2014 22 mill US students will
be engaged in online higher
education. Most campus courses
include an online component
 4 of every 5 faculty and staff are
online to complete the work of
their employer
 The past decade has shown slow
changes of accessibility of
institutional web content; only
3% of a national sample would
meet US federal standards
So what is
creating these
barriers?
Complexity of
achieving
accessible web
in US
education
 Administrative
commitment & leadership
 Policy and
implementation plans
 Procurement strategies
 Training and support for
ALL who produce web
content – including
teachers
 IT programs that do not
require accessibility in
curriculum. Next
generation web developer
perpetuates the problem