Access to High Tech A Challenge for Students with Disabilities

Anyone with an inbox has been there: navigating through cluttered emails, sifting through spam and newsletters, searching for a certain message. Few could manage with their eyes closed.

Necessary technologies such as email can pose a barrier for students with vision disabilities at Texas colleges and universities. For students with vision, hearing, learning or physical disabilities, keeping up with fast-changing Internet programs and new classroom protocol is a catch-up game made possible only with assistive technologies.

Screen readers, magnifiers and textbook scanners improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities and decrease dependence, but they’re being outpaced by popular innovations such as learning management systems, student email and directories, and massive amounts of new online information.

“There has been this monumental shift toward using the Internet and online content in the classroom,” said Rudy Becerra, an advocate for people with disabilities. “The problem is some of that is inaccessible for some students.”

Learning management and student information systems are standard on most campuses across the state. Colleges and universities typically require students to have Internet access to register for classes and to monitor transcripts and grades. Some even administer quizzes and tests online.

Dianne Hengst, director of disability services at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said most professors there supplement in-class material with online content, usually through Blackboard, a popular learning management system that allows users to interact with other students, view additional content such as online videos or text and submit homework or test assignments.

She said accessibility problems are not exclusive to students with vision disabilities. Technology poses different types of accessibility problems to students with hearing, mobility, learning and cognitive disabilities.

For example, a YouTube video assigned by a professor might not include closed captioning, which would cause a barrier for a student with a hearing impairment, she said.

“It is a matter of civil rights and basic inclusion,” Hengst said. “The highest unemployed population in the world is the disabled, so it is important to provide everyone with the same opportunity to be successful.”

Sandi Patton, director of disability services for the Lone Star College system, said its campuses in the Houston area also use Blackboard to supplement in-class material. She said accessibility to technologies, such as Blackboard, has progressed, but it is important for software designers to “build for accessibility” from the beginning rather than attempting to repair the product after its release.

Jessica Finnefrock, senior vice president of product development at Blackboard, said its products must meet industry standards, gain approval from people with disabilities through partnerships with entities such as the National Federation for the Blind, and pass analyses from outside testing companies before they are placed on the market.

Finnefrock said products designed by Blackboard, which partners with about 1,500 higher-education institutions in the United States, are designed to be compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Marti Hathorn, assistive technology supervisor at the San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind, said assistive technology such as screen magnifiers, screen readers, closed-circuit television and textbook scanners allowed her to be independent in college. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration from UTSA in 2008.

“(People with disabilities) don’t want to be segregated. We don’t want our own computer lab,” Hathorn said. “I didn’t want to be left out of anything or cut corners. I wasn’t (in school) to get by, I wanted to do better than everyone else.”

Hathorn, who is blind, said raising awareness is one of the most vital aspects to increasing universal accessibility.

“When computer usage first took off, accessibility wasn’t even brought to the table,” Hathorn said. “Now it is starting to be a priority and is part of the discussion, and more people with disabilities are speaking up.”

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said awareness for everyone involved in higher education — from regents and administrators to students and instructors — is key.

Zaffirini, chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said there is no law specifically directed at technology access for students with disabilities but that resources provided by the government are plentiful.

For example, the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services offers enhanced state funding for assistive technologies and devices: $1 million per year in the current biennium.

Hathorn said she received a $1,000 screen reader from the Division of Blind Services when she was attending college.

The Texas Technology Access Program, housed at the University of Texas and funded fully by the federal government, provides demonstrations of assistive technologies to people who use them.

Roger Levy, director of the TTAP, said the rate that technology changes requires all parties, including students, professors, legislators, software developers and service providers, to work together to achieve universal accessibility.

Hengst, of UTSA, said each link in the chain of accessibility is interdependent upon the rest.

“My head spins when I think about where technology will be in 20 years,” Hengst said. “We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, but I think it will be very exciting.”

