Access for Persons with Disabilities

The challenge of web accessibility raises issues of both policy and technology. Join experts in each of these two areas in this free April 4 EDUCAUSE Live! web seminar, The Why and How of Web Accessibility, as presenters Harry Hochheiser, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Sciences, Towson University, and Tracy Mitrano, Director of IT Policy and Computer Policy and Law Program, Cornell University, discuss this important topic.

Policy guru Tracy Mitrano says: "Developing a web accessibility policy has been one of the greatest but most rewarding challenges I have faced in creating an IT policy framework at Cornell. With the EDUCAUSE Live! audience, I would like to share some of the struggles and stories about that process and what accessibility, education, and the web have come to mean to me as a result."

"Phase l of the Association of American Publishers' Alternate Format Solutions Initiative (AFSI) is being completed . The findings and options developed during the initial research phase are to be presented to the AAP's Higher Education publishers for study. The shape of AFSI's Phase II will largely be defined by the results of Phase 1, and the nature of and timetable for Phase ll's next steps are expected to emerge shortly. This session will provide an opportunity for attendees to get updated on the efforts so far and to contribute their insights, pose questions, engage in discussion, and thereby contribute to the AAP's ongoing collaborative effort to develop a practical set of effective solutions to the real challenges of getting textbooks into alternate formats on a timely basis for post-secondary students with disabilities."

At CSUN 2007 this past week, Rick Bowes provided a very broad and informative report of where the publishers stand in terms of their interest and comfort with postsecondary DSS alt-text/E-text creation and provision. In general it appears that the two sides are getting more comfortable with each other and the gap is starting to narrow with some concessions on both ends. The publishers look-up service has made locating the right people and communicating with them to get digital files of textbooks much easier - but is not being used as much as they woould like. Though not perfect – this service was and continues to be a concrete example of what the publishers and educators can do when they find common ground. (Not so subtle hint --- this service will only continue and improve if we on the postsecondary disability services side use it and provide appropriate and honest feedback.)

A message from ATHEN President Ron Stewart:

It is my pleasure to announce that the second issue of the ATHEN E-Journal is now live and available for your reading enjoyment. The focus of this issue is Higher Education and Web Accessibility: Providing Training and Support for the Future.

I would like to thank Cyndi Rowland for all her hard work as this issues guest editor, and to Sean Keegan the ATHEN webmaster for all the effort he extended in getting it web-ready. I would also like to extend my personal thanks to each of the authors represented. I am sure you will find the articles as informative and as insightful as I have.

Ron Stewart, President
Access Technologists Higher Education Network

And also as promised - a report on the AHEAD E-Text Institute at Babson College. This too can be found on the ATHEN blog and is titled:

Report: AHEAD E-Text Institute #3

As promised - I have posted a report on the workshop

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

This can be found at the ATHEN Blog and is titled:
Report: Making Knowledge Accessible in the Digital Age

 

Next week I will be co-presenting [with Ron Stewart] the third official* Association on Higher Education And Disability E-Text Institute. This will be taking place at Babson College and is the first of what is anticipated to be regular trainings around the country and outside of conferences. Institute #1 was at the 2005 AHEAD annual conference in Milwaukee and #2 took place at the 8th annual Accessing Higher Ground conference in Boulder.

I had the pleasure of spending a good Friday afternoon loading software for the institute in one of the Babson College training labs alongside my friend Erin Evans, who runs their disability services and is Program Chairperson of the AHEAD 2006 conference. For someone who is adamantly not a geek - she held her own in the monotony that is loading much software on many computers:

• Dolphin Ease Publisher
• Dolphin EaseProducer (the latest beta)
• Dolphin EaseReader
• Abbyy .pdf transformer
• Abby FineReader (v. 8)
• Adobe Acrobat Standard
• A sample of an in-house DAISY textbook from my staff
• AT&T Natural Voices (half Mike and half Crystal)

All told, for 16 computers it took about three hours. Not a record by any means, but adequate for the task. The institute filled to the 25 participant capacity fast and there is a waiting list in case anyone cannot make it.

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

Greetings from the membership of ATHEN.

ATHEN was formed to meet a critical need for a professional identity and build a collective understanding of what it means to work in the field of Access Technology in Higher Education. While other organizations exist that work on parallel tracks in disability services, the founding membership felt that a targeted organization was needed to fulfill the collective needs of the membership. A secondary driving force is the creation of professional development activities for Access Technologists that mirror similar career tracks in other areas of IT management and service delivery.

