Accessible Information Technology: Lesson Learned From Three Universities

Posted by Isra Anwar

March 24, 2014

Technology has the potential to increase personal efficiency, accessibility information, and cooperation among learners, employees, and employees at college organizations. It is unlikely that educational organizations deliberately remove particular groups from the possibilities technology provides. Nevertheless, when grounds use IT that is not designed to be available for people with problems, some of these people experience limitations to education and employment. In contrast, when universities style and employ websites, application, and other IT that are available for all learners and employees, they lead the way toward stabilizing the stage and assisting complete involvement in educational and profession activities.

It has been approximated that more than 6% of all higher education and people in the United States report having a impairment (Henderson, 2001). Their level of registration is increasing as more inclusive pre-college programs, AT, and legal requires offer greater possibilities for people with problems to prepare for and succeed in higher education studies (Henderson, 2001; National Authorities on Disability, 2000). In light of this trend, as well as increased use of IT by all associates of the university community, IT accessibility for learners with problems is particularly important. In short, to ensure these learners have equal educational possibilities, universities need to (1) make assistive technology available to learners, employees, and employees with problems and (2) develop, obtain, and use accessible IT. The writers of this article review key problems of these two factors, discuss related initiatives made by three universities and universities, and share lessons found could be applied at other universities and universities.

ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND ACCESSIBLE IT

The accessibility to a variety of assistive technology (AT) makes it possible for an individual with almost any type of impairment to operate a pc and telecom equipment (Closing the Gap, 2007). Substitute computer keyboard, text-to-speech application, screen zoom, word-prediction application, sentence structure and punctuation pieces, and other AT all play positions in providing people with with problems accessibility IT that increases their educational and profession possibilities. However, AT resolves only a portion of the IT accessibility problem. Other problems concern the style of popular IT. For example, those who are sightless often use text-to-speech techniques that read loudly what appears on pc displays. However, these conversation outcome techniques only offer accessibility material provided in written text format. Therefore, website owners need to offer different methods to accessibility material provided in non-text form (e.g., pictures, frames), so they do not hard information limitations to those who are sightless.

Accessible style of IT is the electronic equivalent to control reduces. Although control reduces were created to assist people using motorized wheel chairs, they also aid people forcing baby buggies and delivery carts--many users advantage from accessible style. For IT, accessible style means that the complete variety of user abilities is considered at the style stage, and, as a result, products are available for all people, including those using a variety of popular computers and AT. For example, sayings on videos advantage an excellent student for whom English is a second language, a employee who is hard of hearing, a person who wants to search for particular material in the clip, and an excellent student working late into the evening while other associates of the household are sleeping. In the same way, an excellent student who cannot accessibility design because of a slow Internet access benefits from written text alternatives to graphic pictures that are also used by those who are sightless. In addition, providing material in multiple types details the needs of learners with various learning problems and styles.

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