Source: www.mysanantonio.com, GAATES

Free High Tech Solution for Students with Print Disabilities

Elizabeth is a college freshman who has severe dyslexia that makes it impossible for her to decipher printed materials. Nearly every night for 12 years of school, Elizabeth’s mother would sit down and read her daughter’s school work to her because that’s the only choice they had.

But a few months before starting college, Elizabeth discovered an online library called Bookshare.org , run by a small non-profit called Benetech.

“My life changed as I entered the world of accessible literature,” Elizabeth wrote on Bookshare’s blog.

For Elizabeth and the millions of students who are “print disabled” — meaning they have trouble reading because of dyslexia or vision disabilities — many textbooks are not available in an audio format or in any other format that’s easily accessible. Bookshare converts texts into accessible digital formats–mostly audio and digital braille–for those who can’t decipher print.

“I would hear about a book and remember thinking, ‘I wish I could read that,’ knowing it might be available in a year and a half. Bookshare changed all that.”

It’s not that Benetech invented accessible literature. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), which is part of the Library of Congress, has 300,000 titles and close to 1 million registered readers. The library provides audio books, Braille books and digital files that communicate with electronic Braille notetakers. However, many NLS books must be requested by mail and wait lists for popular texts can be long. In the last few years, the NLS has started offering some texts for download.

A few other services, like the nonprofit Learning Ally which has been around since 1948, also offer accessible books for people with vision disabilities. But the difference is that neither of these organizations specializes in textbooks. In fact, the NLS refers users to Bookshare, for this purpose.

Currently Bookshare, which was founded in 2001, offers more than 150,000 titles, which can be downloaded in a file format that works with several different digital solutions. Membership is free for all students, including those in adult education, and $50 per year for everyone else, not including a $25 one-time set up fee. For textbooks that aren’t yet available on Bookshare, users can send in a request for those titles, which then take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to convert.

“We want books in a format everyone can use,” said Betsy Beaumon, vice president of Benetech.

Benetech’s user-friendly software and its efforts to work with publishers to create accessible digital texts on the front-end have earned the small company a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Last month, the Department of Education awarded Benetech $6.5 million a year through 2017 to continue and expand its work to make textbooks, textbook images and software innovations for users more widespread.

Bookshare books aren’t just PDFs of print pages. Each page is scanned and processed through an optical character recognition program that translates the image file into a text file. That file is proofread to eliminate typos and ensure that things like odd page layouts haven’t damaged readability. Finally, the file is formatted so that it can be “read” in a digital voice by screen reading software — a computer program that reads what’s on the screen — or fed to a Braille notetaker.

Benetech engineers have also produced an iPhone, iPad and Android app that makes these files user-friendly in a variety of ways. For example, it’s easy to skip to a chapter heading or even a specific page just as a sighted reader could with a paper textbook by using a combination of aural clues and tapping of the touch-screen.

One of two specially created voices can be chosen to read the text. The voices can be sped up or slowed down without losing their pleasant tone. For Rob Turner, the head of customer service at Benetech, this means no more “chipmunk voices.” Turner is blind and in order to read texts as fast as sighted readers when he was in college, Turner would speed up the tape deck playback. With years of practice, he can listen to and take in aural information this way much faster than most people.

Since many legally blind people have some amount of vision and because dyslexic readers can see, the software also has a visual element. The size and color of the text can be changed. The background color can also be changed—this has been shown to help some dyslexic readers. A highlighter can be set to follow each word of the text as it’s read out loud.

Math equations have traditionally been a big stumbling block for this demographic of readers. The software that “reads” text from the screen cannot read image files and math equations are often in image files. Benetech has created a program that allows a user to type a math equation into a box that will translate the equation into code that works with its software or that can be fed into a Braille notetaker.

Rick Roderick, who has been blind since birth, has made a career out of teaching other blind people to use computers and Braille notetakers. As such, he’s stayed on the cutting edge of technology to help the blind. Bookshare, he said, is the best innovation yet.

“Bookshare has totally improved my quality of life,” he said.

The biggest change has been the speed at which he can access 

books, Roderick said.

