Category: Accessibility

Innovative Ideas Braillie App and Dyslexie

The power of technological innovation is sometimes astounding.

BraillieTouch

Mario Romero a post-doctoral researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology has co-developed an app, called BrailleTouch, that could help blind people send text messages and type e-mails on touch-screen smartphones. The free app, which is being developed for Apple iOS and Google Android devices, should be available in a matter of weeks.

Dyslexie

A Dutch graphic designer and dyslexic, Christian Boer, developed a font specifically for dyslexic readers. The Dyslexie font works by tweaking the appearance of certain letters of the alphabet that dyslexics commonly misconstrue, such as “p”, “b” and “d,” to make them more distinct from each other and to keep them “tied down,” so that the reader is less likely to flip them in their minds. The letters in the font are also spaced wide apart to make reading them easier.

The font is  available for purchase, in either English or Dutch, from Boer’s website in English or Dutch.  The font can be used on either the Mac or Windows operating system, but not on devices such as iPads. However, a software company called LingApps says it will soon offer an assistive reading and writing application for iPad that uses Dyslexie.

Some  U.S. schools are now using the font ,but there’s not yet been any major study by a educational system or government to gauge the font’s value in teaching young dyslexics how to read.  Boer does not tout the font as a “cure” for dyslexia but as a tool that can help individuals with dyslexia.

Check out Scientific American’s deeper dive into the project, which includes a link to a Dyslexie version of the article, so you can compare it to the magazine website’s font.

For details on how Boer created the font, check out this video.

The Campus ICT Accessibility Conversation

Technology and the Internet have revolutionized the way we teach at the postsecondary level as well as the way students learn. As Ben McNeely points out in Educating the Net Generation, (2005), today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Today’s students, K through college, represent the first generations to grow up with their entire lives surrounded by, and using, computers, video games, digital music players, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. In this ubiquitous environment, given the sheer volume of their interaction with technology, today’s students think and process information much differently than their counterparts from earlier generations.

ICT Accessibility in Higher Education Network

Not long ago, I joined a LinkedIn group, ICT Accessibility in Higher Education Network which was created to bring together faculty, staff, instructional technologists, college and university IT decision-makers, students with disabilities, educational publishers/vendors, and all others in the higher education community who are actively involved or have an interest in ensuring that information and communication technology (ICT) being used or being considered for adoption is accessible to everyone, especially people with disabilities. (In this group, ICT includes the full range of technology used for in-class or remote delivery of instruction, online course registration systems/learning management systems, campus websites/portals, library technology, career center software, and social media used to engage existing or attract new students.)

ICT Goal

The goal of this group is to broaden the campus ICT accessibility conversation to include everyone who has a role in the selection, purchase, implementation, support/training on, and use of technology in the college and university setting, in and out of the classroom. Group moderator, Jennison Asuncion, initiated discussion by asking members to, “identify key information and communication technology accessibility challenge(s) facing people with disabilities on your campus.

Common Themes and Issues

The comments and related discussion have been thoughtful and several familiar themes and issues have emerged, including:

  • Convincing leadership at higher levels in our organization that technology accessibility is a priority. Creating accessible technology and web sites allows persons with disabilities equal participation and benefits everyone with better overall design.
  • Effectively integrating the technologies used by students with other technologies available on campus to support teaching and learning.
  • Inaccessible materials, especially third-party materials (e.g. content management and e-mail systems, textbooks, videos etc.)

I believe that this group will be a valuable resource for all participants for we can learn from one another and little by little, perhaps get the message out that accessibility isn’t just for students with disabilities. As assistive technologies are becoming part of the mainstream (e.g. the text to speech and speech to text on the iPad) universities are going to need to respond with accessible content so that the general student body can access materials on multi-modal devices.

Social Media, the ‘Net’ and Disability

During summer 2011, I participated in an online continuing education program called “23 Things for Professional Development.” The program leaders described “23 Things” as “a self-directed course aimed at introducing you to a range of tools that could help your personal and professional development as a librarian, information professional or something else. Each week, we’ll write about one or more tool from our list of 23 things and invite you to try it out and/or reflect on how it could help your professional development. Some of the tasks will be practical “Things” for you to try out straight away, and some of them will be less immediate: ideas to try in the future, or things you can start working towards now and realize in due course or when opportunity arises!”

To take part, participants needed to set up a blog if they didn’t have one, register it with “23 Things” and use it to reflect on each of the 23 “Things.” I used my existing library-related blog, Susie Learns 2.0 to participate. Although the target audience was librarians, the program was “for anyone who thinks they might benefit from it….”

Benefits of Participation

Did I benefit from participation? Yes, I did. I learned about a variety of social media and online tools that I wouldn’t have experimented with otherwise. Some of the “Things” I was already using, others were new to me. Some of the “Things” that were unfamiliar, I realized I would have a use for, others left me unimpressed or knowing I would not find them useful.

Reading posts from other participants and writing my own showed me there are numerous creative and innovative librarians and librarians-in-training who are taking on the challenge of learning to use technology and social media. We are acknowledging the profound change wrought by the Internet and social media. We are also thinking about how it affects and is changing not only libraries, but the profession as a whole. Some of the changes and technology we accept and embrace enthusiastically, some we struggle with or reject and still other changes we fret about – wondering about the true impact in the long term.

Disabilities and New Technology

How does “23 Things” relate to the themes of WinAhead’s World? Higher education is also wrestling with the changes wrought by technology and social media. Partly because I participated in “23 Things,” I’ve been thinking about social media, technology and disabilities, in the context of online learning. I have a nagging feeling that many of the “Things” we experimented with would not be all that “user friendly” for individuals with disabilities, particularly visual, motor or learning disabilities. That isn’t to say that Google products like Gmail, Calendar, Blogger and Docs or Twitter, Evernote, Pushnote, Cite-u-like, Slideshare, Flicker and other media are not being used by individuals with disabilities for they are. But, depending on the disability, these media are probably not as “out-of-the-box” usable as they are for individuals without disabilities.

Technological Innovation only Part of the Problem

It’s not just emerging technology and social media that are problematic. Disability Service providers often struggle to get accessible textbooks from publishers and still find themselves caught in a conflict that should have been worked through long ago – the conflict between the rights of publishers to make money and the civil rights of people with disabilities. There are also ongoing challenges inherent in making the campus LMS and/or new technologies deployed in the classroom accessible and user-friendly. With individuals with disabilities such a large untapped consumer market and higher education also a lucrative market, designing with disability in mind should be a strong incentive for publishers and software and technology designers.

Designing with Disability in Mind

When this blog was created, WordPress was chosen over Google Blogger because was identified as the better choice if one was thinking about accessibility issues. WordPress still has some progress to make to really support accessibility, particularly in terms of the choice of themes that genuinely support accessible page creation. That said, accessibility is addressed and helpful tips are provided at the Accessibility Support page and at the Codex. Google has similar information at Making Google Accessible. However, WordPress and other blogging tools still require authors to have some awareness of accessible publishing. The key to improving this lack of awareness is education. Education, not tools, is the key to better accessibility.

The basic tools exist for making books, websites and other media accessible. If education is the key, this leads me to wonder, “What needs to happen for developers, designers and creators of new technology and social media to understand the economic and social value of designing and creating ‘with disability in mind?'”