Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education: Challenges and New Practices for Inclusion 3030371247, 9783030371241

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Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education

Challenges and New Practices for Inclusion Edited by Jane Seale

Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education

Jane Seale Editor

Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education Challenges and New Practices for Inclusion

Editor Jane Seale Faculty of Wellness, Education and Language Studies The Open University Milton Keynes, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-37124-1    ISBN 978-3-030-37125-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Pattern © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

Grants All of the authors of this book were participants of an International Network that was supported by The Leverhulme Trust under Grant number IN-2016-018. In addition, some authors obtained additional support from other grants. They will acknowledge the support of the funders within their own individual chapters.

Figures We would like to acknowledge the following colleagues who have given permission for us to reproduce their figures in this book. Jane Seale for permission to reproduce Fig.  1.1: ‘A contextualised model of accessibility’ which was first published in Seale, J. (2006). E-Learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice. Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis Group. Sheryl Burgstahler for permission to reproduce Fig. 3.1: ‘Characteristics of a UD strategy’; originally published in Burgstahler, S. E. (Ed.). (2015). Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice (2nd. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Sheryl Burgstahler for permission to reproduce her original artwork: Fig. 3.2, Relationship of the level of access provided through UD versus accommodations of a campus that primarily embraces the accommodation framework compared to one that promotes UD; Fig. 3.3, Dimensions of

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

a UDHE Framework, and Fig. 3.4, Inclusive Campus Model underpinned by the UDHE framework. Brian Kelly for permission to reproduce Fig. 3.5: ‘Early and later versions of holistic model of e-learning accessibility originally published in Kelly, B., Nevile, L., Draffan, E., & Fanou, S. (2008). One world, one web but great diversity. Paper presented at the 2008 international cross-­ disciplinary workshop on Web accessibility (W4A), Beijing, China. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/267205/1/p141-kelly.pdf. Accessed 26 Sep 2019 and Kelly, B., Phipps, L., & Swift, E. (2004.) Developing a holistic approach for e-learning accessibility, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 30, 3, http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/ 26513/19695. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Ruchi Permvattana for permission to reproduce Fig. 3.6: ‘The VIVID (Vision Impaired using Virtual IT Discovery) Model’; originally published in Permvattana, R., Armstrong, H., & Murray, I. (2013). E-LEARNING For the visually impaired: A holistic perspective. International Journal of Cyber Society and Education, 6(1), 15–30. (2013) doi: https://doi. org/10.7903/ijcse.1029. Elaine Pearson for her permission to reproduce Fig. 3.7: ‘A staff development model for inclusive learning design’; originally published in Papadopolous, G., Pearson, E., & Green, S. (2012). A provisional framework for supporting academics in accessible and inclusive e-materials development. Proceedings of the 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, 459–468. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 262203038_A_provisional_framework_for_supporting_academics_in_ accessible_and_inclusive_e-materials_development Georgios Kouroupetroglou for permission to reproduce Fig.  3.8: ‘The stakeholders who mediate the relationship between a student with a disability and an accessibility unit’; originally published in Kouroupetroglou, G., Pino, A., & Kacorr, H. (2011). A model of accessibility services provision for students with disabilities in higher education. Proceedings of the International Conference Universal Learning Design, 8–11 February 2011, Brno, 23–33. http://access.uoa.gr/Unit%20Publicity%20Files/ Kouroupetroglou_Brno_2011.pdf Jesus Boticario for permission, on behalf of all EU4ALL partners, to reproduce Fig. 3.9 ‘The EU4ALL Model’. This model was produced as part of the EU4ALL project (IST-2006-034478) funded by the European Commission, The work of Jesus Boticario and aDeNU is also supported

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

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by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (TIN2008-­ 06862-­C04-01/TSI). Sheryl Burgstahler for permission to reproduce Fig. 4.1: ‘University of Washington Stakeholder engagement model’; originally made available at: https://www.washington.edu/doit/accessstem-student-centeredcommunity-building-model Sheryl Burgstahler for permission to reproduce Fig.  6.1: ‘The AccessSTEM model for applying evidence-based interventions’; originally published in Burgstahler, S. E. (Ed.). (2015). Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice (2nd. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Christian Bühler for permission to reproduce his original artwork: Fig. 6.2 Transition service and advice network in Germany.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Jane Seale 2 Higher Education, Information and Communication Technologies and Students with Disabilities: An Overview of the Current Situation 21 Catherine Fichten, Dorit Olenik-Shemesh, Jennison Asuncion, Mary Jorgensen, and Chetz Colwell 3 Accessibility Frameworks and Models: Exploring the Potential for a Paradigm Shift 45 Sheryl Burgstahler, Alice Havel, Jane Seale, and Dorit Olenik-Shemesh 4 New Perspectives on Stakeholders: Who Needs to Step Up to the Plate and How? 73 Laura King, Sheryl Burgstahler, Björn Fisseler, and Dana Kaspi-Tsahor 5 New Designs or New Practices? Multiple Perspectives on the ICT and Accessibility Conundrum 99 Tali Heiman, Tim Coughlan, Hadi Rangin, and Markus Deimann ix

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Contents

6 New Practices: Promoting the Role of ICT in the Shared Space of Transition117 Christian Bühler, Sheryl Burgstahler, Alice Havel, and Dana Kaspi-Tsahor 7 New Solutions, Future Possibilities143 Jane Seale Index157

Notes on Contributors

Jennison  Asuncion joined the Adaptech Research Network based at Dawson College in Montreal as a research assistant in 1997 and became a co-director in 1999. Asuncion is also Engineering Manager for Accessibility at LinkedIn. Christian Bühler  is Chair of Rehabilitation Technology and Vice-dean for Budget and Structure of the Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences. He has been Honorary Professor of Rehabilitation Engineering at the Fernuniversität Hagen since 1997. Sheryl  Burgstahler founded and directs the DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) Center and the Access Technology Center (ATC) at the University of Washington in Seattle. Chetz  Colwell  supports OU web and software developers in making their materials accessible to students with disabilities, and to conduct research on the accessibility of new technologies. She conducts ‘expert’ accessibility evaluations of web sites and module materials using a range of assistive technologies, browser settings, and operating system settings. She also conducts face-to-face evaluations with disabled students. Tim Coughlan  is an accessibility specialist for the Institute for Educational Technology at the Open University. His research interests sit at the crossroads of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Educational Technology. He is particularly focused on the design and evaluation of novel systems that support creativity and openness in learning. xi

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Markus Deimann  holds a chair in Instructional Technology and Media. He is an expert in Open Education and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Catherine  Fichten is an expert in disability, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and higher education and Director of the Adaptech Research Network. She is also a winner of the Canadian Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public or Community Service. Björn  Fisseler  is a research assistant working in the field of e-learning and educational technology and focuses on making these accessible and usable for all students, whether disabled or not. Alice Havel  was the co-coordinator of the Student AccessAbility Centre at Dawson College, Montreal, which provides campus disability related services. As a research associate with the Adaptech Research Network her focus is on the development of inclusive teaching practices through universal design and the use and accessibility of ICTs in postsecondary education. Tali Heiman  is an expert in disability, social-emotional aspects, coping strategies, ICT, and higher education. Most of her recent research studies emphasize social and emotional aspects and digital technology advantages/disadvantages relating to students with disabilities in higher education. Mary  Jorgensen is a research associate at the Adaptech Research Network. Her research interests include the experiences of students with mental health related disabilities who pursue higher education. Dana Kaspi-Tsahor  is the head of the accessibility section at the Open University of Israel and she is an authorized service accessibility expert. In addition, she teaches on the subject of gifted students with and without disabilities, at the Department of Education and Psychology. Laura  King  works as a teacher-researcher. She has taught English as a second language for over 18 years. She has recently completed a three-year study on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for students with learning disabilities and reading difficulties. Dorit Olenik-Shemesh  is a specialist in emotional intelligence and coordinates the special education academic course at the Open University Israel.

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Hadi Rangin  is an information technology accessibility specialist at the Accessibility Technology Center and DO-IT Centre at the University of Washington. Rangin identifies accessibility issues on campus and promotes universally designed software. Jane Seale’s  research focuses, in particular, on the role that technologies play in the lives of adults with learning disabilities and the factors that influence or sustain the digital exclusion of disabled learners.

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 A contextualised model of accessibility (Seale, 2006) 9 Fig. 3.1 Characteristics of a UD strategy: It is accessible, usable, and inclusive. (Burgstahler, 2015, p. 15) 48 Fig. 3.2 Relationship of the level of access provided through UD versus accommodations of a campus that primarily embrace the accommodation framework compared to one that promotes UD 49 Fig. 3.3 Dimensions of a UDHE Framework 51 Fig. 3.4 Inclusive Campus Model underpinned by the UDHE Framework51 Fig. 3.5 Early and later versions of holistic model of e-learning accessibility 55 Fig. 3.6 The VIVID (Vision Impaired using Virtual IT Discovery) model56 Fig. 3.7 A staff development model for inclusive learning design 59 Fig. 3.8 The stakeholders who mediate the relationship between a student with a disability and an accessibility unit 60 Fig. 3.9 The EU4ALL model 62 Fig. 4.1 University of Washington Stakeholder engagement model 78 Fig. 6.1 The AccessSTEM model for applying evidence-based interventions. (Copyright © 2011, Sheryl Burgstahler, University of Washington) 123 Fig. 6.2 Transition service and advice network in Germany. (Copyright © 2019, Christian Bühler, TU-Dortmund University) 131

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List of Tables

Table 3.1a Comparing the nine models based on their approach to access 63 Table 3.1b Comparing the nine models based on their views of engagement, responsibility, and change 64 Table 3.1c Comparing the nine models based on ICT support, student support, and stakeholder engagement 65 Table 7.1 Five categories of ‘futures thinking’ 146

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Jane Seale

Abstract  The focus of this book is disability, Information and Communication Technologies and Higher Education. Specifically, the contributing authors of this book examine the role that ICT can play in reducing the disadvantage that students with disabilities experience within HE. The purpose of this chapter is to outline and justify the contents and themes of the book, as well as to provide a background against which the issues discussed can be understood. In order to achieve this, this chapter will: (1) define key terms; (2) review relevant international legislation; (3) outline the aims and objectives of the research underpinning this book and (4) provide an overview of the five key themes that will be addressed in the book: models, stakeholders, designs, transitions and new solutions. Keywords  ICT • Disability • Higher education • Legislation • Practice • Research

J. Seale (*) Faculty of Wellness, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_1

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Contextualising the Scene In this section, I will provide an overview of how we will define and use key terms such as disability, ICT and Higher Education. I will then provide an overview of relevant international legislation. Definitions and Use of Terms For the purposes of this book, disability is defined broadly to include physical, sensory, mobility, social and cognitive disabilities. It is acknowledged, however, that disability does not define a single homogeneous group; students with different disabilities and within disability groups show substantial variation in terms of their experiences and attainment. The contributing authors to this book come from five different countries and as a consequence, the exact terminology used varies. In some countries, writers refer to ‘students with disabilities’ while in others they refer to ‘disabled students’. There are considered arguments for the use of each term (see, e.g. Seale, 2014), but in order to main consistency across the whole book we will use the term ‘students with disabilities’. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is understood broadly to include online learning (both distance and blended learning), assistive technologies such as screen-readers, general use technologies such as tablets, social and networking applications such as Facebook as well as specific application technologies such as statistics packages. Different countries and different authors use different terms such as Information Technology (IT), but again in order to maintain consistency, whenever referring generally or collectively to technology in this book we will use the term ICT. Sometimes, in the book, a distinction will be made between mainstream and specialist technologies, where specialist refers to assistive technology (AT). There are many definitions and categorisations of AT (see Seale, 2014 for an overview) but for the purpose of this book it will be understood as ‘any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities’ (United States Congress, 2004). The term Higher Education (HE) will be used broadly to mean education which is normally delivered by a university or college. More specifically, the focus is on the teaching and learning experiences of students with disabilities registered for undergraduate or postgraduate degree

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­ rogrammes. Alternative terms used in other countries include tertiary p education, post-secondary education or post-compulsory education. Throughout this book, we will explore the role that ICT can play in enabling access to HE and more specifically access to positive learning experiences. An associated term that will be frequently used within the book is accessibility. There are a range of definitions of accessibility (Seale, 2014), but for the purposes of this book, accessibility will be understood as: […] the ability of the learning environment to adjust to the needs of all learners. Accessibility is determined by the flexibility of the education environment (with respect to presentation, control methods, access modality, and learner supports) and the availability of adequate alternative-but-­ equivalent content and activities. The needs and preferences of a user may arise from the context or environment the user is in … Accessible systems adjust the user interface of the learning environment, locate needed resources and adjust the properties of the resources to match the needs and preferences of the user. (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2004, Section 2)

As a definition of accessibility, this one is quite attractive for three main reasons. Firstly, it rejects a focus on just disabled learners, preferring instead to address the needs of all learners. Secondly, it rejects a deficit approach to disability. Finally, it locates responsibility firmly with all relevant stakeholders to influence the ability of the learning environment to adjust to learner needs and preferences. Accessibility Legislation A review of research and practice literature over the last thirty years reveals that legislation has been a core focus of attention (Seale, 2006, 2014). The majority of stakeholders have argued that the best way to reduce the disadvantage that students with disabilities experience within HE with regard to their ICT access and use is to introduce legislation that makes it mandatory for HE institutions to ensure their ICT is accessible and to threaten severe consequences if they do not. The contributing authors of this book come from the United States of America (USA), Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), Germany and Israel where legislation that has some relevance to accessibility has been established; some more recently than others.1,2,3,4,5,6

