Making Knowledge Accessible in the Digital Age

DBerkowitz — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:19:00 -0500

Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Invites you to attend a forum:

University Teaching and the Challenge of Universal Design:
Making Knowledge Accessible in the Digital Age

Tuesday, April 18, 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Gutman Conference Center
7 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138

Dr. David Rose
HGSE Lecturer on Education
Founding Director & Chief Scientist for CAST
Center for Applied Special Technology

Dr. Thomas Hehir
HGSE Professor of Practice,
Director, School Leadership Program

Ron Stewart
Founding Director, Technology Access Program,OregonStateUniversity,
National Consultant and Leader on Accessible Technology Environments,
President - Access Technologist Higher Education Network

David Rose will present a cognitive neuroscience framework for understanding individual differences in learning at the post-secondary level, and provide examples and guidelines for teaching and learning environments that meet the challenge of those differences. Dr. Rose will emphasize the advantages of using modern multimedia to enhance traditional lectures, textbooks, and discussions, providing greater flexibility and accessibility for a wide range of learners. The framework of Universal Design for Learning will be emphasized along with future directions in the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) that are likely to affect university teaching.

Using real world scenarios, Ron Stewart, will define the complex of technologies and collaborations necessary to provide digital access to a diversity of learners at the post secondary level. An overview of the complex often conflicting pressures that impact access for students with disabilities will illustrate the need for collaboration of the major stakeholders in higher education in order to provide the digital connections which make learning accessible to all students.

Thomas Hehir will comment on the importance of inclusive education which shifts the emphasis from changing the learner to changing the educational environment in order to reach every student in the digital age. Dr. Hehir will moderate a Q&A session following the lecture.

This forum is open to the public and there is no charge to attend. It will be of interest to faculty, administrators, Learning Technology and IT professionals, librarians and students. It is not necessary to pre-register, but an indication (by email to: ads@gse.harvard.edu) of your plan to attend would be appreciated.

The Office of Student Affairs, Access and Disability Services Office extends our thanks and appreciation to LD ACCESS Foundation for its generous support of the forum and for sponsoring the Reception following the forum. We would also like to thank the Association on Higher Education and Disability and the HGSE student leaders in the BRIDGE organization for their support.

For more information or accommodations for a disability, please contact:
Eileen Berger, Office of Student Affairs, Access and Disability Services ads@gse.harvard.edu or call 617 495 9608 (voice), 617 496 4351 (TTY)

Open Source Assistive Technology

StuartYeates — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 02:58:55 -0600

The Open source Assistive Technology Software (OATS) website is a searchable index of assistive technology enabled open source software. They're just a new site, but they list all sorts of things from addins with Microsoft Windows full open source web browsers.

They have a developer section, but I can't help but feel that they're missing something. Most of the recent assistive technology gains have been bought about by everyday projects and programmers using toolkits enabled for i18n and assistive technology, but there is scarce a mention of the importance of these, and not a single mention anywhere that I can find of the various testing suites which enable even the most dim-witted of us web developers and programmers to check we're doing things right.

But, as they say, they're still in beta.

EDUCAUSE | Universal Access

Making Knowledge Accessible in the Digital Age

Open Source Assistive Technology