“My frustration was I would hear about a book on Morning Edition or Fresh Air and I remember thinking, ‘I wish I could read that,’ knowing it might be available in a year and a half,” he said. “Bookshare changed all that.”

Now, Roderick said he can get new books within days or weeks of their publication date. As soon as it’s uploaded to Bookshare, he can access it. He can also get same-day news from print publications like The New York Times and a list of other big and small periodicals.

“I remember asking one of my teachers in first grade, ‘Will there ever be a Braille newspaper?’” Roderick said. “She said, ‘No, that would be impossible.’ That is now possible.”

Benetech leaders hope their recently awarded grant will continue to make even more content readily available to those who cannot decipher print. They have already begun conversations with publishers about how eBooks can be formatted for accessibility from the beginning of the printing process so the long process of scanning and changing file types can be eliminated.

Beaumon said she is especially excited about the work they’ve begun with a few textbook publishers in advance of the switch to Common Core standards. If digital files are created as “accessible literature” in the first place, Beaumon said there would be more high-quality content available more quickly.

“Now is the opportune moment,” she said.

Elizabeth is about to start her sophomore year of college. She’s developed the habit of figuring out exactly what books she’ll need for her upcoming semester and making sure they’re available on Bookshare months in advance. If they’re not, she buys two copies of the book, one for herself and one to send to Benetech for scanning. That way, everyone will have access to the information.

“I consider it a privilege to have the opportunity to read every word,” she wrote on the Bookshare blog.

Source: KQED, GAATES

US DOL's Office of Disability Employment Policy Announces $950,000 Grant to Establish Accessible Technology Action Centre

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy today announced the availability of approximately $950,000 to fund a cooperative agreement to establish and operate the Accessible Technology Action Center, a new national resource that will facilitate and promote the use of accessible technology in the hiring, employment, retention and career advancement of persons with disabilities.

“Accessible technology can have a significant impact on persons with disabilities when it comes to succeeding in the workplace,” said Kathy Martinez, assistant secretary of labor for disability employment policy. “This new center will build on previous partnerships and focus on specific issues facing employees with disabilities and the technology industry.”

The ATAC will expand access to information and communication technologies in the workplace for persons with disabilities. The center will promote the knowledge, technical skills, tools and leadership strategies needed to address accessibility issues, and will seek to raise awareness of the impact critical accessible workplace technologies have on competitive employment opportunities.

The initial award will be for 12 months with the possibility of up to four optional years of funding, depending on the availability of funds and satisfactory performance. The full announcement for this grant opportunity can be found at http://www.grants.gov. Applications will be accepted until Aug. 31, 2012.

Source: GAATES

US Scientists Aim to Deliver Visual Images to People with Vision Disabilities

Humans possess the unique ability to form mental images of things that exist only in their minds, and U.S. scientists now believe there may be a way to harness this ability someday to give sight to people who are blind.

Neuroscientists at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston have recently advanced their understanding of how the brain conjures up images, and hoped to someday bypass the eyes to directly deliver visual images into blind people’s brains, according to the latest online edition of the Texas Medical Center News on Monday.

In studying three individuals and creating an illusion of the flash of light to stimulate the brain, the scientists discovered two regions of all the three people’s brains required stimulation before the individuals could generate mental images in their mind.

The occipital lobe, a part of the brain at the back of the head, is responsible for vision and mental images, but the scientists discovered the brain’s temporoparietal junction must be active and work in conjunction with the occipital lobe for individuals to “see” an image in their mind, at least in the three people studied.

“This new study is a step toward our goal of better understanding visual perception, which will help us make a useful visual prosthetic,” said Daniel Yoshor, the study’s senior author.

A visual prosthetic, Yoshor said, could work like this: People who is blind might wear a prosthetic consisting of eyeglasses containing a webcam. The tiny camera would film the scene before blind person’s eyes, then relay information to a computer chip implanted in the person’s brain, which would stimulate the brain to generate mental images.

“If successful, we would in essence bypass eyes that no longer work and stimulate the brain to generate mental images,” said Michael Beauchamp, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the UT Medical School.