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In the USA, there is the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and its 2008 Amendments7 and other relevant federal statutes, such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (see Hums, Schmidt, Novak, & Wolff, 2016 for a summary). The Office for Civil Rights (n.d.) enforces a variety of American federal laws that apply to HE.  Rowland (2012), Director of WebAIM, highlighted legal action taken in America against a number of colleges and universities between 2009 and 2012 concerning the inaccessibility of their ICT. Probably as a reaction to such complaints, the United States Departments of Education and Justice jointly issued a “Dear Colleague Letter” in 2010 to presidents of colleges and universities expressing concern over the use of emerging technologies (U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, 2010). This was followed by a supplement which provided guidance on the use of emerging technology and institutions’ obligations to students with a broad range of disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). Axelrod (2018) wrote that in the USA, publishers do not have to make their books accessible. If materials are not accessible to students with disabilities, the HE institution is liable. Recommendations about how to avoid legal action are available in Rowland, Whiting, and Smith (2015). In 2010  in England, Scotland and Wales, the Equality Act (Advance HE, n.d.) brought together previous equality legislation. In relation to HE institutions, the Equality Act protects staff and students with a variety of characteristics, including disabilities. It places a duty on HE institutions to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for staff and students with disabilities. More recently, in September 2018, the United Kingdom adopted the European Union’s Directive on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications (The Paciello Group, 2018), which covers HE institutions. The Directive includes technical requirements aligned with WCAG 2.1 (2018), but also goes beyond technical compliance. It requires HE institutions to provide a website statement on compliance, a mechanism for end users to report accessibility issues and a link to report complaints. Enforcement mechanisms, however, are not as strong as some might like. They depend on individuals making complaints to the Equality and Human Rights Commission and, if successful, will provide for compensation but not fines (Christopherson, 2018). In Germany, Section 2.4 of the Higher Education Framework Act (Hochshulrahmengesetz, 1976 and updated in 1999 and 2017) requires that universities ensure that students with disabilities are not disadvantaged in their studies.8 As these institutions are under public law, all ICT

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and IT-based services that universities offer are required to be barrier-free and accessible. A core component of this Act, however, is that responsibility for compliance is devolved to individual states (länder). This may partly or wholly explain why accessible and ICT related practices are inconsistent. In 2011, the German parliament ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN-CRPD) and in doing so committed itself to the establishing of an inclusive education system. Aust (2018) reports that so far, most of the efforts to honour this commitment have ignored HE. Canadian legislation consists of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Government of Canada, 2019), the Canadian Human Rights Act which created the Canadian Human Rights Commission (Government of Canada, 2018a) and Canada’s approval of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2010 (cf. Council of Canadians with Disabilities, 2011). However, none of these guarantee the accessibility of ICTs for Canadian HE students with disabilities. Although Canada is proposing to create an Accessible Canada Act (Government of Canada, 2018b) which would ensure accessibility of ICTs to several federal organisations, this does not include colleges or universities. Nevertheless, Canada benefits from American legislation. Once American ICTs are made accessible, the version produced for English language Canadian students and institutions are usually still accessible after modification. Moreover, many Canadian colleges and universities, especially larger ones, have policies that serve to ensure ICT accessibility for their students (e.g. McGill—Office for Students with Disabilities, 2019). Smaller institutions often employ a central group that provides equipment and expertise to its members. Moreover, access professionals have instant communication with one another through a Canada-wide electronic mailing list (listserv: ACCESS-EDU). Like Germany, the major challenge for Canada is that education falls under the responsibility of each province or territory. Each geographical region is responsible for its own disability legislation (e.g. Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2014). Much of the accessibility legislation requires updating and re-­ evaluation (e.g. Smith, 2018) and further, Canada has no nation-wide digital-accessibility legislation (Essential Accessibility, 2018). Indeed, this decentralised approach makes for an uneven playing field with respect to the provision of accessible ICT for students with disabilities. In Israel, like the USA, legislators write law in this area at the federal level. The aim of the Law for the Equal Rights of People with Disabilities

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(5758-1998) is to guarantee Israeli society’s commitment to promoting equal rights for people with disabilities by preventing discrimination, striving for equality by providing adjustments and encouraging affirmative action. In order to help implement the equal rights act for people with disabilities, the law has been amended to include more specific reference to accessibility. The amendment to the Equal Rights of People with Disabilities Law (5773-2012) therefore includes a list specifying the places requiring accessibility, including accessibility adjustments in HE institutions and the services they provide. To ease the operational and financial burden entailed in making current services and public places accessible for persons with a disability, the process may be implemented gradually. Accessibility timetables and gradual application are detailed in the accessibility regulations, which must be fulfilled by November 1, 2021.9,10 In addition, as part of the law in Israel, the employer shall not discriminate against his or her employees or persons seeking employment, because of their disabilities, provided that they are qualified for the job or position in question (this includes hiring, employment terms and promotion at work). When needed, the employers are required to provide suitable accommodation, which includes modifying the workplace, the equipment therein, job requirements, work hours, job hiring tests, training and instruction and work procedures, all without imposing an undue burden on the employer. A public committee that examined the implementation of the Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act (Laron, 2005) emphasised the crucial role of HE in the integration of people with disabilities into society and employment. The committee found that the higher the level of education of people with severe disabilities, the greater the chances are that they will integrate into society in general, and in employment in particular, and will be able to support themselves. The committee called for expanding access to HE institutions and student support programmes. Specific regulations were passed in 2016, under which academic institutions are obligated to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities (Access Israel, 2016). On the other hand, the main challenge Israel is facing is the need to increase collaboration with the National Insurance Institute (started in 2011) so as to raise the necessary funds to improve the existing accessibility in their HE institutions (Eliav, Benayoun, Sabato, & Berger, 2014). Whilst legislation is probably a necessary pre-condition for improvements to be made to the ICT related experiences of students with disabilities, the main premise of this book is that on its own, legislation is not

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enough. One of the main problems with legislation is that it points to rules that practitioners should comply with. It does not however help practitioners translate those rules into practice. Legislation tells a practitioner what they should do, but not how they can do it. This is probably one of the main reasons why, despite the existence of an array of laws and policies, students with disabilities in HE are still disadvantaged (see Chap. 2 for a wider discussion).

Conceptualising the Scene: Integrating Research and Practice This book is the product of a three-year long collaboration between fifteen practitioners and researchers from the UK, USA, Canada, Germany and Israel. This collaborative International Network was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and was titled ‘Disabled students, ICT, post-­compulsory education & employment: in search of new solutions’, Ed-ICT for short. The overarching aim of the Ed-ICT International Network was to seek ways in which research could inform practice (and vice versa) in the field so that the disadvantage that disabled learners experience can be reduced, or better still eliminated. The Ed-ICT International Network therefore explored the role that ICTs play, or could play, in both creating barriers and mitigating disadvantages that students with disabilities in HE experience both generally and specifically in relation to social, emotional and educational outcomes. The network also examined how practices of educators and other stakeholders could potentially craft successful and supportive relationships between learners with disabilities and ICT.  The related objectives of the network were to: • Synthesise and compare the available research evidence across the five countries regarding the relationship between students with disabilities, ICTs and HE • Construct theoretical explanations for why ICTs have not achieved the dramatic reductions in discrimination, disadvantage and exclusion hoped for when equality and discrimination related laws were published across the five countries • Provide new perspectives about potential future solutions regarding how HE institutions can better use ICTs to remove the ongoing problems of disadvantage and exclusion of students with disabilities

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In order to meet these objectives five international symposia were held, each focusing on one of the following broad themes: . Effective models and frameworks (Seattle Symposium, March 2017) 1 2. New stakeholder perspectives (Montreal Symposium, June 2017) 3. New designs (Tel Aviv Symposium, March 2018) 4. Effective transition practices (Hagen Symposium, October 2018) 5. New solutions (Milton Keynes Symposium, June 2019). For each symposium, stakeholders from the host country were invited to present, share and discuss their research and practice. Stakeholders included: students with disabilities; faculty and professionals responsible for faculty/staff development; professionals responsible for support services for students with disabilities; campus information technology staff; digital textbook and resource publishers; and senior institutional administrators. All outputs from the symposia have been made available from the project website.11

Conceptualising the Scene: A Thematic Overview In this section, I will provide an overview of the five main themes that will be examined across the chapters of this book. Effective Models and Frameworks In response to a perceived lack of progress in making ICT related learning experiences accessible for students with disabilities in HE, I have argued that legislation should not be the sole focus of attention (Seale, 2006). I argued that focusing on the rules contained within legislation was constraining thought and therefore practice. The community needed to expand its ideas and therefore I suggested that conceptual tools such as metaphors, models and frameworks could provide a stimulus for this new thinking by providing a supporting structure around which practice could be built. With this in mind, I proposed a new model for conceptualising the context in which accessibility practice needed to develop (see Fig. 1.1 and also Chap. 3). One important contribution that this model made to the field was to suggest that in order to respond to external drivers such as legislation, standards and guidelines (see top of Fig.  1.1), stakeholders needed to

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DRIVERS

UNIVERSAL STANDARDS

HEI STAKEHOLDERS

STAKEHOLDER RESPONSES

STUDENT

DEVELOP SHARED GOALS

LECTURER

DEVELOP POLICES & STRATEGIES

LEARNING TECHNOLOGIST

RE-ORGANISE SERVICES IDENTIFY BROKERS

SUPPORT WORKER

DEVELOP STRATEGIC

STAFF DEVELOPER

DEFINE & AGREE BEST PRACTICE

SENIOR MANAGER

VIEWS OF DISABILITY

VIEWS OF ACCESSIBILITY

DEVELOP & USE OWN TOOLS

VIEWS OF INTEGRATION & SEGREGRATION

VIEWS OF DUTY & RESPONSIBILITY

VIEWS OF TEAMS & COMMUNITY

MEDIATORS

Fig. 1.1  A contextualised model of accessibility (Seale, 2006)

PARTIALLLY OR OPTIMALLY ACCESSIBLE E-LEARNING

UNIVERSAL GUIDELINES

OUTCOME

LEGISLATION

VIEWS OF AUTONOMY & COMPLIANCE

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work together to develop their own tools (e.g. models). The creation of such tools would be mediated by stakeholder views of a range of issues including disability, integration and compliance (see bottom of Fig. 1.1). The rise in ubiquity of the Universal Design (UD) model provides one example of how this has happened in the field. In response to legislation (typically in the USA) many researchers and practitioners have identified UD as a solution to poor accessibility practices (Fichten, Asuncion, Barile, Ferraro, & Wolforth, 2009; Grabinger, 2010; Harper & DeWaters, 2008; Perlow, 2007). They are drawn to this model because it resonates with their views on accessibility, inclusivity, disability, equity and accommodations. Whilst advocacy for UD has generally helped to move the field forward, I have expressed concern that the community appears to have latched onto the UD model without considering (a) what evidence exists to show that UD does actually improve the learning experiences of students with disabilities and (b) whether there are any alternatives to UD that need to be considered before opting for UD as the sole solution (Seale, 2014, 2017a, 2017b). At the Seattle Symposium, we therefore undertook to identify all other models and frameworks that exist in the field and to evaluate their potential to help develop practice that can, through the use of ICT, successfully alleviate the disadvantaging and exclusion of students with disabilities. Chapter 3 of the book reports and discusses this examination in more detail. New Stakeholder Perspectives In justifying the value of the contextualised model of accessibility, I have argued that the extent to which ICT related learning experiences are accessible will be influenced by how all the stakeholders within an HE institution respond to external drivers for accessibility such as legislation, guidelines and standards (Seale, 2006). This response will be mediated by stakeholders’ views and understandings of disability, accessibility and inclusion; duty and responsibility; autonomy and freedom; and teamwork and community. The practices that develop out of these responses will vary depending on the stakeholders and the context in which they are operating but essentially centre on taking ownership and control as well as developing personal meaning from externally imposed impersonal mandates. With regard to the legislation that I have outlined earlier in this chapter, my argument is that it will not on its own change ICT related practice within an HE institution because the stakeholders must translate

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legislation into polices and strategies that are meaningful to them in the context in which they are working. What the contextualised model of accessibility stresses is the existence of a ‘gap’ between the drivers for accessible ICT related practice and their desired outcome (ICT related learning experiences). The gap between drivers and outcome needs to be ‘bridged’ by accessible ICT related practices and the stakeholders within an HE institution each have a role in helping to bridge that gap. In considering what barriers might exist to hinder all relevant stakeholders contributing to changes and improvements in practice, I have argued that some stakeholders try to absolve themselves of responsibility, others are invisible and still others are visible but not listened to (Seale, 2014, 2017b). At the Montreal Symposium therefore, we undertook to examine questions such as: What are the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder? Which stakeholders are not heard? What factors contribute to the silencing of stakeholder voices? What can be done to promote the amplification of stakeholder voices? Chapter 4 therefore reports and discusses this examination in more detail. New Designs In the ICT, disability and HE community, it is relatively easy to find new research reporting new ICT design developments. Some recent research has focused on developing new applications for existing technologies. For example, Rumrill et al. (2016) describe some apps for the iPad that they have developed designed to offer cognitive support for students living with traumatic brain injury by providing psychological interventions. Goldberg, Karimi, and Pearlman (2016) describe how they have integrated three systems that they had previously developed: an online location-­based education system, a social navigation network system and a group-forming collaborative learning system. This integrated system, which they call IMAGINE, makes recommendations to physically disabled students about which learning resources or activities would best meet their needs. Collins, Davies, and Gaved (2016) describe how they have used a portable Wi-Fi network and mobile technologies to support the inclusion of students with physical disabilities in field study courses. Other research has focused on developing new technologies that assist students with disabilities in engaging with tasks that they are commonly required to undertake but can find difficult or inaccessible such as note-­ taking, reading texts or interpreting numerical data. For example, a team

