Post-16 students matching assistive technologies with e-learning materials and social networking applications.

Ron Stewart

E.A. Draffan

Speaker Notes:

Setting the scene

Students come with a wide range of skills and abilities, some using assistive technologies and others adapting their working environment to suit their needs.

Speaker Notes:

Technologies

Not all fit neatly into what we may know as ‘access or assistive technologies’ There are a wide range of enabling technologies working with different types of applications requiring varying degrees of skills and abilities.

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This slide has pictures of different types of assistive technology such as specialist keyboard, magnification software, switch access, mind mapping, a joystick and Google being used as a spell checker.

Issues arising

Web Accessibility

E-learning

Alternative Media Formats

Speaker Notes:

It is usually easier to create an accessible site than to provide all the same information in another equally effective format. There are clear guidelines and standards for ensuring web accessibility and clear benefits for institutions who embrace these standards. Accessible web content will reach audiences who use assistive and/or emerging technologies. Use of structural tags and accessible templates will result in faster loading times and easier site maintenance.

E-learning takes many forms and while the adapting materials and offering human support can address individual barriers as they are identified, a proactive approach can minimise that need.

Distance learning can be a powerful option for many students including those are disabled. Distance learning can be accessible and easy to use for those who rely on Assistive Technologies, if designed well from the outset.

Content is often loaded into a course management tool like Blackboard. While these management tools themselves often afford basic accessibility, the content that is loaded may or may not be accessible.

Assistive Technology is often used to access alternate format materials and e-text is an increasingly common format.

Many institutions have developed or are developing policies and best practices to deal with alternate format material provision in general and e-text in particular.

Alternative Formats

Electronic Textbooks

Braille

Enlarged Print

Notetakers, Real Time Captioning, and/or Computer Assisted Notetaking

Interpreters, Real Time Captioning, and/or Computer Assisted Notetaking

Alternative Testing

Speaker Notes:

Why do materials need to be produced in alternative formats?

In order to ensure compliance with the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) 2001, (an amendment to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995), the colleges and universities are required to produce material in braille or other alternative formats for visually impaired students or those with other print difficulties.

Issues related to e-learning

Speaker Notes:

Issues related to e-learning

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Social Networking – Web 2.0

Andy Budd of

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What do the students say they want?

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Making it work with PowerPoint

Speaker Notes:

This is a Flash presentation of how a student adapted a PowerPoint slide show to suit her needs – it was two cluttered and her text to speech program would not work with the version provided on-line so she had to download the slides and un-clutter some whilst reading the headings and text in edit mode with TextHelp Read and Write.

PowerPoint Accessibility

Provide the Presentation File to Students

Don’t Overload Slides

Don’t Use Colour to Convey Meaning

Carefully Select Colours and Fonts

Avoid Animation and Transitions

Embedded Content may not be Accessible

Make use of Speaker notes that can be read with screen readers or text to speech.

Making it work with all presentation tools

Speaker Notes:

Xerte e-learning tool

Speaker Notes:

This is an example of Xerte being used to present a student’s strategy for checking a word he was unsure about – he used a combination of Word, Google and Babylon spell checker to find the word but all these strategies failed so finally he searched on the web to find a journal article using the word and was relieved to find he had spelt the word correctly.

Making it work – Adobe Acrobat PDF’s

Speaker Notes:

Two pictures of a PDF file showing aircraft parts with labels. The left hand picture shows detailed diagrams with labels. The right hand picture shows what can be achieve when the PDF is scanned in to be read by a screen reader or text to speech. The labels lose their positions and the diagrams are all over the place.

Making it work – Adobe Acrobat PDF’s

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Making it work - Assessment

Case Studies of alternative assessments

SPACE Project - Inclusive Assessment

http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=10494

Speaker Notes:

Speaker Notes:

A cluttered picture of possible assistive technologies that have to be used in e-learning situations. Example of poor design but also an example of how many different items may be used that are not just specialist products such as the iPod and Windows Smart phone. Other items include speech recognition, a small keyboard, magnification, spell checking, word prediction and Web 2.0 technologies themselves.

Thank You

E.A. Draffan

Research Fellow

Learning Societies Lab

University of Southampton

Mobile 07976 289103

E-mail: ead@ecs.soton.ac.uk

LexDis Project website

www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk

Ron Stewart

Technology Advisor

Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD USA)

Tel: 001- 609 213-2190

E Mail: ron@ahead.org

Ahead website http://ahead.org

Speaker Notes:

Thank you.

Ron Stewart

Technology Advisor

Association on Higher Education and Disability

Voice: 001- 609- 213-2190

E Mail: ron@ahead.org

webpage: http://ahead.org

Mrs E.A. Draffan

Research Fellow

Learning Societies Lab

University of Southampton

Mobile 07976 289103

E-mail: ead@ecs.soton.ac.uk

LexDis Project website

www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk