FW: Access to on-line courses

[Ozmun, Karen]

below is a link to an article on-line.  complete text follows.  fyi, karen

[forwarding header deleted -- from EASI]

  http://chronicle.com/chronicle/guide.htm
   Scroll down to Information Technology Section
   "Giving Access to the Disabled"   Page: A69

Full Text of Article:

   The Chronicle of Higher Education
   From the issue dated October 29, 1999
                                                                       
  Colleges Strive to Give Disabled Students Access to On-Line Courses
  
   By DAN CARNEVALE
   
   As they race to expand their distance-education offerings, colleges
   and universities are finding that they must include the virtual
   equivalents of wheelchair ramps when building their on-line
   classrooms.
   They must accommodate, for instance, the sophomore who can't see the
impressive navigational graphics on a Web page because he's blind, and the
graduate student who can't listen to a streamed audio lecture
   because she's deaf. In fact, many students with disabilities find that
   Web sites' technological extravaganzas are more of a burden than an
   aid.

   Distance-education administrators and advocates for people with
   disabilities agree that provisions of the Americans With Disabilities
   Act and the Vocational Rehabilitation Act apply generally to on- line
   education programs. But the courts are still sorting out the specifics
   of the laws' requirements, and many faculty members find themselves
   learning about on-line accessibility as they go.

   Meanwhile, some colleges and universities are preparing their own
   accessibility guidelines, hoping to make faculty and staff members
   think carefully about the needs of students who may not be able to
   see, hear, or move well. And some Web sites are offering helpful
   advice on accessibility for anyone planning to put information on
   line.

   For the most part, distance-education students with disabilities
   already can get the equipment they need to make up for their
   impairments. Blind students can use software that reads on-line text
   aloud or produces a Braille message for the students to follow.
   Students who cannot move their arms easily can use adaptive equipment to
manipulate the computer with other parts of their bodies.
   But some common features of the Internet make navigation difficult for
   people with certain disabilities. Text-reading programs, for instance,
   can't make heads or tails of all those pretty graphics. The problem is
   easily avoided if the programs can pick up and read aloud alternate
   texts that are placed behind the graphics, but not every Web site
   provides those texts. Sites with frames and tables -- two workhorses
   of Web-page design -- tend to confuse those programs, which often read
   from left to right, ignoring the layout.

   Problems can also arise from deficiencies of the software students use
   to overcome their disabilities. Some programs have trouble reading
   certain symbols and graphs -- which can make taking a mathematics or
   science class on line extremely difficult.

   It's not that Web-site creators are ignoring the accessibility issue,
   says Jane E. Jarrow; it's that they don't always realize how important
   accessibility is. Ms. Jarrow is president of Disability Access and
   Information Support, an organization that offers advice about
   accessibility to both individuals and institutions. "There's a whole
   art to the issue of making things accessible on line," she says. "But
   people don't think to do it."

   An important issue for universities is trying to determine exactly
   what the law requires. While the details are being fleshed out in the
   courts, "it's hard to know what the law means," says NormanCoombs, a
   history professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and
   chairman of Equal Access to Software and Information, which provides
   guidance on how people with disabilities can use technology as an aid.
   Many students' accessibility difficulties will probably be resolved on
   a case-by-case basis, Mr. Coombs says. For example, the law probably
   won't require universities to provide disabled students with special
   equipment to take on-line courses. But he adds that if an institution
   is providing equipment -- such as laptop computers -- to all of its
   students, it will most likely have to offer adaptive equipment to
   those with impairments.

   Current laws are adequate to guarantee the disabled access to the
   Internet, Ms. Jarrow says. But such access may be slow to arrive,
   because every type of disability must be considered in light of the
   law and the current state of technology.  "The institutions know they're
obligated," Ms. Jarrow says. "The issues are more practical than legal."

   The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has
   specific guidelines for compliance with the disabilities law on
   traditional campuses. But the agency has not yet issued such rules for
   on-line education.   In general terms, the civil-rights office advises
that students with and without disabilities should be assured of the same
access to on-line courses. And it measures compliance not by access alone,
but
   by the effectiveness of the access. The office also says that disabled
   students should receive course information -- in a timely and accurate
   manner -- that is equivalent to what non-disabled students get.

   The office often refers people to a comprehensive set of
   on-line-accessibility guidelines published by the California Community
   Colleges System. Among its tips: Provide clear, prominent navigation
   mechanisms (for those who can't click on small links). And don't rely
   on color alone to distinguish characteristics of a page (for students
   who are colorblind).

   The goal is that virtual classrooms should be held to the same
   accessibility standards as conventional classrooms, says Carl Brown,
   director of the High-Tech Center Training Unit for the California
   Community Colleges System. "The notion here is that everyone should
   have equal access to information."

   Many colleges that put courses on line are trying to educate their
   faculty and staff members about how to make the material accessible to
   the disabled. "Sometimes you're not aware of what you're doing and
   what impact it has," says Janet D. Scott, director of Chemeketa
   Online, the distance-learning arm of Chemeketa Community College, in
   Salem, Ore. "We learned a lot from experience."

   So the college compiled a handbook and other guidelines to help
   faculty members who want to make their on-line offerings as accessible
   as possible. The guidelines include tips that might not occur to
   non-disabled users. Keeping individual Web pages relatively short, for
   example, means that students using text readers don't have to listen
   to a long, drawn-out page before clicking on to something else.
   Much of what colleges can do to make Web pages accessible is fairly
   simple. But making sure that the education disabled students get is
   equivalent to that received by other students requires more effort --
   and maybe more cash.

   "If you're going to try to meet that standard of equivalence -- not
   compliance, but equivalence -- that raises the cost," says William H.
   Berdine, chairman of special education and rehabilitation counseling
   at the University of Kentucky. "Absolute equivalence is a higher
   standard."
   Creating on-line courses has cost the University of Kentucky about
   $15,000 for each low-tech offering and about $30,000 for each that is
   more advanced. A large part of that expense stems from making the
   entire course accessible to disabled students.
   But other institutions say observing the disabilities law doesn't have
   to be costly for on-line courses, especially if compliance is part of
   the plan from the start. "A ramp into a building doesn't cost much if
   you put it in when you build the building," says Rochester's Mr.
   Coombs.

   But paying someone to revamp a Web site's coding, page by page and
   line by line, can cost a college a lot.
   California's Mr. Brown encourages colleges to offer technical support
   and to educate their faculty and staff members so accessibility can be
   built into courses while they are being created. "It doesn't cost
   anything at all," he says. "It's just a matter of taking the time to
   do it."

   Several on-line services also help Web-site designers build accessible
   pages. A program called Bobby checks pages and points out potential
   problems of access (http://www.cast.org/bobby/). The program was
   created by the Center for Applied Special Technology, an organization
   devoted to using technology to expand opportunities for everyone,
   including people with disabilities.
   Named after the slang term for a British police officer, Bobby reviews
   a site to make sure there is alternate text under each graphic. It
   also notes, in detail, ways in which the site's accessibility could be
   improved.
   Michael Cooper, the design and technical leader for Bobby, says the
   program benefits all people who use the Web, disabled and unimpaired.
   "We believe a Web page that's accessible is easier for a non-disabled
   person to use," Mr. Cooper says.
   Mr. Coombs, for his part, stresses that most inaccessibility stems
   from Web-site creators' failure to think things through.
   "Poor design, or thoughtless design, or whatever we want to call it,
   puts up needless barriers," Mr. Coombs says. "With a little bit of
   effort, everything could be accessible."


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   http://chronicle.com
   Section: Information Technology
   Page: A69
     _________________________________________________________________
   Copyright - 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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