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based at Southampton University in the UK has developed a web based application called Synote that enables a student to create synchronised bookmarks or ‘Synmarks’. These bookmarks can contain notes and tags synchronised with audio or video recordings, transcripts and slides/images from lectures and can be used to find and replay parts of the recordings.12 Developed by a research-based consultancy organisation in Denmark, Sensusaccess13 automatically converts documents into alternative media including audio, ebook and digital braille. Sensusaccess is currently being trialled in the Open University, UK to enable students to convert documents themselves. While, Vines and colleagues outline how they have investigated the use of sonification as an alternative or supplement to figure descriptions and tactile graphs for representing numerical data that is displayed in a plot or a graph.14 These examples, whilst encouraging, present us with a number of conundrums that the delegates of the Tel Aviv Symposium discussed further. For example, Seale (2018) debated the question: If some parts of the community are willing and capable of designing ICTs that meet the access and learning needs of students with disabilities, why can’t all members of the community do so? To justify the posing of such a troubling question, Seale pointed to evidence of continued high levels of inaccessible websites that HE institutions are designing and publishing (see Seale, 2014 and Chap. 2 of this book). The Tel Aviv symposium also examined a second design conundrum relating to what kind of technology needs to be designed. Linked to debates regarding UD, key stakeholders in the community do not always agree about whether the community should be aiming to eliminate the need to design technologies especially for students with disabilities (AT) by designing better mainstream technologies, or whether there will always be a need to design new ATs. Chapter 5 reports and discusses these conundrums in more detail. Effective Transition Practices Quite a lot of attention has been paid to how problematic the process of transition to and from HE can be for students with disabilities (Fisseler, 2018). Kimball, Wells, Ostiguy, Manly, and Lauterbach (2016) highlight how students with disabilities often face unique challenges resulting from the interaction between the institutional environment and the nature of their disabilities, and the services that the institutions provide to students with disabilities vary in their effectiveness and usage. It is generally agreed

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that ICT could play a role in supporting transition. For example, with regard to students with disabilities transitioning to college, the focus has traditionally been on ensuring students can take the AT they have used at school with them to college. However, some argue that general fluency with digital technologies is essential for not only surviving college or HE, but also for vocational training and preparation for employment. Madaus, Banerjee, and Merchant (2011) state that ‘AT alone is no longer sufficient, fluency with broader learning technologies is now an essential element of college survival’. Twenty years ago, small-scale research identified a potential need for HE institutions to play a more active role in introducing students with disabilities to both mainstream and specialist technologies. For example, in a US study, students reported that their ICT needs had not been evaluated prior to college entry and that information about technology or accommodations in the workplace had not been provided by the university when they began transitioning to employment. (Rumrill Jr., Koch, Murphy, & Jannarone, 1999). In a UK study, Mull and Sitlington (2003) conducted a literature review in order to examine the role of technology in the transition to HE.  They concluded that although ICT can make things easier for students with disabilities, students can struggle to get access to it either because of cost or issues related to this because questions arise about their eligibility to receive funding for ICT. Students find that they have to be more proactive in HE and advocate for themselves with regard to applying for an assessment of their individual needs and for AT devices or reasonable accommodations. Twenty or so years later, however, very little new research has been conducted into what the benefits might be of factoring ICT into transitioning planning. In a systematic review of HE transition interventions published between 1997 and 2017, Lindsay et al. (2018) identified just four transition projects that included online delivery, either for meeting support needs or for developing ICT literacy skills. Lindsay et  al. used their review to try and identify best practices in transition programmes generally. Although they highlight that the format of successful programmes can vary and can include an online element, they do not identify or discuss what best practice might be in relation to the delivery of the specific online element. The Hagen symposium therefore attempted to address this gap and consider questions such as how should ICT and ICT literacy skills be integrated into transition programmes? Chapter 6 draws

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on examples from participating countries of the Ed-ICT network in order to suggest possible answers to these questions. New Solutions Despite thirty years of legislation (and associated standards and guidelines), technology is still not meeting its full potential. This may be partly due to technical barriers such as inaccessibility that could be solved by new design practices that produce new accessible ICTs. But mostly, I would argue, it is due to poor practice beyond the realms of ICT design. It is due to poor practice in the lecture halls and seminar rooms, poor practice in student support services and poor practice in the wider HE institution. In 2014, I highlighted the fact that many researchers and practitioners in the community had identified training and UD as two potential solutions to address poor practice (Seale, 2014). I also questioned the manner in which the community members had gone about advocating for these two new solutions: The majority of researchers in the field have constructed a narrative in their papers, which is so consistently repeated that it has in my view, become a habitual mantra that is voiced but rarely questioned. The mantra goes something like this: 1. There are a growing number of disabled students entering higher education, so many in fact that we can no longer ignore their accessibility needs 2. In addition to these growing numbers there is equality and anti-­ discrimination legislation which practitioners are obliged to comply with; and this legislation applies to e-learning, so accessibility practices should therefore improve 3. Despite these drivers, accessibility practices are not improving 4. The solution to poor accessibility practices is training 5. The solution to poor accessibility practices is universal design This mantra needs questioning. The silences around this mantra need questioning. In particular, it is imperative that we examine the evidence that universal design is effective in improving the accessibility of e-learning resources or that accessibility training improves accessibility practices. (Seale, 2014, 16–17)

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One way to examine this mantra (and others) is to develop new ways of thinking and framing the issue of poor practice. An example of our attempt to do this in this book is to look beyond our own national borders and engage in an international comparison of certain practices. By comparing and contrasting how each country has addressed the same issues, it is ­possible that the evidence base for (or against) accepted truths is extended. It may also be possible for new possibilities to be created through proposals to adapt or apply an approach from one country to another. The Milton Keynes symposium attempted to go one step further than this by providing time and space for participants to build on what they had learnt from the five countries and as a result identify future directions in both research and practice. Chapter 7 adopts a ‘futures thinking’ lens to examine the outcomes of this attempt as reflected in the discussions contained within Chaps. 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Conclusion The premise of this book is that ICT has a role to play in reducing the disadvantage that students with disabilities experience within HE. In this chapter, I have identified the legislative drivers that have the potential to reduce the barriers that prevent ICT playing such a role. I have also argued that despite such drivers, ICT related accessibility practice will not improve unless key factors such as models, stakeholders, designs and transitions are examined and critiqued in more detail. It is through such critique that I contend we can give voice to new possibilities.

Notes 1. Sheryl Burgstahler, Alice Havel, Bjorn Fisseler, Chetz Colwell and Dana Kaspi-Tsahor contributed to the content of this section. 2. https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/united-states/ 3. https://www.essentialaccessibility.com/blog/canadian-accessibility-laws/ 4. https://cielo24.com/2016/12/uk-web-accessibility-law/ 5. https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/germany/ 6. h t t p s : / / w w w. j u s t i c e . g o v. i l / E n / U n i t s / C o m m i s s i o n E q u a l RightsPersonsDisabilities/Accessibility/Accessibility_Legislation/Pages/ Accessibility-Legislation-Default.aspx 7. https://www.ada.gov 8. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hrg/index.html

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9. h t t p s : / / w w w. j u s t i c e . g o v. i l / E n / U n i t s / C o m m i s s i o n E q u a l RightsPersonsDisabilities/Accessibility/What-is-an-Accessibility/Pages/ Service-Accessibility.aspx 10. https://www.nevo.co.il/law_html/Law01/501_479.htm 11. http://ed-ict.com 12. https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/projects/synote/ 13. http://www.sensusaccess.com/service-description 14. http://users.mct.open.ac.uk/chris.hughes/sonification-phase1-report/ final_report.html

References Access Israel. (2016). Regulation of higher education institutions in Israel, 2016. Resource document. Access Israel. https://www.aisrael.org/?CategoryID=32 54&ArticleID=53299 Advance HE. (n.d.). Equality legislation. Resource document. Advance HE. https://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/equality-legislation/ Aust, R. (2018). Disability in higher education: Explanations and legitimisations from teachers at Leipzig University. Social Inclusion, 6(4), 125–136. Axelrod, J. (2018). Making materials accessible to students in higher education institutes: Institutional obligations, methods of compliance, and recommendations for future action. Learned Publishing, 31(1), 39–44. https://doi. org/10.1002/leap.1148. Christopherson, R. (2018). Government identifies body to enforce website accessibility – Now will they step up to the task? Resource document. AbilityNet. https:// www.abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/government-identifies-body-enforcewebsite-accessibility Collins, T., Davies, S., & Gaved, M. (2016). Enabling remote activity: widening participation in field study courses. In D.  Kennepohl (Ed.), Teaching science online: Practical guidance for effective instruction and lab work (pp. 183–195). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Council of Canadians with Disabilities. (2011, February). UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities: Making domestic implementation real and meaningful. Resource document. Council of Canadians with Disabilities. http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/international/un/canada/making-domesticimplementation-real-and-meaningfulfeb2011 Eliav, T., Benayoun, D., Sabato, I., & Berger, E. (2014). National insurance institute, review of main activities and trends 2013. Resource document. Israeli government. https://www.btl.gov.il/Funds/Documents/KranotSkira2013.pdf Essential Accessibility. (2018, March 16). An overview of Canada’s accessibility laws: A look at the old and the new. https://www.essentialaccessibility.com/ blog/canadian-accessibility-laws/. Accessed 27 Sep 2019.

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Fichten, C.  S., Asuncion, J., Barile, M., Ferraro, V., & Wolforth, J. (2009). Accessibility of e-learning and computer and information technologies for students with visual impairments in postsecondary education. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 103, 543–557. Fisseler, B. (2018). New Practices: What individual and institutional practices can support the transition to and from PCE and from PCE to employment? Discussion paper for Ed-ICT Leverhulme International Network Symposium Hagen, October, 2018. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Fisseler-New-Practices-Ed-ICT-Symposium-4.pdf Goldberg, M., Karimi, H., & Pearlman, J. L. (2016). Interactive, mobile, Agile and novel education (IMAGINE): A conceptual framework to support students with mobility challenges in higher education. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 11(1), 50–60. Government of Canada. (2018a, October 22). Canadian Human Rights Commission. Resource document. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/human-rights-commission.html Government of Canada. (2018b, December 11). Proposed Accessible Canada Act – Summary of the bill. Employment and Social Development Canada. Resource document. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/employmentsocial-development/pr ograms/accessible-people-disabilities/actsummary.html Government of Canada. (2019, February 22). Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982. Resource document. Government of Canada. https://lawslois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html Grabinger, S. (2010). A framework for supporting postsecondary learners with psychiatric disabilities in online environments. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 8(2), 101–110. Harper, K. A., & DeWaters, J. (2008). A quest for website accessibility in higher education institutions. Internet and Higher Education, 11, 160–164. Hums, M. A., Schmidt, S. H., Novak, A., & Wolff, E. A. (2016). Universal design: Moving the Americans with Disabilities Act from access to inclusion. Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, 26, 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1123/las.2015-0011. IMS Global Learning Consortium. (2004). IMS access for all meta-data overview. Resource document. IMS Global Learning Consortium. http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accmdv1p0/imsaccmd_oviewv1p0.html Kimball, E. W., Wells, R. S., Ostiguy, B. J., Manly, C. A., & Lauterbach, A. A. (2016). Students with disabilities in higher education: A review of the literature and an agenda for future research. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 31, pp.  91–156). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Laron, E. (2005). Report of the public commission to examine matters relating to persons with disabilities and to promote their integration into the community. Jerusalem. (Hebrew).

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Lindsay, S., Lamptey, D.-L., Cagliostro, E., Srikanthan, D., Mortaji, N., & Karon, L. (2018). A systematic review of post-secondary transition interventions for youth with disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation, 1–14. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/09638288.2018.1470260. Madaus, J. W., Banerjee, M., & Merchant, D. (2011). Transition to postsecondary education. In J.  M. Kauffman & D.  P. Hallahan (Eds.), Handbook of special education (pp. 571–583). New York: Routledge. McGill – Office for Students with Disabilities. (2019). Access technology & computing resources. Resource document. McGill University. https://www.mcgill.ca/ osd/student-resources/accesstech Mull, C. A., & Sitlington, P. L. (2003). The role of technology in the transition to postsecondary education of students with learning disabilities. A review of the literature. The Journal of Special Education, 37(1), 26–32. https://doi.org/10 .1177/00224669030370010301. Office for Civil Rights. (n.d.). About OCR. Resource document. U.S. Department of Education. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/aboutocr.html Ontarians with Disabilities Act. (2014, April 22). The Act (AODA). Resource document. Ontario Government. https://www.aoda.ca/the-act/ Perlow, E. (2007). Accessibility in the postsecondary classroom: Health education faculty perspectives (2006–2007). Paper presented at CSUN 2007, Los Angeles, 22nd March. Resource document. CSUN. http://www.a4access.org/ csun2007.doc Rowland, C. (2012, November 19). Review of recent legal issues in higher education and web accessibility. http://ncdae.org/blog/recent-legal-issues/ Accessed 27 Sep 2019. Rowland, C., Whiting, J., & Smith, J. (2015). What do you need to create and maintain web accessibility? In D.  L. Edyburn (Ed.), Accessible instructional design technology (Vol. 2, pp.  13–45). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Rumrill, P. D., Jr., Koch, L. C., Murphy, P. J., & Jannarone, A. (1999). Technology transfer concerns of college graduates with disabilities: Profiles in transition from higher education to competitive careers. Work, 13(1), 43–49. Rumrill, P.  E., Hendricks, E., Jacobs, D.  J., Leopold, K., Hendricks, D.  J., Sampson, E., et al. (2016). Promoting cognitive support technology use and employment success among postsecondary students with traumatic brain injuries. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 45(1), 53–61. Seale, J. (2006). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis Group. Seale, J. (2017a). From the voice of a ‘socratic gadfly’: A call for more academic activism in the researching of disability in postsecondary education. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 32(1), 153–169. https://doi.org/10.1080 /08856257.2016.1254967.

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Seale, J. (2017b). What models, approaches or frameworks exist in the field of disability, ICT and post-secondary education: are they successful in transforming the support and delivery of ICT for disabled students or do we need new ones? Discussion paper for Ed-ICT Leverhulme International Network Symposium, Seattle, March 2017. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/wpcontent/uploads/2017/03/Seale_Ed_ICT_paper_03032017.pdf Seale, J. (2018). Making higher education more accessible to disabled students: Do we need new technologies or new technology practices. Discussion paper for Ed-ICT Leverhulme International Network Symposium Tel Aviv, March 2018. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/tel-aviv/ programme/ Seale, J.  K. (2014). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Smith, E. (2018, February 18). Members of new advisory board want Nova Scotia to rethink accessibility. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/accessibility-advisory-board-province-legislation-members-1.4541188. Accessed 27 Sep 2019. The Paciello Group. (2018, April 26). EU directive on the accessibility of public sector websites and mobile applications. https://developer.paciellogroup.com/ blog/2018/04/eu-directive-on-the-accessibility-of-public-sector-websitesand-mobile-applications/. Accessed 27 Sep 2019. The United States Congress. (2004). The Assistive Technology Act. Resource document. US Congress. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS108hr4278enr/pdf/BILLS-108hr4278enr.pdf U.  S. Department of Education. (2011). Electronic book reader Dear Colleague letter: Questions and answers about the law, the technology, and the population affected. Resource document. Office for Civil Rights. http://www2.ed.gov/ about/offices/list/ocr/docs/504-qa-20100629.html U.S. Department of Justice and the U. S. Department of Education. (2010, June 29). Joint “dear colleague”: Electronic book readers. Resource document. US Government. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100629.htm W3C. (2018). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. Resource document. W3C. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/

CHAPTER 2

Higher Education, Information and Communication Technologies and Students with Disabilities: An Overview of the Current Situation Catherine Fichten, Dorit Olenik-Shemesh, Jennison Asuncion, Mary Jorgensen, and Chetz Colwell Abstract  This chapter provides context for the issues discussed throughout the book to justify why the issue of students with disabilities using technology to support their studies in higher education continues to be both important and problematic. To do this, the chapter: (1) reviews current statistics regarding enrollment and success of students with disabilities in higher education; (2) examines the role and prevailing use of

C. Fichten (*) Dawson College and McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] D. Olenik-Shemesh The Open University, Ra’anana, Israel J. Asuncion · M. Jorgensen Adaptech Research Network, Montreal, QC, Canada C. Colwell The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_2

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information and communication technologies in higher education; (3) considers the potential of the next wave of new ICTs; (4) illuminates with examples the many good, bad and terrible practices related to ICTs experienced by students in higher education; and (5) discusses the implications for future research and practice. Keywords  ICT • Disability • Higher education • Trends • Predictions

Statistics Regarding the Success of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education Over 11% of students enrolled in two-year and four-year colleges in Canada and the United States have a disability (Fichten et  al., 2018; Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities (Ontario), 2012; Snyder, de Brey, & Dillow, 2016); however, the 2016 American Freshman Survey (Eagan et  al., 2017), based on 137,456 full-time students who entered 184 American 4-year colleges and universities, found that 21.9% self-­ reported a disability. Similar percentages have been reported in other countries. For example, a recent investigation noted that 12% of undergraduates had a disability in the United Kingdom (Advance HE, 2018). These students encounter a variety of barriers in pursuing higher education (HE), including problems with support services, faculty attitudes, as well as technological problems. Given their large numbers, understanding facilitators and barriers to the academic success of students with disabilities is vital. A variety of articles show that HE students with disabilities graduate at the same rate as students without disabilities, however, they take additional time to do so (Arim, 2017; Jorgensen et  al., 2005; Knight, Wessel, & Markle, 2018). Other investigations, however, show that students with disabilities are more likely to drop out than their nondisabled peers (DaDeppo, 2009; Newman, Wagner, Cameto, & Knokey, 2009; Rosenbaum, 2018; Wessel, Jones, Markle, & Westfall, 2009) and less likely to graduate (Advance HE, 2018). While some studies reported that the nature of students’ disabilities was a factor (e.g., S. Jorgensen et al., 2003), other studies report no differences (e.g., Herbert et al., 2014). As Kimball, Wells, Ostiguy, Manly, and Lauterbach (2016) concluded, graduation rates are not well understood.

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The large American NLTS2 study showed that students with disabilities are more likely to attend 2-year or community colleges than 4-year colleges or universities (Newman et al., 2011). As well, it is important to note that approximately half of the students who self-report disabilities do not register to receive disability-related services from their schools (Fichten et  al., 2016, 2018). These students must cope with their access needs, including their ICT-related access needs, on their own. The North American and European economies have become progressively more knowledge based. This makes an HE credential more important (Carnevale & Desrochers, 2003). Education helps individuals with disabilities obtain employment (Getzel & Thoma, 2008; Shaw, Gold, & Wolffe, 2007). For example, a recent study found that of those HE graduates with disabilities in the labor force (i.e., employed or looking for work), 70% were employed a year after graduation (Jorgensen et  al., 2015), a figure somewhat lower than the employment rate of students without disabilities. The same is true in the United Kingdom (Advance HE, 2018). Canadian, American, and British data show that students who enroll in but do not complete an HE program are less likely to be employed, and receive a lower salary than a graduate (Advance HE, 2018; Jorgensen et al., 2015; Ma, Pender, & Welch, 2016). There are a number of reasons for the large numbers of students with disabilities graduating from HE including: the increased recognition of the abilities of students with disabilities; a redefinition of disability that recognizes that this group includes students other than those with mobility and sensory disabilities; a de-medicalization of disability in the HE context; and the increased presence of ICTs within HE.

Higher Education and Information and Communication Technologies: Turn of the Century to Current Times To understand the role and prevailing use of ICTs in HE, it is important to put the current situation in context. To do this, in this section we cover the evolution of specialized assistive technology (AT), the use of ICTs in online and face-to-face instruction1 and the blending of assistive and general use ICTs.2

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Specialized Assistive Technology In the 2000s, the medical model lost ground. In this framework, the emphasis was on managing the student’s disability and on providing accommodations, including assistive technology (AT), for each student based on diagnosis and needs (National Educational Association of Disabled Students, 2012). Since the 2000s, the social model of disability, where the focus is on making changes to the environment to ensure accessibility to as many people as possible (McGuire, 2011), has been gaining strength in Canadian, American and British HE institutions (Black, Weinberg, & Brodwin, 2015; Fichten et al., 2016; Thornton & Downs, 2010). This includes the adoption of universal design concepts, which involve responding to the diversity of users from the outset, from the realm of products and buildings (Connell et  al., 1995; Vanderheiden, 1993) to ICTs and HE (Ableser & Moore, 2018; McGuire, Scott, & Shaw, 2003; Thomson, Fichten, Budd, Havel, & Asuncion, 2015). With regard to HE professionals, a key finding is that mainstream ICT specialists on campus know very little about the technological needs of students with disabilities (Fichten et  al., 2009). Subsequent research shows that while many students’ ICT-related access needs are being reasonably well met, there is a key exception—training on how to use needed AT (e.g., screen reading software) (Fichten et al., 2012). These days, most large HE institutions have an assistive technologist on staff (e.g., Access Technology Higher Education Network (ATHEN) https://athenpro. org/). These individuals help students with their AT and also train students on how to use these. The same is not necessarily true for small institutions. In investigations carried out by the Adaptech Research Network3 students noted the high cost of specialized assistive technologies (e.g., screen reading software, specialized multipurpose software for students with learning disabilities). Students also shared low-cost alternatives. This resulted in the compilation, starting in 1999, of a listing of free or inexpensive hardware and software alternatives that might be useful for students with diverse disabilities.4 This compilation continues to grow and showcases both the “built-in” features of PCs, Macs, Android, and iOS devices as well as providing descriptions of a variety of free and low-cost software, hardware, and apps that are evaluated by the Adaptech team. Most smartphones and tablets include powerful built-in accessibility features for people with different disabilities. Given the role of mobile

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t­echnologies in current and future HE, the accessibility, usability, and affordability of apps for mobile devices is an exciting development (Fichten, Havel, Jorgensen, King, & Harvison, 2019). E-Learning and Classroom Use of ICTs Most North American instructors use some form of instructional ICT in their courses (Schmid et  al., 2014). This includes technologies such as PowerPoint, podcasts, videos, polling software, simulations, blogs, digital textbooks, course management systems, lecture capture, and web conferencing (Fichten et  al., 2018; Tarawneh, Tarawneh, & Alzboun, 2011). The extensive deployment of Wi-Fi in most HE institutions, along with mobile computing, is helpful to students with disabilities. These are especially helpful when professors upload their teaching materials in accessible formats and allow students to access these on their own devices. Professors often make online materials available on a course website, course management system, or online education platform which allows students to interact with learning materials outside of the classroom (Lombardi, Murray, & Gerdes, 2011). In some cases, the course management system (CMS)/virtual learning environment (VLE) system is itself problematic. A recent report (Policy Connect, 2018) was produced to help United Kingdom HE institutions adapt when new digital accessibility regulations came into force. The report states that the HE sector, “has a long way to go in making VLEs accessible to all” (p. 12). Digital accessibility problems in HE are not new. Fichten et al. (2009) surveyed over 200 students with disabilities and over 100 staff from Canadian colleges and universities regarding e-learning problems and solutions. “Problems specified by at least 10% of students were, in rank order: inaccessibility of websites/course management systems, technical difficulties, poor use of e-learning by professors, difficulty connecting to websites/course management systems, and students’ lack of knowledge of how to use e-­learning” (p. 247). Of particular concern is that across all groups, the most common response to questions around solutions was “unresolved.” This applied to problems such as “inaccessibility of websites/CMS,” “poor use of e-learning by professors” and “students’ lack of knowledge of how to use e-learning.” Recommendations for ensuring accessibility of AT and e-learning are made by Kenney et al. (2016). Although online content can be inaccessible (e.g., no captioning of videos, PDF files containing scanned images that cannot be read by screen

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reading software), it is material used “on-the-fly” inside the classroom that can pose the most serious access challenges. For example, if the professor uses a video clip in class, this may not be available to the student who requires video description or subtitles. Or if they use a simulation or digital polling in class, students may not be able to download the results onto their devices to make it accessible. As Berkowitz (2008) cautioned over a decade ago, just because it is digital does not mean that it is usable or accessible to all. HE libraries have been increasingly moving toward digital journals and e-books that can be read online or downloaded and borrowed for a predetermined number of days. The accessibility of these e-books varies, however. This trend notwithstanding, unless or until paper-based publications disappear completely from library shelves, colleges and universities must continue seeking ways to address the need for timely access to print material. This was demonstrated by the 2013 settlement agreement involving America’s UC Berkeley’s library (Schwartz, 2013), which underscored that this need is still very much a reality. Fortunately, technology exists to convert most print material into electronic formats. Active learning using digital whiteboards (e.g., Smart Boards), cooperative learning, and flipped classrooms have also become popular (Lasry, Dugdale, & Charles, 2014). This can include interactive white boards (e.g., SMART board) and study pods where students all have digital access and teach each other. A challenge when it comes to interactive white boards is how to make both the content and the ability to use them, accessible to both students with visual or hearing impairments and to students with attention-deficit issues who have difficulty in noisy “team” environments and can get lost in the multiplicity of activities (Gonzalez, 2016). Nevertheless, efforts are ongoing to make active learning accessible (e.g., Illinois State University Media Relations, 2012; Summers & Brauner, 2012). Universal design is a mainstream concept championed by offices that provide disability-related supports on campus (Ableser & Moore, 2018; Burgstahler, 2015; CAST, 2018). Universal design concepts are starting to emerge—although slowly—out of the disability arena (Davies, Schelly, & Spooner, 2013). For example, text-to-speech software has excellent potential for proofreading papers for everyone (Greenbaum, 2014). Captioned videos could help all students with spelling of technical terms or unfamiliar names or words. The use of universal design in e-learning, however, is usually more by happenstance than intention (e.g., PowerPoint and course notes on websites are available to all, but can be considered an

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access accommodation for students with certain disabilities). Social media are also increasingly used in academia (Selwyn, 2012). How accessible these are to students with different disabilities varies, however (Asuncion et  al., 2012). For example, effective YouTube captioning is still not as widely used as it can be. The vast majority of students with and without a disability have a smartphone. For example, 97% of student participants in the large EDUCAUSE student survey by Brooks and Pomerantz (2017) reported owning a smartphone. In a smaller study that included two samples comprised of 46 HE students with and 46 HE students without disabilities 100% of both groups owned a smartphone (Chmilar & Anton, 2018). Smartphones have different levels of built-in features meant to provide access to people with disabilities. There is also the growing number of free or inexpensive software solutions available to support persons with disabilities.4 These developments, along with the trend toward universal design, hold promise for meeting the future technology and e-learning accessibility needs of students with diverse disabilities. Blurring the Lines Between Adaptive and General Use ICTs In a study that is now almost two decades old, close to 800 HE students with disabilities were asked what computer and/or adaptive computer technologies they considered could be useful in getting their academic work done (Fichten et al., 2001). In rank order, the top ten for students with all types of disabilities combined was: spelling/grammar checker, scanner, portable note-taking device, dictation software, alternate format materials (e.g., books, hand-outs), specialized software for learning disabilities (e.g., word prediction), voice control software (voice commands like “file,” “open”), a large screen monitor, text-to-speech software (reads what’s on the screen), and mouse adaptations. The results highlight that technology considered general use ICTs are, in fact, used as AT by students with certain disabilities. For example, the ubiquitous spell checker was used by students with learning disabilities as an AT. Dictation (speech-to-text/voice recognition) software, a key feature of Apple and Android devices, is used as an AT by students with a variety of hand/arm impairments and some types of learning disabilities. Text-to-speech screen reading technologies, originally used by people with visual impairments, have crossed over into the mainstream. The same is true for scanners and optical character recognition software, which are

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used as AT by students with visual and other print impairments. However, experts are not necessarily aware of the way students are using ICTs. For example, a study by Fichten et  al. (2013) showed important gaps in a comparison of experts’ ICT recommendations and ICTs actually used by HE students with learning disabilities. First, students with a learning disability did not report using many of the high-end software that experts believed could benefit them. Conversely, experts did not mention some software tools and apps that students did indicate using to do their school work, such as office suites, smartphones, MP3 players, instant messaging, and concept mapping. Blurring of the division between assistive and general use technologies has allowed students with disabilities access to a vast array of technologies from which to choose. This includes: open source technologies, such as WordPress, Khan Academy, and MySQL; built-in features of software, such as effective dictation, magnification, and narration software built into general use technologies such as Office 365 and Android and iOS devices; general use hardware and software, including inexpensive printers with automatic sheet feeders and bundled scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) software; and inexpensive apps for smartphones and tablets that are useful and usable by students with and without disabilities.

