Accessibility Still Lacking to NFB

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has accused Educause and Internet2 of ignoring the needs of print-disabled students in e-book pilots in progress on more than 20 campuses across the country this fall. The criticism caught the pilot developers by surprise since they thought they were collaborating with the NFB on the project.

The criticism was leveled, in part, because a review of the original pilot done by Disability Services at the University of Minnesota recommended the school drop out of the program because of its use of PDF formats that wouldn’t work with adaptive technology such as text-to-voice software.

“The initial problem was the way the content is packaged and delivered, but it really [goes] beyond that, to the affordances that are built into the package as well,” said Brad Cohen, associate chief information officer for academic technology at the University of Minnesota.

The NFB criticism is an attempt to pressure organizers to add accessibility requirements into any platform used to deliver e-books, according to NFB President Marc Maurer, who added he would be satisfied to know what accessibility plans will be going forward.

“There has to be a deadline by which time they expect the system to be accessible to blind professors and students,” he said. “It can’t be 25 years from now. A couple of years would suit me. I’d be glad to have it sooner than that.”

Educause and Internet2 claimed in an e-mail to Campus Technology, “Given the rapid change in how technology is deployed—students often bring it rather than campuses providing it—it is critical to experiment with new ways to provide course materials. Inevitably, some of those experiments fall short. However, rejecting experimentation does not solve the problem.”

The tiff could be an opportunity for publishers to become more involved. Mickey Levitan, CEO of Courseload, which provides an e-reading platform for the pilot, said he believes accessibility is a “shared interest” between tech firms and publishers.

“These are very complex issues that will have to be resolved with collaboration of all the key parties,” he said. “I don’t think that this is going to fall unduly on any one of those groups, but its clear that its going to have to be a collaborative multipronged effort if we’re going to make progress possible.”

Group Nears Online Education Compact

One issue facing online learning has been finding ways for institutions to offer online programs that meet the Department of Education’s state authorization rules. Those regulations force colleges and universities that offered online programs to register in every state.

While the authorization requirement was struck down by the federal courts earlier this year, most experts believe it will be back when Congress gets around to reauthorizing the Higher Education Act next year. So, state regulators, staff from regional higher-education compacts, key stakeholders, and other experts have been meeting to draft an agreement that would make it easier to get state approval for online classes that are available to students throughout the nation.

The goal of the agreement would be to “eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies for states and higher-education institutions by establishing ‘reciprocity’ among states that sign on to the effort,” according to a report in eCampus News. The project, a joint effort by the Council of State Governments and The Presidents’ Forum, would reform the regulatory review and approval process that governs postsecondary institutions offering degrees across state lines and require each state to approve the terms of any agreement.

“I’ve looked at the authorization issue from all sides and reciprocity is still the best answer to meet everyone’s needs, especially the student,” said Russell Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s Cooperative for Educational Technologies.

Print disabled children get quicker access to traditional texts

This article highlights Bookshare, a nonprofit that provides free specialized electronic copies of books to students with certain print disabilities.  This story is an example of how e-book technology has great potential for students who previously relied on more burdensome and harder to obtain alternatives to the traditional book.

Bookshare makes books to be read aloud by computers, magnified, and spaced differently so that students with vision problems or learning disabilities can read them.  Bookshare’s agreement with 160 publishers allow them to make these special need e-books  available at the same time new releases reach bookstore shelves, unlike typical audiobooks. 

Bookshare memberships are for students who are blind, have low vision, have such learning disabilities as severe dyslexia, or have a disability such as cerebral palsy that could keep them from holding a book.  For these children, Bookshare is free, due to a $32 million grant by the U.S. Department of Education four years ago that’s led to 150,000 student Bookshare memberships across the nation.  And the department’s office of special education programs gave the organization another $3 million in mid-October to take its work even further during the next year. 

The article says barriers still remain.  For example, many books are filled with photographs, diagrams, charts, and drawings that may be supplemented by a single line or two of text.   Although e-books can read aloud that simple description, more elaborate details aren’t available in most cases.  

Links to Recent Accessibility Stories

This article is in a recent issue of The Chronicles of Higher Education providing links to the latest piece on how to build and apply digital resources that are accessible to everybody.   If you have trouble with the links below try going straight to the article.

• “Accessibility for Web Writers”
• “the Business Case for Accessibility.”
• “The a11y Bugs Project”
• “Will copyright hamper IP closed captioning?”
• “It’s not as hard as you think.”
• “HTML 5 Video, Text Tracks, and Audio Descriptions Made Easy (or at least easier)”
• “Assistive Technology Experiment: Dragon NaturallySpeaking.”
• “an open source software tool for creating DAISY compliant audio books.”
• “Mobile Accessibility Lite’
• “[Understand] the purpose of an image using alt text.”
• “Campaign of the Month”
• “An Introductory Set of Accessible Mobile Applications.”
• “Access My N.Y.C. “
• “Apps for Autism”
• “an extremely detailed set of resources about ARIA

Hidden Cost of Digital?

Here’s an article about colleges capping broadband usage on campus and students having to pay for data overlimit fees.  As digital books become more embedded with rich-media and takes up more and more data transmission this issue could be one of those unforeseen consequences of going digital.  Will faculty have to deal with students who say, “I could not access my digital course materials because I went over my data limit and I can’t afford to pay the fees?”

This leads to asking the question, what is the real cost for going digital?   Many schools have ‘free’ (nothing is really free- tuition is suppose to cover those costs) internet access and may not limit downloads.  But what if the student does not have access to internet at home or cannot afford broadband access to required educational content?  Are download rates higher as students move toward tablet devices like the iPad?  Will students need to subscribe to internet or broadband services so that they can read their assignments?  Will students without such access be at a disadvantage as digital course materials become the norm? 

We were recently asked, "What is the average data usage for student’s courses?"  Honestly, we do not know. If anyone has any data out there please share with us your findings.  Is it insignificant?  Will it become significant down the road?