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Students with disabilities have historically faced many barriers in their attempts to access and succeed in post-secondary education.
However, with the growth of e-learning, these students are now benefiting from advances in learning technologies that provide comprehensive interactive access to text-based, audio and video materials—anywhere, and at anytime via the internet. Moreover, a 2009 study published in the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability indicates that university students with disabilities are beginning to display similar retention and graduation rates as students without disabilities.
E-learning technologies have the potential to improve learning opportunities for students with disabilities, as highlighted in the Canadian Council on Learning’s report, State of E-Learning in Canada. The report examines the current state of e-learning throughout Canadian society and internationally.
At Carleton University, for example, about 6% of its 25,000 full- and part-time students are registered with disabilities—and their course completion rates are about the same as the rest of the student body. According to Larry McCloskey, director of Carleton’s Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities, one-on-one counseling with coordinators helps students become computer-savvy and adapt e-learning to suit their unique disabilities (e.g., mobility, psychological, learning, hearing, and visual). Coordinators aid students with study skills, learning strategies, and by assessing and providing academic accommodations—helping students adjust to the university environment and course demands. The Paul Menton Centre also provides a fully-equipped examination room to enable students to take tests with assistive technologies.
Learning technologies at Carleton are used mostly to overcome accessibility problems so that students with disabilities can learn in traditional ways like their classmates. For example, to facilitate a blind or visually impaired student’s access to printed material, coordinator Jason Goveas may tailor a text’s digital copy for different software programs. Screen-reading programs speak the text aloud in a synthesized voice and describe images via the embedded code. These programs also read and describe websites. For students with a learning disability—a catch-all term for students with visual, auditory and/or conceptual information-processing deficits—other programs read the text and display it so the student can follow along.
There are challenges, however, to providing students with the access they need to these materials. “The big issue has been getting publishers to provide the material in an electronic format,” Goveas said. “Textbooks have limited markets and a short shelf life, so some publishers resist releasing the electronic version at the same time as the book, if at all.” He added that publishers fear that an electronic copy could be pirated, resulting in a loss of revenue.
Sometimes, Goveas will contact the W. Ross Macdonald School (WRMS) for visually impaired, blind and deaf-blind students. Located in Brantford, Ontario, WRMS is building a repository of digitized texts (funded by the Ontario government)—but if WRMS does not have a digital copy or cannot acquire one from the publisher, the institution will cut each page from a book and scan it individually before emailing it to a client: a time-consuming and expensive effort.
A pilot project launching in late 2009 might help to resolve this issue. To be most efficient, the publisher will funnel electronic copies through one institution, WRMS, whenever an educational institution makes a request. The pilot should be able to provide students with course materials in accessible formats promptly, which is crucial since, as Goveas remarked, academic semesters are only 12 weeks long.
Another significant change bound to affect e-learning for students with disabilities will be the upcoming implementation of the Accessible Information and Communications Standard, legislated by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in 2005. AODA’s goal “is to make Ontario the first barrier-free state in the world for people with disabilities,” McCloskey said. By 2011, all public organizations (including educational) must accommodate people with disabilities by providing published material in requested formats, in a timely fashion.
“A visually impaired student might want a book on tape, or CD, or to be read from a computer, or in Braille—and then there’s large print in various fonts,” McCloskey described the challenge of serving each student according to his or her individual needs. “AODA is really about accommodating the person’s choice in a timely manner. Entire library holdings don’t need to be converted just in case someone asks. What we need to do is guarantee that within 24 hours we’ll produce the format of choice.”
In addition to educational institutions, web-based resource centers such as The Inclusive Learning Exchange (TILE) are being launched across the country to increase access to e-learning for students with disabilities. TILE is integrating advances in broadband e-learning technology to create a repository of interactive learning environments that transform in response to the needs of the individual learner. TILE provides accessibility software in a variety of media types for students with disabilities at K-12, post-secondary, workplace and lifelong-learning levels.