Higher Education and Information and Communication Technologies: The Next Wave New ICTs are expected to be integrated in HE institutions in the coming years. These have the potential to reengineer teaching and learning processes for students with disabilities (Jones, Williams, & Rudinger, 2018), assuming, of course, that they are designed with accessibility in mind and the procurement of institution-wide technologies follows accessibility guidelines. Mobile Technologies Mobile technologies such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets are one of the most promising kind of ICTs (Alexander et al., 2019; Hershkovitz & Forkosh-­Baruch, 2017). Mobile technologies provide a rich range of learning tools, including applications, games, digital books with interactive elements, visual content, camera, and browsers, enabling mobile and flexible learning with no boundaries of space and time (Fichten et al., 2019).

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Mobile technologies enable learning any place and any time, while building new knowledge, creativity and cooperation in educational contexts (Hershkovitz & Forkosh-Baruch, 2017). Mobile devices are a gateway to accessible learning environments, enabling the use of accessible content and the exploration of subjects at a personal pace. In this context, “wearable technologies” are often manufactured in the form of clothing accessories such as jewelry, sunglasses, backpacks, and shoes, enabling, among other features, studying and sending email. These advanced technologies can increase students’ involvement and motivation to learn, help develop innovative learning skills and, above all, enable learning outside the classroom (Ferreira, Moreira, Pereira, & Durão, 2015). Mobile technologies can also motivate students to learn and persevere in tasks, to personalize learning and to enable students to be active in the process of learning. Mobile technologies can particularly assist students with disabilities. This is especially applicable in HE because most students own mobile devices and most academic institutions provide free access to wireless networks. This makes the use of mobile devices inexpensive, convenient, and easy. However, professors often dislike the presence of students’ personal devices in class and, in some cases, forbid their presence (Fichten et al., 2019). Indeed, the Educause: Continuing to Look to the Horizon (2019) website rates “rethinking the practice of teaching” as a “wicked” problem and states that this is a difficulty that is “complex to even define, much less address.” Whether the benefits of mobile computing and their actual effect on learning for students with disabilities are realized is a matter for empirical investigation. Cloud Computing Cloud technology has already started to assist all students, including those with disabilities. Cloud services enable students to access a variety of online resources, services, and tools that do not consume processing and memory resources on their devices. This includes Office 365, which has a variety of powerful built-in accessibility features. The use of cloud technology also provides flexibility and savings in computing costs and facilitates the use of mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablets because these have limited storage and memory capability. Current uses of cloud computing include software tools and collaborative applications, and access to learning materials, virtual labs, virtual worlds, media, email, and

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more (Adams Becker et al., 2017). Cloud technology can enable HE institutions to reduce costs. It also has benefits in the implementation of distance learning programs, of special interest to many students with disabilities. The Internet of Things The Internet of Things is the next technological step in the development of smart objects. It is a network of physical objects (“things”) that incorporate digital components, software and sensors that enable advanced communication between the objects and the ability to collect and exchange information. This technology, introduced at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, is expected to expand significantly in the coming years in HE institutions. As a result, it will be possible to develop smart learning environments that will enable students to receive information from existing objects in the learning environment (e.g., a school laboratory, a botanical garden, an archeological park). This new technology has great potential for students with disabilities by making learning systems much more accessible. But will this actually come to pass? Our review presented in the next section suggests that it will only come about if practices within HE change. Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enormous implications for students with disabilities. The Educause: Continuing to Look to the Horizon (2019) website suggests that AI will be incorporated into HE within the next two years. For instance, in the future, professors may transform learning into an interactive experience through the use of personal artificial intelligence tutors, helping students with disabilities access lectures at their own pace with personalized AI help (Lynch, 2018). While the development of educational AI may have great promise in advancing full inclusion and effective study processes for students with disabilities, a variety of concerns have been noted. These include issues related to equity, inclusion and privacy (Alexander et al., 2019). We would like to add accessibility to the list of challenges. Indeed, few of the innovations we have outlined in this section on new wave ICTs will succeed in providing positive learning experiences for students with disabilities unless they are designed with

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their needs in mind. Designers must also avoid repeating the problematic practices that we highlight in the next section.

Information and Communication Technologies and Students with Disabilities: The Good, the Bad, and the Really Problematic Practices The cost of assistive software and hardware, the current generation of students’ personal mobile technologies, as well as online and face-to-face teaching with digital technologies has resulted in both good and bad outcomes for students with disabilities. In this section, we offer a selection of examples to illuminate the many good, bad, and terrible examples of ICT-­ related practices experienced by HE students. The Good In the United Kingdom, Disabled Students’ Allowances (UCAS, 2018) are available to eligible students. The Allowance can fund both technological and human support. What makes this especially good is that data show that Allowance awards have a favorable impact on graduation; 73.9% of students with disabilities who qualified and received the Allowance achieved first-class or upper second-class honors compared to 72.5% of those who did not receive the Allowance (Advance HE, 2018). In addition, the Policy Connect (2018) report cites some examples of good practice in HE, such as lecture recordings with transcripts (University of Southampton), an audit of e-book formats used to inform the procurement of content (University of Kent), and the use of the virtual learning environments to provide alternative assessment types (Bournemouth University). Student views expressed at the series of Ed-ICT Symposia show that students have many powerful, readily available resources to teach themselves how to use ICTs if training from the HE institution is unavailable. These include Google and YouTube (M.  Jorgensen, Fichten, King, & Havel, 2018). Technology has also promoted online learning which allows students with certain disabilities, such as mobility impairments and mental illness, to participate fully in HE; students can access the course at home and still feel like they are part of the class (Heiman, Olenik-Shemesh, Kaspi-Tsahor, & Regev-Nevo, 2018). For students who attend face-to-­

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face classes, technology has facilitated note-taking, as students can record lectures using their smartphones (Heiman et  al., 2018) and they can download professors’ notes if these are uploaded before class (University of Washington, 2017). Studying has also been facilitated by technology as a result of subject-specific applications, such as MathType, apps such as Zoom that allow students to listen to the professor’s lecture at home (Heiman et al., 2018), and concept mapping software, such as Inspiration, which help students structure their ideas (University of Washington, 2017). The Bad In America, publishers are struggling to provide accessible digital versions of textbooks. Accessibility is hampered by proprietary technologies that include publishers’ own screen reading software that is not appropriate for all students. Older books are not always available in digital formats. Although the technical issues reported by Cooper (2014) have been resolved by developments in MathML and MathJax and by web browsers’ support for these technologies, math related texts still pose a huge challenge (D.  Comden, personal communication, December, 2018). Publishers of Canadian texts often provide no accessible formats at all. This is especially true of materials in French. Moreover, digital course packs are often inaccessible. For example, Canada’s Concordia University Student Hub (n.d.) wrote on the university website in February, 2019, “The Bookstore sells digital versions of many of its course-packs, but cannot guarantee that they are universally accessible. The ACSD therefore recommends that students who’d like to have their course-packs converted purchase the hard copies.” HE websites are often not fully accessible. Seale (2014) analyzed the results of a range of studies that tested the accessibility of university home pages as well as program/course pages and library pages in a range of countries including the United States, Canada, and Europe. She concluded that there was still clear evidence of a lack of accessibility. More recently, Alahmadi and Drew (2017) evaluated a sample of 3 pages from the websites of 60 top-ranking universities in the world, including Oceania and the Arab states, using the Achecker (2011) tool. They found high numbers (~3000) of problems in each region, “Of the 82,685 errors on the 180 pages, there were 30,944 home page errors (37.42% of the total), 24,433 admission page errors (29.55% of the total) and 27,308 course description page errors (33.03% of the total)” (p. 15). The authors con-

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sider this a global problem which shows that HE institutions pay minimal attention to accessibility. Alahmadi and Drew compared their findings to previous similar studies from 2005 to 2014 and found that although there has been a slight improvement, the situation remains problematic. Other examples include reports by Canadian, American and Israeli students with disabilities who participated in the Ed-ICT Symposia.5 They reported that they do not have the time required to learn how to use specialized ICTs. Furthermore, students are not always aware of what technologies are available to help them succeed academically. There is also a lack of training about how to use AT, so students often do not know how to use the technology or they have to teach themselves (Heiman et  al., 2018; Jorgensen et al., 2018; University of Washington, 2017). For example, one student said that they had to train themselves to use a screen reader and refreshable braille display (University of Washington, 2017). In addition, students complained about incompatibility of platforms and difficulties with general use technologies because the latest versions used by their HE institution were incompatible with their AT, which often lagged a version behind. Students with disabilities can also become frustrated when the experts, who are supposed to show them how to use AT, do not understand their perspective. For example, at the Tel Aviv Ed-ICT symposium, a student who is blind reported that an expert was not prepared to show them how to use an application and software from the perspective of someone who cannot see the screen. Students also reported many errors made by text-­ to-­speech software. This is particularly problematic for students who are blind or have visual impairments because they may not be able to read the text itself to correct the mistake. One student who was blind said that they had to upgrade their JAWS program to correct for such errors, but it was very expensive (Heiman et al., 2018). In Israel, the problem is endemic (Kaspi-Tsahor, Heiman, & Olenik-Shemesh, 2018). The Really Problematic Most Canadian HE libraries do not have accessible digital copies of textbooks because of copyright legislation; only the student with a disability is entitled to have digital copies of many texts. In case of disputes with their HE institution, students must take their case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (Government of Canada, 2018), which can take ­several semesters to hear the case. Moreover, this group does not work

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with precedents—each case is unique. Other Canadian examples of inaccessibility and poor practice include the location of accessible computer labs in buildings far from the student’s classes, professors who do not allow students with disabilities to use their personal mobile technologies in class, and government policies that do not allow students to use their AT for final exams. This latter issue is also common in Israel (Kaspi-Tsahor et al., 2018). In addition, in Israel, because of the small population and the nature of the alphabet, Google Translate and text to-speech apps work especially poorly (Kaspi-Tsahor et al., 2018). Universities continue to procure technology that is not accessible (D.  Comden, personal communication, December 2018), resulting in problems in the future. Procurement by HE institutions of accessible ICTs was raised as an issue at the Ed-ICT Symposia (2019). There appears to be very little research in the area of procurement of accessible ICTs for HE institutions, and there are conceptual issues related to accessibility that need to be included in the procurement process (cf. Cravero, 2017). As early as 2006 (Seale, 2006), Seale identified this as one of the key adjustments that institutions can make in response to disability-related legislation. However, we are not aware of any studies in which the complex reasons for accessibility not being fully considered within procurement processes in HE institutions are analyzed. According to student testimonials at Ed-ICT Symposia (2019), in Canada there is a lack of adequate government funding for students to access ICTs. This is problematic given the ubiquitous use of mobile applications in HE, which HE services cannot provide or lend to students (Jorgensen et al., 2018). Another barrier to students accessing ICTs is the high costs of some ICTs (Heiman et al., 2018; Jorgensen et al., 2018). In addition, students with disabilities have difficulty using computers with needed AT at their institution due to restricted lab hours. Lab hours can also be problematic for some students because they cannot stay late at the college because of adapted transportation schedules. Students at the Ed-ICT Symposia (2019) related that there were compatibility problems between MAC and Windows computers. This can be especially problematic for students with disabilities who have restricted access to computer labs at the HE institution and who have to rely on using their own personal computer, which may have their needed AT but fail to work with the school’s software. Some of the barriers that students must overcome in accessing ICTs also arise when the HE institution

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upgrades software or makes changes to learning platforms and websites, such as online course websites (Heiman et al., 2018). When the upgrades and updates are done, new online course websites may not be accessible to students because the updates are not compatible with older versions of AT that the students are using.

Implications for Future Research and Practice Given the difficulties we have outlined concerning access to and use of ICT by students with disabilities in HE, we suggest that there are many things that could help to remove barriers: the push to incorporate universal design into learning; the move away from the medical toward the social model of disability; technology innovation in general; advances in adaptive hardware and software; the presence of free and low-cost technologies deemed useful by people with disabilities; increasing awareness of digital accessibility; adoption of institutional digital accessibility policies; disability-­specific legislation that addresses digital inclusion; as well as changes in the way learning is being delivered using all forms of ICTs. We do however wish to highlight two issues that we feel are particularly important and that have implications for both research and practice: (1) stakeholder knowledge of ICT and (2) design and development issues. Stakeholder Knowledge of ICT Despite the central importance innovative developments such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and those that will come in the future and the issues identified earlier in this chapter there remain a variety of difficulties related to their integration for assisting students with disabilities in HE. One significant issue is that ICT specialists, procurement officers, librarians, faculty, and other stakeholders know very little about the technological needs of students with disabilities. There is a need to develop education modules concerning how to meet the ICT-related needs of students with different disabilities for these professionals. Assistive technologists can help to promote an in-depth understanding of the AT that students with different disabilities use and how this is related to general use learning and educational technologies.

