EDUCAUSE | Access for Persons with Disabilities

Tune in April 4: Free Web Seminar on the Why and How of Web Accessibility

pkurkowski — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:45:08 -0500

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."

Technology expert Harry Hochheiser summarizes: "Although the need for accessible web sites is widely accepted, many developers are still uncertain about the costs and limitations associated with designs that account for users with varying skills, capabilities, and computing tools. Fortunately, these problems are solvable: with proper planning and design, web sites can be interactive, engaging, highly functional, and accessible. The combination of accessibility guidelines and automated evaluation tools can help any developer build sites that are more accessible and usable for all users."

Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event or browse related EDUCAUSE resources on Web Accessibility, Web Administration, Design and Development, Access for Persons with Disabilities, Adaptive and Assistive Technology, Usability Development, and Policy and Law: Campus.

AAP Update on Accessible Textbooks at CSUN 2007

DBerkowitz — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:55:51 -0500

"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.)

Publishers are looking to implement 'next steps' by mid-year 2007 and are looking to DSS (through Rick) to provide additional information about what we do with the files (both those we produce in-house and those we obtain via the lookup service) and how we workflow both. Rick will be contacting DSS and Higher Education entities in the coming weeks with questions and scenarios for response. All he desires is honest feedback and your questions and suggestions. ATHEN firmly supports the work he is doing and thanks him (and the publishers) whole-heartedly!

The Bel Air room in the LAX Marriott was quite full for this report with attendees and representatives from a good cross section of postsecondary service providers, industry representatives, non-profit entities and other interested parties. Shortly after his presentation, the room was abuzz with the sort of questions and feedback Rick is seeking.

In-hand with this work, AHEAD will (hopefully) soon be rolling out the next version of the E-Text Survey [PDF link]. The British contingent (E.A. Draffan and the chaps from the Royal National Institute for the Blind) brought to our attention the work being done across the pond. Gaeir Dietrich summarized a number of issues quite nicely and reminded everyone how fast the technology is moving – for example how well the newest version of Adobe Reader (v. 8) audibly renders tagged PDF. If anyone reading this blog took took notes at the meeting I'd appreciate you sending them to me for posting. Thanks.

One point that Rick got across is that of money. For good or bad – the publishing houses are businesses and they need assurance (and evidence) that at best they are going to see some profit from their efforts and at worst that they will not be throwing money down a hole. The publishers are more and more open to the burgeoning best practices in the field and want to provide what our students need. However, all of this comes with a cost – be it in human resource terms of having publisher based staff to gather materials and create the formatted files – to hardware and software and document storage – to the development of practices on their end from development, to assembly to security to delivery to tracking and on and on. Rick pointed out that if even one of the publishers is able to configure a profit from their efforts then the others will jump on the band wagon “within hours”.

Higher Education and Web Accessibility: Providing Training and Support for the Future.

DBerkowitz — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:22:45 -0600

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

Report: AHEAD E-text Institute #3

DBerkowitz — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 08:00:09 -0500

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

Report on "Making Knowledge Accessible in the Digital Age"

DBerkowitz — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:40:24 -0500

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

AHEAD E-Text Institute [#3]

DBerkowitz — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 21:45:01 -0500

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.

Day One will be Ron discussing the management and administration of e-text production programs. This will include overviews of copyright and how it impacts the services we provide our students, as well as NIMAS and its potential impact on the postsecondary environment.

Day Two moves to the lab and Ron starts the day with scanning production techniques and how to properly de-spine a textbook. I take over in the afternoon and get into the nitty-gritty of DAISY production using both EasePublisher and EaseProducer. Knowing most of the folk in attendance will help me gear my information to their needs. For example, most of them will be outsourcing their book scanning and will likely start with a .pdf. Turning this into a finished DAISY Talking Book is a multi-step process that is not too difficult to learn.

If you are interested in learning more, check out the links within this post. I will be posting to the ATHEN blog with pictures shortly after the institute.

* I say "official" because in June I will be flying solo with a similar work the AHEAD New England group. This one will be at Landmark College up in Vermont.

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)

Access Technologists Higher Education Network [ATHEN]

DBerkowitz — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 09:23:57 -0600

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:

Acquiring, sharing, and dissemination of best practices in Access Technologies (AT).
Promote the establishment of Degree Programs.
The establishment of a professional identity for those who practice AT in Higher Education.
The development of Professional Standards of Practice for AT in Higher Education.
Present a collective voice for the professional practice of AT service delivery.
The development of a credentialing process AT Professionals in Higher Education.

If your are working in the areas of Access Technology, Information Technology supporting the needs of disability support services programs, or in any other related area of service delivery to postsecondary students and adults with disabilities, it is our sincere hope that you will consider becoming an active member of ATHEN. For more information about the organization please visit our website at: www.athenpro.org and our blog at http://athenpro.blogspot.com/.

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.

Assistive Technology (AT), what is it?

jbailey1025 — Wed, 25 May 2005 12:34:00 -0500

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.