For more information about the organization please visit our website at: www.athenpro.org and our blog at http://athenpro.blogspot.com/.

ATHEN was formed in the spring of 2002 at the CSUN conference in Los Angeles, in a collective meeting of 50 of the leaders in the rapidly growing field serving the technology access needs of individuals with disabilities in a variety of adult educational venues. This meeting was the result of several years of discussion of the need for a professional organization, the realization that access technology services and issues are outgrowing their disability support services roots, and the growing need for AT and IT to develop supportive relationships.

The primary goals of ATHEN are:

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.

One definition of AT is additional hardware or software added to a PC so that students with disabilities can access the computer.

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Some examples are:

 

Screen Reader

This allows blind computer user access to the information on the screen. These products are quite sophisticated in there ability to communicate various and different aspects of screen information.

 

Examples are:

Jaws for Windows - http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/JAWS_HQ.asp

WindowEyes - http://www.gwmicro.com/products/

Mac/Apple VoiceOver - http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/voiceover/

note: reports to various lists from end users indicate that this is promising technology, but needs further development

 

Braille Displays

Braille displays take information from the screen reader and translate it into Braille. Some Braille users might prefer this over synthetic speech and a user with a combination of blindness and hearing issues might require it.

 

Examples are:

Alva - http://www.aagi.com/catalogue/ProductType.asp?Braille

FreedomScientific - http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/displays.asp

 

Screen Enlarger

Computer users who have low-vision issues need a screen enlarger to enlarge the entire screen. The full screen exceeds the boundaries of the monitor and the monitor, in effect, becomes an enlarged portion of the "screen." Screen enlargers also allow for adjusting screen colors, contrast, focus tracking, and masking.

 

Examples are:

ZoomText - http://www.aisquared.com/Products/ZoomText8_mag/Z8Mag.htm

Magic - http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_magic.asp

Mac/Apple - http://www.apple.com/lae/education/disability/easyaccess.html#closeview

 

Speech Recognition

Computing by voice dictation is more familiar to mainstream computer users because of the appeal of the basic idea. The notion of speaking a document rather than typing it is alluring. And for some, it is successful keyboard alternative, but for people with severe mobility limitations, it may be the only way that they can use the computer.

 

Examples are:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking - http://www.scansoft.com/naturallyspeaking/

IBM Via Voice - (same manufacturer and NaturallySpeaking) http://www.scansoft.com/viavoice/

Mac/Apple - http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/speech/ 

 

Other Technologies

 There is a multitude of alternative keyboards, mice, foot pedals, monitors, speakers, adjustable tables etc. available to accommodate different needs or combinations of disabilities.

 

What about computer users who are deaf or hard of hearing (HOH)? 

Computers will sometimes emit a beep to alert the user to some event. In some cases the sound played attempts to indicate the type of event, but the objective always is to get the attention of the user. Most operating systems have a setting to "flash" the screen when an alert beep is sounded. The flash is seen by the user who is deaf or HOH. The web delivers more detailed sound (dialogue etc.), but it is the obligation of the content provider to furnish an alternative (usually some form of captioning) that will render in a conventional browser.

 

Technological Support for Cognitive Disabilities

 

Much of the AT designed for physical disabilities has evolved into the area of cognitive support. Screen readers have been recast to help people with reading related learning disabilities. Speech recognition combined with other software techniques helps students with cognitive issues around written expression.

 

Reading Support 

These programs allow for scanning of printed text and that text is then read to the user via a synthetic voice. Generally these application highlight the spoken word, have integrated dictionaries, and allow for imbedded written or spoken notes.

 

Some examples are:

Kurzweil 3000 - http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/displays.asp

                         Mac version http://www.kurzweiledu.com/products_k3000mac.asp

WYNN - http://www.freedomscientific.com/LSG/products/wynn.asp

 

Writing Support 

Student with expressive writing issues are helped by programs that utilize speech recognition, word prediction, and read back of completed sentences. (Note: the writing support technologies mentioned above, have some support for writing built in.)

 

Examples are:

texthelp - (lists both Win and Mac) http://www.texthelp.com/products.asp?q1=products

Don Johnston SOLO - (for both Mac and Win) http://www.donjohnston.com/catalog/catalog.htm

 

This list and the accompanying description are meant a brief overview. This list is by no means exhaustive. Please feel free to post comments or questions.