However, Yoshor, also chief of neurosurgery at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, noted that a key obstacle to progress right now “is our limited understanding of how brain activity leads to visual perception.”

Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com, GAATES

CRTC Approves Proposal to Establish Broadcasting Accessibility Fund

On August 7, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved BCE’s proposal to establish a Broadcasting Accessibility Fund. This independent fund will support initiatives to improve access to the Canadian broadcasting system by persons with disabilities.

“Canadians with disabilities should be able to access broadcasting content using the latest technologies, applications and services,” said Jean-Pierre Blais, Chairman of the CRTC. “The new fund will serve as a catalyst for the development of innovative solutions and help ensure the needs of persons with disabilities are taken into consideration at the design stage.”

When BCE purchased CTVglobemedia in 2011, it committed $5.7 million to create an independent Broadcasting Accessibility Fund. The company subsequently presented a proposal to the CRTC.  Different groups representing persons with disabilities were consulted and provided their comments through an open consultation process.

The fund will support accessibility projects that are supplementary to the CRTC’s existing regulatory obligations for the broadcasting industry.  This could include accessibility initiatives for online and mobile programming services. The CRTC is requiring that the fund provide services and publish documents (such as application forms, policies, and annual reports) in both official languages.

The Broadcasting Accessibility Fund will begin accepting applications by December 5, 2012.

For more information, visit http://crtc.gc.ca

Source: GAATES

New Website Launches for People with Vision Disabilities

At Discovery World on Thursday, a consortium of Milwaukee-based organizations announced a new web portal for people with vision disabilities, and unveiled an accompanying weekend-long art exhibit.

The new site, Connections in Sight, offers resources and information on eye research for people with vision disabilities and their families.

The consortium hopes the new site will help people with vision disabilities maintain quality of life and find employment opportunities. Braille and recorded library materials, vision rehabilitation, communications training, orientation and mobility training, adaptive computer training, and support groups are available through the website. It is estimated that 60,000 residents of southeastern Wisconsin need vision support services.

The “Through the Lens of Others” art exhibit showcases the work of nine artists with vision disabilities, and opens at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Eye Institute, 925 N. 87th St.

“Our art exhibition debunks the myth that people who are blind or low vision can’t see or lead productive lives. Most people with vision disabilities can in fact perceive some level of light and form,” said exhibit organizer Dena Fellows, director of marketing at Vision Forward Association. “People who are blind or low vision are able to produce not only intelligible art, but art that truly is inspired.”

The consortium includes Audio & Braille Literacy Enhancement (ABLE), Vision Forward Association, Beyond Vision, Center for Deaf-Blind Persons Inc., the Wisconsin Talking Book and Braille Library, and the Milwaukee County Office for Persons with Disabilities.

Source: http://www.jsonline.com, GAATES

CHRC Report Shows Significant Gaps in Equality of Opportunity for Persons with Disabilities in Canada

Canadians have a better picture of how disability affects equality of opportunity, thanks to a new benchmarking study released by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) on July 9.

The Report on Equality Rights of People with Disabilities compares Canadians with disabilities to those without disabilities across a spectrum of indicators, such as education, employment, economic well-being, health, and housing. The report consolidates data from seven Statistics Canada surveys.

“This is the first comprehensive examination of how disability affects equality of opportunity in daily life,” Acting Chief Commissioner David Langtry said. “It provides a benchmark that will enable Canadians to track progress and identify barriers that deny people with disabilities the full opportunity to make for themselves the lives they wish to have.”

The report released today provides insight for academics, NGOs, community groups and all levels of government involved in developing policies and programs aimed at improving life for Canadians with disabilities. It provides a baseline for future studies that the Commission intends to undertake to measure change.

The report shows a different reality for persons with disabilities in areas such as education, employment and economic well-being.

When compared to other adults, adults with disabilities:

• are half as likely to complete a university degree,
• are more likely to settle for part-time instead of full time employment, and
• have lower annual incomes.

Source: CHRC, GAATES