Bills in Congress could mean equal digital access for disabled students
Imagine not being able to access your course materials online because you have a print disability such as dyslexia or blindness. The technology and capability for access is out there, but your college has no rubric to follow to use the tools that provide it.
That’s reality for some students with print disabilities, but recent legislation in Congress could mean an implementation of guidelines that would provide equal access to information in educational technology, such as a college’s online library database. It would also provide equal access to digital instructional materials, such as handouts scanned into a PDF, online quizzes or lab assignments.
The Technology, Education and Accessibility in College and Higher Education Act (TEACH Act), introduced late last year, and an August proposal to rewrite the Higher Education Act would, if passed, require the U.S. Access Board to create guidelines for the educational technology used at colleges, giving students with print disabilities the same access as everyone else. Universities could use technology that doesn’t conform to the guidelines, but they’d still have to provide equal access to materials for all students.
While this Congressional session is nearly over, supporters of the bill, including the National Federation of the Blind, are hopeful it passes soon.
“We know for a fact that blind students can’t afford to wait,” says Lauren McLarney, government affairs specialist at the NFB.
Currently, digital instructional materials either have to be reformatted or read aloud to students at their respective disability services center. But students sometimes have to go without access.
Jamie Principato, a blind student who attended Florida State University as a sophomore, says when she started her algebra class, it did not provide a Braille textbook, any electronic materials to use and all of the tests, quizzes and homework assignments were on an online system that were not compatible with her screen-reading software she uses on her computer.
Principato has since transferred to Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colo., and due to credits not transferring and a change in major, she’s a freshman Her course materials are still not entirely accessible.
“We’re getting to a point where technology is growing faster than we can keep up with it in the accessibility industry, and it needs to start being developed accessible from the start,” she says.
Kyle Shachmut, president of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) of Massachusetts, says it’s hard to describe what access to digital information looks like right now, but that’s why the guidelines would help.
“There are (no accessibility guidelines) for educational technology, which is why we so desperately need them, because there’s nothing stimulating the market to say, ‘we aiming for this standard of accessibility.’”
As the use of technology in the classroom has rapidly evolved, it’s left some students behind.
“There’s a whole host of technologies that are employed in the classroom,” Mark Riccobono, president of the NFB, says. “The problem is that right now, the universities are often implementing these technologies without real attention to whether or not they’re accessible to people with disabilities.”
Riccobono uses the analogy of a new building, which would require access for the disabled, to point out the need to make educational technology accessible at its conception.
“If the university was going to build a new building, they wouldn’t put up a new building and then later say, ‘you know, we really should’ve put in an elevator, let’s see how we can accommodate getting students in wheelchairs to the third floor,’” he says. “That’s kind of what some universities have been doing with technology.”
Without the access to digital information, students with disabilities at the University of Florida have to be accommodated in a less-efficient manner.
“Currently, we meet individually with students who may need specific access to course materials or textbooks, and we have several different options to find the best solution for them,” says Jim Gorske, assistant dean of students and director of the Disability Resource Center at UF.
Gorske, who says about 1,500 students use the center’s services each year, 20-25 of whom need visual services, supports the TEACH Act.
“It gives the university guidelines of what needs to be put in place,” he says. “Not that disability services offices don’t do a good job of addressing that now, but it sometimes winds up being more of a retro-fit … rather than being able to be proactive.”
But not everyone is convinced the TEACH Act is the best solution for providing equal digital access.
Ron Zwerin, director of marketing for EDUCAUSE, a non-profit association of higher education information technology (IT) leaders and professionals, says while the organization agrees with supporters of the bill about the importance of improving the needs of students with disabilities, they believe “it would have a significant impact on the ability of higher education institutions to advance teaching and learning and provide the best possible learning opportunities for all students.”
“(The TEACH Act) would impose only on higher education a new standard for accessibility that colleges and universities can’t meet for all students, disabilities and technologies,” he says. “The use of this new standard makes the bill’s proposed voluntary IT guidelines de facto IT standards, and at the same time denies institutions the flexibility provided under existing law to meet student’s individual needs when technology alone can’t.”
And while the bill says that updates in guidelines would be made every three years, Zwerin says the process by which they’d be developed has yet to produce updated federal IT accessibility standards in eight years.
Zwerin says EDUCAUSE hopes to work with the bill’s supporters “to advance our shared goal of improving accessibility where reasonably possible.”
“We would welcome a discussion about voluntary guidelines based on the flexibility provided in current law, which has existed for decades,” he says.
*Ben Sheffler is a junior at University of West Florida.
http://college.usatoday.com/2014/09/28/bills-in-congress-could-mean-equal-digital-access-for-disabled-students/
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