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Design and Development Issues Another future change in practice that arises from the research and from the experiences of students with disabilities is the inclusion of students with disabilities in the early stages of the development of new innovative technologies. The expertise of students about the needs of students with disabilities appears to be necessary during the process of development to ensure not only accessibility but also usability. The challenges of HE budget and priorities are also always there. New ATs require expensive financing in their development. This is passed on to the limited numbers of students who require these for individual use (Treviranus, 2019). A key challenge is how to develop AT that will enable students with disabilities to use them, regardless of their economic ability. In addition, research is needed concerning HE policies regarding the integration, deployment, and budgeting for new AT for students with disabilities. Very little research has been done on these issues thus far. A well-developed progressive society provides students with disabilities with a great deal of autonomy to manage their lives and solve problems. It encourages them to acquire HE as a tool to increase their inclusion in society and obtain employment (Feldman, Danieli, Lahav, & Haimovich, 2007). We would argue that this principle should be a guiding light for ICT developers and administrators in the HE systems.

Conclusion In 2020, few will argue that without some level of digital skill or know-­ how, all HE graduates, including those with disabilities, will be at a significant disadvantage when entering the labor market. This is why in HE institutions, from applying to schools to selecting and then taking courses, and almost every other aspect of the curricular and extra-curricular experience has a technology basis. Given the number of students with disabilities in HE, the imperative is that all of the digital experiences across the curriculum and the campus must be accessible and inclusive. Failure to do so puts these students at a disadvantage relative to their nondisabled peers, especially when seeking employment. Students with disabilities, however, continue to face a variety of barriers, including inaccessible digital course materials and websites; lack of training on how to use needed AT, poor compatibility between software used by the HE institution and students’ AT; libraries that do not stock

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accessible digital textbooks or course packs; professors who do not allow students with disabilities to use their personal mobile technologies in class; procurement of inaccessible HE technologies that will affect teaching and learning for many years; the high cost of some AT; and restricted access to computer labs. Moreover, many HE institutions simply pay minimal attention to accessibility. To overcome these barriers, enhancing the knowledge of ICT stakeholders, including students with disabilities, in the design and development of new technologies and examining HE policies are key priorities for researchers and practitioners in the field.

Notes 1. This section is based on Fichten, C. S., Asuncion, J., & Scapin, R. (2014). Digital technology, learning, and postsecondary students with disabilities: Where we’ve been and where we’re going. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 27(4), 369–379. 2. This section is based on Fichten, C. S., Nguyen, M. N., King, L., Barile, M., Havel, A., Mimouni, Z., Chauvin, A., Budd, J., Raymond, O., Juhel, J.-C., & Asuncion, J. (2013). Information and communication technology profiles of college students with learning disabilities and adequate and very poor readers. Journal of Education and Learning, 2(1), 176–188. 3. http://www.adaptech.org 4. http://www.adaptech.org/en/downloads 5. Ed-ICT International Network Symposia. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/

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Heiman, T., Olenik-Shemesh, D., Kaspi-Tsahor, D., & Regev-Nevo, M. (2018). Proceedings of the Ed-ICT International Network Israel Symposium: In Search of New Designs. The Open University of Israel. Resource Document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ProceedingsEdICTIsraelSymposium.pdf Herbert, J. T., Hong, B. S. S., Byun, S.-Y., Welsh, W., Kurz, C. A., & Atkinson, H. A. (2014). Persistence and graduation of college students seeking disability support services. Journal of Rehabilitation, 80(1), 22–32. Hershkovitz, A., & Forkosh-Baruch, A. (2017). Integrating mobile technology in higher education instruction [translation]. Academic Teaching, 6, 21–29. Illinois State University Media Relations. (2012, July 3). SMART Boards for visually impaired. Report: The Illinois State University Faculty-Staff Newsletter. Resource document. The Illinois State University. http://mediarelations.illinoisstate.edu/report/1213/july3/smartboards.asp Jones, B., Williams, N., & Rudinger, B. (2018). Designing and implementing an assistive technology lab for post-secondary education. Education Sciences, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8010011. Jorgensen, M., Fichten, C., King, L., & Havel, A. (2018). Proceedings of the Ed-ICT International Network Montreal Symposium: Stakeholder Perspectives. Resource document. Montréal, Québec: Adaptech Research Network. https:// eric.ed.gov/?id=ED580147 Jorgensen, M., Fichten, C. S., Nguyen, M. N., Budd, J., Barile, M., Asuncion, J., et  al. (2015). Employment realities of recent junior/community college and university graduates and premature leavers with disabilities. International Journal of Disability, Community, and Rehabilitation, 14(1). Resource document. IJDCR. http://www.ijdcr.ca/VOL14_01/articles/jorgenson.shtml Jorgensen, S., Fichten, C. S., Havel, A., Lamb, D., James, C., & Barile, M. (2003). Students with and without disabilities at Dawson College graduate at the same rate. The Journal for Vocational Special Needs Education, 25(2-3), 44–46. Jorgensen, S., Fichten, C. S., Havel, A., Lamb, D., James, C., & Barile, M. (2005). Academic performance of college students with and without disabilities: An archival study. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 39(2), 101–117. Kaspi-Tsahor, D., Heiman, T., & Olenik-Shemesh, D. (2018, October). Support the transition of people with disabilities to post-compulsory education (PCE) and from PCE to employment. Paper presented at the 4th Ed-ICT International Network Symposium, Hagen, Germany. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/ hagen/programme/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Kenney, M. J., Jain, N. R., Meeks, L. M., Laird-Metke, E., Hori, J., & McGough, J. D. (2016). Learning in the digital age: Assistive technology and electronic access. In L. M. Meeks & N. R. Jain (Eds.), The guide to assisting students with disabilities: Equal access in health science and professional education (pp. 119– 140). New York: Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

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Kimball, E. W., Wells, R. S., Ostiguy, B. J., Manly, C. A., & Lauterbach, A. A. (2016). Students with disabilities in higher education: A review of the literature and an agenda for future research. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 31, pp.  91–156). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Knight, W., Wessel, R.  D., & Markle, L. (2018). Persistence to graduation for students with disabilities: Implications for performance-based outcomes. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 19(4), 362– 380. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025116632534. Lasry, N., Dugdale, M., & Charles, E. (2014). Just in time to flip your classroom. The Physics Teacher, 52(1), 34–37. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.4849151. Lombardi, A. R., Murray, C., & Gerdes, H. (2011). College faculty and inclusive instruction: Self-reported attitudes and actions pertaining to universal design. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 4(4), 250–261. Lynch, M. (2018, June). My vision for the future of the assistive technology in education. Resource document. The Edvocate. https://www.theedadvocate.org/ vision-future-assistive-technology-education/ Ma, J., Pender, M., & Welch, M. (2016). Education pays 2016: The benefits of higher education for individuals and society. Resource document. The College Board. https://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/education-pays2016-full-report.pdf McGuire, J. M. (2011). Inclusive college teaching: Universal design for instruction and diverse learners. Journal of Accessibility and Design for All, 1(1), 38–54. https://doi.org/10.17411/jacces.v1i1.80. McGuire, J. M., Scott, S. S., & Shaw, S. F. (2003). Universal design for instruction: The paradigm, its principles, and products for enhancing instructional access. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 17(1), 10–20. Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (Ontario). (2012). Update on students with disabilities. Postsecondary Education Division of Ontario. Presentation at the University of Michigan. National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS). (2012). Enhancing accessibility in higher education institutions: A guide for disability service providers. Resource document. NEADS. www.neads.ca/en/norc/eag/ eag_en.pdf Newman, L., Wagner, M., Cameto, R., & Knokey, A. (2009). The post-high school outcomes of youth with disabilities up to 4 years after high school: A report from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2) (NCSE 2009-3017). Resource document. National Center for Special Education Research, U.S.  Department of Education. http://www.nlts2.org/reports/2009_04/ nlts2_report_2009_04_complete.pdf Newman, L., Wagner, M., Knokey, A.-M., Marder, C., Nagle, K., Shaver, D., & Wei, X. (2011). The post-high school outcomes of young adults with disabilities

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up to 8 years after high school: A report from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2). Resource document. National Center for Special Education Research. http://www.nlts2.org/reports/2011_09_02/ nlts2_report_2011_09_02_complete.pdf Policy Connect. (2018, September). Accessible virtual learning environments: Making the most of the new regulations. Resource document. Policy Connect. https://www.policyconnect.org.uk/sites/site_pc/files/report/1134/fieldreportdownload/appgatreport09-18final.pdf Rosenbaum, J. E. (2018). Disabilities and degrees: Identifying health impairments that predict lower chances of college enrollment and graduation in a nationally representative sample. Community College Review, 46(2), 145–175. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0091552118762630. Schmid, R. F., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Tamim, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Surkes, M. A., et al. (2014). The effects of technology use in postsecondary education: A meta-analysis of classroom applications. Computers & Education, 72, 271–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.11.002. Schwartz, M. (2013, May 16). Settlement expands UC Berkeley library service to disabled. Library Journal. https://www.libraryjournal.com/? detailStory=settlement-expands-uc-berkeley-library-service-to-disabled. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Seale, J. (2006). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Seale, J.  K. (2014). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice (2nd ed.). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Selwyn, N. (2012). Social media in higher education. In A. Gladman (Ed.), The Europa world of learning (62nd ed., pp. 3–7). London: Routledge. Shaw, A., Gold, D., & Wolffe, K. (2007). Employment-related experiences of youths who are visually impaired: How are these youths faring? Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 101(1), 7–21. Snyder, T. D., de Brey, C., & Dillow, S. A. (2016). Digest of education statistics 2015 (51st Ed.) (NCES 2016-014). Resource document. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/ED570993.pdf Summers, E., & Brauner, D. (2012, November 6). Viewing the smart board on an iPad. http://support.sas.com/misc/accessibility/education/ios/smartboard. html. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Tarawneh, H., Tarawneh, M., & Alzboun, F. (2011). Enhancing the quality of e-learning systems via multimedia learning tools. International Journal of Computer Science Issues, 8(6), 107–111. Thomson, R., Fichten, C., Budd, J., Havel, A., & Asuncion, J. (2015). Blending universal design, e-learning, and information and communication technolo-

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gies. In S.  E. Burgstahler (Ed.), Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice (2nd ed., pp. 275–284). Boston: Harvard Education Press. Thornton, M., & Downs, S. (2010). Walking the walk: Modeling social model and universal design in the disabilities office. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 23(1), 72–78. Treviranus, J. (2019). Learning to learn differently in higher education. Paper presented at the accesXchange Conference, Montréal, Québec. UCAS. (2018). Disabled students’ allowances. Resource document. UCAS. https:// www.ucas.com/student-finance-england/disabled-students-allowances University of Washington. (2017). Symposium one: Effective models, frameworks, and approaches. Proceedings from the Ed-ICT International Network: Disabled students, ICT, post-compulsory education & employment: In search of new solutions. Resource document. University of Washington, Seattle, WA. http:// ed-ict.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Symposium-Effective_models_ frameworks_and_approaches_0.pdf Vanderheiden, G. C. (1993). Accessible design: A handbook for more universal product design. Madison, WI: Trace Research and Development Center. Wessel, R. D., Jones, J. A., Markle, L., & Westfall, C. (2009). Retention and graduation of students with disabilities: Facilitating student success. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 21(3), 116–125.

CHAPTER 3

Accessibility Frameworks and Models: Exploring the Potential for a Paradigm Shift Sheryl Burgstahler, Alice Havel, Jane Seale, and Dorit Olenik-Shemesh

Abstract  The focus of this chapter is accessibility frameworks and models that have the potential to promote a paradigm shift whereby the design of ICT and related practices that ensure the needs of students with disabilities are fully addressed. In order to examine the potential of models and frameworks to bring about such a paradigm shift and transform practice this chapter will: (1) review common frameworks and associated models that influence the design and delivery of accessibility services, (2) discuss

S. Burgstahler (*) University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Havel Adaptech Research Network, Montreal, QC, Canada J. Seale Faculty of Wellness, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] D. Olenik-Shemesh The Open University, Ra’anana, Israel © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_3

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whether something other than (or in addition to) existing frameworks and associated models is needed in order to activate a paradigm shift toward more inclusive ICT and practices, and (3) discuss the implications for future research and practice. Keywords  ICT • Disability • Higher education • Accessibility • Models • Frameworks

Common Frameworks That Influence the Design of Accessibility Services While many commentators in the field use the terms model and framework interchangeably, we use the term “model” to refer to a practical or conceptual representation of systems and processes; in our case, those that are relevant to the provision and support of ICTs that contribute to successful educational and employment outcomes for students with disabilities. Models may describe existing practices (what is currently happening) or prescribe practices (what should be happening). “Frameworks” provide foundational elements (e.g., principles or assumptions) of a model. Adoption of frameworks and models on a campus can contribute to a “paradigm,” which refers to a widely accepted group of ideas about how something should be done or thought about as an organization routinely conducts business. The paradigm provides an almost unconscious, internalized way of thinking about how things should work, and what problems should be addressed. Common frameworks within higher education (HE) reflect different views of disability, accommodation, and inclusion. “Medical” or “deficit” views of disability rely on a medical diagnosis and build on the assumption that the problems and difficulties that people with disabilities experience are a direct result of their individual physical, sensory, or cognitive impairments. As a response to this view, the major task of professionals is to adjust the individual (e.g., through surgery, medication, rehabilitation) or, at institutions of HE, provide accommodations that allow the person with a disability to access instruction and other campus offerings as much as is reasonable (Shakespeare, 1996). The locus of change is the individual. In contrast, in the “social” and related views of disability, barriers faced by people with disabilities are caused, to a large part, by the failure of designers of social, physical, and technological prod-

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ucts and environments to take into account the needs of individuals with a wide range of abilities. The locus of change is mainstream products, environments, and related policies and social structures (Oliver, 1996; Shakespeare, 2010). Acceptance of this view has resulted in disability-­ related legislation in many countries requiring the accessible design of physical spaces including those in HE. Disability service offices within HE institutions tend to rely on a medical view of disability, which can lead to an individualistic framework for service provision, where the focus is on determining the functional limitations of individuals with disabilities and then providing reasonable accommodations to facilitate their access to a facility, service, course, or technological resource. The provision of such services is typically dependent on the person with a disability securing a “diagnosis” of a disability by a recognized professional, providing a disability services office with documentation of the disability, and securing approval for reasonable accommodations. An accommodations-only framework for service delivery with respect to ICT can lead to a focus on providing assistive technology (AT) for specific individuals with disabilities, rather than on reducing accessibility barriers imposed by mainstream ICT. A framework that relies only or mainly on accommodations in institutions of HE today has been criticized for focusing only on the perceived “deficit” of an individual rather than looking to designing or redesigning educational products and environments to be more accessible to individuals with disabilities (Loewen & Pollard, 2010). Most proponents of the social view of disability in HE, however, recognize that sometimes there is still a need to provide accommodations to individuals in specific circumstances (e.g., sign language interpreters for students who are deaf attending lectures); suggesting that there is value in combining both frameworks, but where the social view of disability is more dominant or prevalent. Universal Design: An Example of Combining Frameworks One well-known approach to service provision that prioritizes social and related views of disability, while acknowledging accommodations may still be needed sometimes, is commonly labeled universal design (UD). UD is the general term, and other terms are used when it pertains to specific applications. For example, applications to teaching and learning have been referred to with labels that include Universal Design of Learning (UDL), Universal Design for Instruction, Universal Design of Instruction,

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Universally Designed Instruction, Universally Designed Teaching, and Inclusive Design for Learning. These practices build on, to varying degrees, the work of the Center for Universal Design (CUD) at North Carolina State University, which defines UD as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” (Center for Universal Design, 1997). Each approach has adopted principles for the design of inclusive practices. For example, the Centre for UD proposes seven principles that guide UD applications to products and environments (flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and size and space for approach and use). The Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST) proposes that teaching and learning practices apply three principles of UDL—multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression (Black, Weinberg, & Brodwin, 2015; Rose, Harbour, Johnston, Daley, & Abarbanell, 2006). Common characteristics of any UD practice are accessibility, usability, and inclusiveness, as illustrated in Fig. 3.1. UD is positioned as inclusive because it values diversity, equity, and integration (Hockings, 2010). This approach provides a way to conceptualize these common characteristics as a routine part of the design of campus-wide applications rather than being

Fig. 3.1  Characteristics of a UD strategy: It is accessible, usable, and inclusive. (Burgstahler, 2015, p. 15)

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considered as after-thoughts once an individual with a disability encounters a barrier (Burgstahler, 2015). Universal Design in Higher Education (UDHE): A Specific Application of UD The terminology: ‘Universal Design in Higher Education’ (UDHE) was adopted by a team of collaborators in several projects at the University of Washington (UW) that were funded by the US Department of Education (grants OPE #s P33A990042, P333AO20044, and P333A050064). UDHE builds upon a total of ten principles drawn from UD and UDL that allow for a wide range of possible applications in HE, not only in teaching and learning, but also in other functional areas such as outdoor spaces, administrative websites and services (Burgstahler, 2015). For all specific applications, the ultimate goal of these proactive practices is access for everyone. The UDHE Framework makes clear that applying UD and UDL principles campus-wide does not eradicate the need for accommodations; it minimizes their necessity and thus reduces the need for students with disabilities to make special requests for them (Hadley, 2011). As the two images presented in Fig. 3.2 illustrate, greater applications of UDHE (including those relevant to ICT) on a campus result in the provision of fewer accommodations (including the provision of AT). The Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) Center at the UW provides an example of how the UDHE

UDHE

UDHE

Accommodations

Accommodations

Fig. 3.2  Relationship of the level of access provided through UD versus accommodations of a campus that primarily embrace the accommodation framework compared to one that promotes UD

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Framework can be applied to ICT in its process for the development and delivery of its collection of videos.1 Its practices are designed to ensure the content of its videos are accessible to and usable by everyone. The website on which the DO-IT videos are hosted is fully accessible and the videos play on a custom accessible media player, developed by DO-IT staff, that allows full operation by people with a variety of disabilities. Each video is provided with closed captions, audio description, and transcripts, and can be downloaded, viewed on DO-IT’s YouTube channel, or ordered on DVD. The Search Video Library feature enables users to search the full text of all videos and to begin playing videos at specific start times based on the search results. Most videos are accompanied by a brochure that includes content presented in the video, along with additional resources. UD and UDL principles are applied in all phases of the design process for each video. The amount of content that is not presented orally is minimized to reduce the need for audio description; for example, the credits, pointers to resources, acknowledgments, and copyright notices at the end of the video are spoken by the narrator and thus do not require the addition of audio description. Filming is done in anticipation of captioning by making certain that valuable visual content is not presented at the bottom of the screen. The Inclusive Campus Model: An Example of How a Framework Can Underpin a Model At the first Ed-ICT symposium in Seattle, Sheryl Burgstahler described how a UDHE Framework underpins an Inclusive Campus Model. Dimensions of the UDHE Framework, as summarized in Fig. 3.3, include scope, definition, principles, guidelines, practices, and process. If the scope of applications is all products and environments campus-­ wide, an institution might choose a definition slightly modified from the UD definition established by the CUD: The design of products and environments in HE to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. The principles are the combination of the seven principles of UD established by the CUD and the three principles of UDL established by CAST, along with the four—perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust—that underpin the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium, an international community that develops open standards to ensure the longterm growth of the Web (World Wide Web Consortium, n.d.). From this

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Fig. 3.3  Dimensions of a UDHE Framework

Scope Definition Principles Guidelines Practices Process

Fig. 3.4  Inclusive Campus Model underpinned by the UDHE Framework

foundation, a campus could adopt overall practices and processes designed to ensure accessibility, usability, and inclusion for all students and lead to a paradigm shift to a more inclusive campus. This UDHE Framework underpins the remaining work and evaluation steps of the Inclusive Campus Model. As presented in Fig. 3.4, to further develop the Inclusive Campus Model, campus leaders representing multiple stakeholders at an institution can begin by reviewing their existing

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institutional vision and values statements in order to determine if they reflect high values with respect to diversity, equity, inclusion, and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities legislation (United States Department of Justice, 1990) or if the statements should be adjusted to do so. After fleshing out the UDHE Framework, the next two steps in applying the Inclusive Campus Model are to identify current practices and to describe new practices with respect to relevant issues that include stakeholder roles, funding, policies, guidelines, procedures, training, and support. Outputs and outcomes should be measured as new practices are put in place; tasks in this area include creating measures, collecting data, analyzing results, and producing reports. In addition, indicators should be identified that measure overall impacts of changes with respect to the established campus values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and compliance. Once the model is fully implemented, the institution can assure continuous improvement by fine tuning new practices and measuring outputs, outcomes, and impacts. The Inclusive Campus Model can be adapted by campus leaders who wish to apply a set of principles that is not the collection of UD, UDL, and WCAG principles used in the basic UDHE Framework. For example, some practitioners embrace Universal Design for Instruction (UDI), an approach developed by the Centre on Postsecondary Education and Disability at the University of Connecticut (McGuire & Scott, 2006), that applies the basic seven UD principles along with two others, in order to make UD more applicable to instruction in HE. The Inclusive Campus Model can be modified for a campus committed to UDI by simply restricting the scope to include applications to instruction and the changing principles of UD, UDL, and WCAG to those of UDI in the Framework. The UW employs the Inclusive Campus Model for ICT procured, developed, and used at the University. Much of the work of the Access Technology Center (ATC) promotes the proactive design and remediation of videos, documents, websites, commercial software, and other ICT to minimize the need for accommodations (UW, n.d.). In spite of these efforts, each academic term, the most expensive accommodations provided by Disability Resources for Students with respect to online learning are for remediating inaccessible documents and captioning videos (Burgstahler & Greear, 2017). The UW continues to make gradual steps toward focusing more on the accessibility of the products (e.g., websites) and environments (e.g., computer labs) and how ICT can be proactively

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designed to be accessible to a broad audience. Nationwide, resolutions to the hundreds of lawsuits and civil right complaints brought to the Office of Civil Rights, the Department of Justice, and courts of law have promoted this approach, as legislation has required that associated institutions proactively design their websites, videos, documents, and other ICT to be accessible (Beaver, 2017; Sieben-Schneider & Hamilton-­ Brodie, 2016). Anecdotal evidence gleaned from the Ed-ICT collaborative meetings, at conferences, and from reports in the literature suggests an increasing interest in UD, UDL, UDHE, or similar frameworks built on UD. For example, in the first Ed-ICT symposium in Seattle, Alice Havel presented another example of a framework that integrates medical and social models of disability, along with the addition of accommodations and universal design.2 The Human Development Model-Disability Creation Process (HDM-DCP) is based on the work of Fougeyrollas (International Network on the Disability Creation Process, n.d.). This conceptual model, not well known outside Quebec, does not downplay the impact of an impairment itself and expounds that life skills are achieved not only by enhancing abilities and compensating for disabilities, but also by reducing environmental obstacles. It is similar to the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps published by the World Health Organization (World Health Organization, 2018), which is still used in some countries today. Although the HDM-DCP model, along with its classification system, is employed by many health, rehabilitation, and social service organizations in Quebec, it has had limited influence on HE. This may be due to a pragmatic reason: eligibility for government funding of disability services in colleges and universities is based exclusively on a medical model. In addition, the complexity of implementing the HDM-DCP model brings no obvious advantages for students, faculty, or service providers. For various reasons, mostly financial, government guidelines for service delivery strongly suggest a needs-based organizational model when determining accommodations, taking into account a student’s strengths, abilities, and needs, while at the same time emphasizing the necessity to eliminate environmental barriers. In spite of the energy dedicated to developing a unique Quebec approach, due to the significant increase in the number of students with disabilities in HE, the prohibitive cost of psycho-educational assessments for diagnosing a learning disability and the desire for a more diverse and inclusive society, many service providers and a growing number of faculty are now seriously exploring the UD framework. Several

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province-wide organizations have created websites to support this trend to implement UDL across French and English Quebec colleges and universities (CAPRES, 2015; Portail du réseau collegial du Québec, 2016; McGill University3). Despite the increasing interest in UD or similar frameworks, the vast majority of campuses world-wide primarily adopt an accommodations-­ only framework in their designs of disability service offerings. Even when there are widely accepted guidelines, such as WCAG in the case of ICT, focus is on compliance (e.g., what do we need to do to be “ADA compliant”?) rather than moving beyond compliance and accommodations to embrace UD practices to ensure ICT is not just accessible, but also usable and inclusive.

Do We Need Something Other than (or in Addition to) Existing Frameworks and Associated Models in Order to Activate a Paradigm Shift Toward More Inclusive ICT and Practices? In the first Ed-ICT Symposium, Jane Seale (2017) proposed that existing frameworks and associated models might be replaced, or at least enriched, if they incorporated wider views of the HE context. She presented the results of a literature review that identified additional models that were considered relevant to the provision of ICT in HE, but which were currently widely ignored. She argued that the field might further progress if practitioners and researchers considered how aspects of models could contribute something beyond accommodations-only and UD frameworks for underpinning practices toward a stance that considers the possibility that best practices might emerge from combining a number of frameworks and models that take into account issues perhaps not yet widely considered. In this section, we briefly outline seven frameworks and models and contrast them to one another and to the Inclusive Campus Model (which is underpinned by a UDHE Framework) and share how additional views on accessibility—such as adaptability, integration and segregation, change agents, and holistic approaches—can inform future research and practice. The Holistic Model of Accessibility for e-Learning Applications Kelly, Phipps, and Swift (2004) proposed a holistic model for e-learning accessibility, which places the learner at the center of the development

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Learner Needs

Infrastructure

Activities or resources

Fieldwork

Web Resources

Tutorials Library

Online Discussion fora Computer Based Assessment

Lectures

Groupwork

Local Factors

Labwork

Problem Based Learning

Learning Objective

E-learning Objects E-mail, wiki’s and Blogs

Work Based Classroom Activities Learning Examination Viva Voce Assessment Distance Learning

ties, cultural, e bili co sa n di

Learning Outcomes

Usability

f needs (includ yo ing iet ar

Accessibility

Students with l). av a i Examples of learning oc

eographical an c, g ds i om

lity Assuran ce Qua

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Fig. 3.5  Early and later versions of holistic model of e-learning accessibility

process, as indicated in Fig. 3.5. Positioning their model as an alternative to UD, they argue for solutions that are tailored to an individual’s specific needs, institutional factors, subject discipline, and broader cultural and political factors. Kelly, Nevile, Draffan, and Fanou (2008) refine their model to argue that a learner-centric model replaces learner needs with learning objectives at the center. They also articulate in more detail the context in which this model might be useful by emphasizing that e-­learning solutions need to take into account both online and offline learning activities and resources (blended learning). The holistic model appears to ignore the perspectives of stakeholders other than students as well as the inclusiveness consideration included in the UDHE Framework. Although it is designed for e-learning applications, this model may also be more generally applicable to ICT access. The VIVID (Vision Impaired Using Virtual IT Discovery) Model for e-Learning Applications Permvattana, Armstrong, and Murray (2013) also offer an alternative holistic model, one that they developed specifically for e-learning environments for the vision impaired, as illustrated in Fig. 3.6. The stimulus for this development was the argument that while models such as those proposed by Kelly et  al. (2008) provide valuable input into the design of specialized e-learning environments for the vision impaired, they are open

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Fig. 3.6  The VIVID (Vision Impaired using Virtual IT Discovery) model

to too much “subjective interpretation” when applied in practice. They therefore attempted to provide a more detailed model, which they assert would make it easier to identify potential solutions to the access barriers commonly faced by vision impaired students. The model they propose is underpinned by insights gained from observations and interviews with vision impaired students and teachers. At the center of the model are the components or resources that need to be made accessible: the physical classroom, the virtual classroom, and the curriculum. Around this core is a layer of local factors that influence accessibility decisions: learning outcomes, learner characteristics, and social elements. The external layer of influencing factors or drivers includes legal requirements, standards, and

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guidelines; institutional factors; and evaluation, feedback, and enhancement. While this model focuses on visual impairment, it appears to be adaptable for students with a wider range of characteristics. The Composite Practice Model for AT Service Delivery Disabled students do not just interact with faculty in physical or virtual classrooms. They often interact with ICT or access services personnel who support them to acquire and use ATs or other accommodations, and it would therefore make sense for models to exist that guide these processes. Leung et al. (1999) developed a composite model to describe and explain practice in regard to the AT service delivery in HE settings across Australia. There were three main components to the model: (1) policy funding, (2) the stakeholders, and (3) the process of assessing students for their AT needs. Leung et al. (1999) argued that this model can serve as a checklist for institutions in assessing their response to AT needs of students with disabilities. It recognizes that there are multiple factors to consider; that assessment for AT may involve a diagnostic evaluation; that there is a full range of available AT, from low tech to high tech, that varies in cost; and that there should be utilization of mainstream service provision whenever possible. While this model narrowly focuses on acquisition of AT, it highlights the contribution of a range of stakeholders including administrators, student services, librarians, ICT services, and AT specialists. In addition, like the Contextualized Model (see later section), the Composite Model acknowledges the powerful influence of external drivers such as policy and funding. Furthermore, although not clearly expressed, the model acknowledges that a cyclical process exists of eligibility, assessment, selection, training, and reassessment, which has the potential to be useful in a practice model of service delivery. A Staff Development Model The development of accessible practices within HE relies on faculty and other staff having the knowledge and skills necessary to change and improve what they do; therefore, staff development is an important element of accessible practice. For example, in 2011, while director of the Office for Students with Disabilities at McGill University in Montreal, Fovet and his colleagues led a whole-campus implementation drive to

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apply UDL. His experience led him to conclude that “The model is often seen as a new concept, and this in itself creates resistance factors related to the management of change process.” (Fovet, Mole, Jarrett, & Syncox, 2014, p. 71) He found that resistance from faculty was the greatest barrier encountered as they were fearful of feeling less competent, anxious about the innovative use of ICT, and concerned about insufficient resources and time. One way to address such concerns was by providing pedagogical support through the Teaching and Learning Support Unit of the university. It therefore makes sense that models to guide the design and delivery of staff development initiatives could be incredibly valuable. Papadopolous, Pearson, and Green (2012) proposed a provisional staff development model (they called it a framework, but we think a more accurate description would be model) for supporting academics to develop accessible and inclusive e-materials. There are four main elements to their framework, as illustrated in Fig.  3.7. The first they call framework components: raising awareness, enhancing understanding, and improving skills. The second element is the processes, which are required to raise awareness, enhance understanding, and improve skills. Thirdly, they proposed a training procedure comprised of two main elements: Accessibility Simulations and a Tutor Accessibility Support Kit (TASK). Finally, they argue that culture change within an institution will not occur without individual self-reflection and collaboration with others. Like other models, the staff development framework acknowledges the influence of external drivers such as legislation and internal drivers such as institutional or individual intentions. Unlike other models, it does not explicitly incorporate different stakeholders, nor does it position itself in relation to universal or accommodation approaches to accessibility. Although this framework is applied to instructional practices, it holds promise for guiding accessible ICT-related staff development on a campus. A Model of Accessibility Services The model of accessibility services attempts to describe how a range of services within an institution might support disabled students. Kouroupetroglou, Pino, and Kacorr (2011) propose a model of ­accessibility services that they argue takes into account both “Design for All” (a term used synonymously with UD) and “Individual Accommodation”

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Fig. 3.7  A staff development model for inclusive learning design

approaches. However, they do not explicitly illustrate how the two approaches underpin their model. The main pillar of this model is the “Accessibility Unit,” which provides a number of supportive services, arranged in a three-tier architecture according to their “proximity” to the student: (1) accessibility services addressed directly to the student; (2) accessibility services applied to the student’s environment; and (3) accessibility promoting services which disseminate good accessibility practices in the university community and beyond. Like the contextualized model

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Accessibility Unit Faculty

Accessibility Unit Staff Academic Advisor

Accessibility Committee

Faculty Secretariat Secretary

Library

Disabled Student

Librarian

Representative Student

Volunteer

Students Community

: Interaction Pool : Affiliation : Information & Training Channel

Fig. 3.8  The stakeholders who mediate the relationship between a student with a disability and an accessibility unit

of accessibility (see later section), this model seeks to identify the stakeholders who mediate the relationship between a student with disabilities and the different service providers: Academic advisors, librarians, student representatives, and so on (see Fig. 3.8). But, unlike the contextualized model of accessibility, Kouroupetroglou, Pino, and Kacorr have for several years implemented their model in practice in the Accessibility Unit of the University of Athens (The largest institution of HE in Greece). Although the model does not directly address ICT, its application in this area seems plausible. A Contextualized Model of Accessible e-Learning Practice Seale (2006) proposed a model of accessible e-learning practice that takes into account all relevant factors that mediate an institutional response to accessibility: the stakeholders, the context (drivers and mediators), and how the relationship between the stakeholders and the context influences the responses made and the accessibility practices

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developed (see Fig.  1.1  in Chap. 1). While the model of accessibility s­ ervices is descriptive, reflecting existing practice within one institution, the contextualized model is conceptual, that is, suggesting an ideal practice. This model stipulates that the extent to which e-learning material and resources are accessible will be influenced by how all the stakeholders within an institution respond to external drivers for accessibility such as legislation, guidelines, and standards. Unlike UD, this model does not take a stance on how a student’s disability or learning needs should be perceived. Instead it argues that institutions’ accessibility practices should be mediated by all stakeholders’ views and understanding of disability, accessibility, and inclusion; duty and responsibility; autonomy and freedom; and teamwork and community. The accessibility practices that develop out of these responses vary, depending on the stakeholders and the context in which they are operating, but they essentially depend on stakeholders taking ownership and control as well as developing personal meaning from externally imposed mandates. As with other models already discussed, although broadly applied to disability services, the contextualized model of accessible e-learning practice also holds promise specifically for ICT practice. The EU4ALL Model The EU4ALL model (the authors called it a framework, but we think a more accurate description would be model) emerged from a four-year European project that developed a general model to address the needs of accessible lifelong learning in HE.  It consists of several standards-based interoperable components integrated into an open web service architecture aimed at supporting adapted interaction to guarantee students’ accessibility needs (Boticario et al. 2012). The model aims to (1) enhance the learning experience, by presenting learning materials that are appropriate for and matched to modality and end-user device preferences, such as mobile devices or a desktop computer, perhaps with AT; and (2) provide a wide range of services that an institution can adopt to ensure that the needs of learners who have disabilities are most appropriately supported. Conceptually, the EU4ALL model does not explicitly take a position regarding conceptual views of disability, but it claims to go beyond typical UD and UDL practices where designs anticipate the needs of a broad

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range of users and strive to meet these needs. The EU4ALL approach aims to adapt or customize digital resources for students at the point of delivery (e.g., through a virtual learning environment so that offerings meet a student’s exact needs). Through a study of different organizations and interviews with key stakeholder groups across Europe, the EU4ALL team identified a broad ontology of services that they suggest as a conceptual map or presentation of ideal institutional processes, which has the potential to inform the creation of new services. This conceptual map underpins the technical or practical aspects in which existing standards are used to define and implement an open and extensible architecture of services for Accessible Lifelong Learning as illustrated in Fig.  3.9. Like the contextualized model, the EU4ALL model emphasizes the involvement and co-operation of a number of different stakeholders.

Fig. 3.9  The EU4ALL model

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An Overview of the Characteristics and Potential of Accessibility Models Presented To help practitioners decide which of the models might be potentially more useful or relevant than others in certain practice contexts, in this section we offer a comparative overview of the models focusing on what they have to say about approaches to access (Table 3.1a); engagement, change, and responsibility (Table 3.1b); and approaches to ICT support, student support, and stakeholder engagement (Table 3.1c).

Implications for Future Research and Practice In this chapter, we have examined the potential of models and frameworks to bring a paradigm shift toward more inclusive practices in HE institutions. In this section, we will discuss the implications of implementing any or all of these models in practice and how research might contribute to such implementation. Table 3.1a  Comparing the nine models based on their approach to access Characteristic

Options

Models that incorporate option in part or whole

Approaches to access

Accommodation for specific students

Composite Practice Model Model of Accessibility Services Inclusive Campus Model EU4All Model Holistic Model Inclusive Campus Model Inclusive Campus Model Staff Development Model VIVID

Adaptability

UD (that maximizes adaptability and includes but minimizes need for accommodations) Segregation, (i.e., having students with disabilities do something different than other students) Mainstream, engaging students with and without disabilities together

Contextualized Model Holistic Model EU4All Model Inclusive Campus Model Model of Accessibility Services

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Table 3.1b  Comparing the nine models based on their views of engagement, responsibility, and change Characteristic

Options

Models that incorporate option in part or whole

Views of engagement

Atomistic, specific parts of an institution

Composite Practice Model Contextualized Model EU4All Model Inclusive Campus Model Model of Accessibility Services Inclusive Campus Model Inclusive Campus Model Staff Development Model Composite Practice Model Holistic Model EU4ALL Model Model of Accessibility Services Contextualized Model EU4ALL Model Inclusive Campus Model Model of Accessibility Services Inclusive Campus Model

Holistic, the whole institution

Views on who is responsible for accessibility

Requires leadership Requires staff development

Disability service unit(s)

All campus faculty and service providers

Views of change

Builds on campus vision and values; is underpinned by a comprehensive framework (UDHE); requires leadership, involves and supports many stakeholders; requires development of policies, guidelines, and practices; measures results; and ensures continuous improvements

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Table 3.1c  Comparing the nine models based on ICT support, student support, and stakeholder engagement Characteristic

Options

Models that incorporate option in part or whole

ICT supported

All

EU4ALL Model Inclusive Campus Model Contextualized Model Holistic Model VIVID Model Composite Practice Model Model of Accessibility Services EU4ALL Model Holistic Model Inclusive Campus Model Staff Development Model Contextualized Model Model of Accessibility Services VIVID Model

Only ICT used in e-learning

Only assistive technology Types of students supported

All students

Only students with disabilities

Campus stakeholders engaged

Only students with visual impairments All

Disability service units only E-learning course instructors and developers only

Contextualized Model EU4ALL Model Inclusive Campus Model Model of Accessibility Services Composite Practice Model Holistic Model VIVID Model

What Approaches to Implementing Accessibility Models and Frameworks Are Required? Practitioners are cautioned to be careful about only partially applying a framework or model. For example, Thomson, Fichten, Budd, Havel, and Asuncion (2015) provide the example that, within the UDL model, “offering students a video as an alternative to text provides multiple means of representation but will not provide full access for a student who is deaf, unless the video is captioned” (p. 277). And, written content will not be available to a student who is blind or has a reading-related disability unless the text provided is in an accessible format. In summary, besides offering multiple ways to gain access to content, practitioners should ensure that each individual option is universally designed, so that it is also accessible,

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usable, and inclusive. In addition, it is wise for stakeholders who implement models to check that their actual practices and procedures are in line with those intended by their chosen models. For example, in 2013, a UD audit was conducted on a large Canadian campus where a disability service unit decided to impose the UD lens on its own service provision (Beck, Diaz del Castillo, Fovet, Mole, & Noga, 2014). They selected this model as the university had recently participated in a broad campus-wide drive to implement UDL in teaching practices. However, as a service unit, the staff were increasingly concerned with a disparity between their external campus message of promoting UD and their actual internal practices. For example, although they encouraged the use of online tools at the time of audit, they still relied heavily on paper-based procedures and offered no alternative to in-person appointments. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that the frameworks and models that have been described in this chapter probably do not capture all stakeholder views and the respective roles necessary to bring about a significant transformation in accessibility practice. For example, participants at the Ed-ICT symposium on “Effective Models, Frameworks and Approaches” in Seattle (University of Washington, 2017) concluded that it was ­important to adopt both top-down and bottom-up approaches to practice, where “top” is associated with legislators, managers, and leaders, while “bottom” is associated with stakeholders that work more closely with students, such as in a disability services office. At the Ed-ICT Montreal Symposium on Stakeholder Perspectives (Jorgensen, Fichten, King, & Havel, 2018), government officials, although invited, were noticeably absent. During discussions, some participants also commented that some senior administrators are not easily convinced to take on leadership roles when it came to ICT accessibility. To facilitate a paradigm shift toward more inclusive campuses, the models adopted by an institution need to clearly incorporate roles for those stakeholders who have the influence to bring about changes and be persistent in seeking their engagement. A review of the frameworks and models reveal specific aspects related to accessible ICT and related practices that practitioners may find it helpful to consider as they embrace a model that best fits their campus. It is our claim that practitioners would potentially benefit from considering the following factors: • The strengths and weaknesses of each model • Campus values and culture

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• Views of stakeholder representatives (e.g., on integration and segregation, duty and responsibility, teams and community, autonomy and freedom) • Implementation of a process to reach a shared vision • Potential roles of a large number of stakeholder groups • Application of holistic practices • Processes for acquiring AT as well as the procurement, development, and use of accessible mainstream IT • External drivers and mediators to change • Training and support issues, tailored to specific audiences and to efforts to promote awareness and increase specific knowledge, skills, and procedures • Potential barriers or resistance factors (e.g., funding) • Culture changes and a paradigm shift to a more inclusive campus • Development of strategic partnerships and implementation plans • Benchmarks to measure progress toward a vision of a more inclusive campus with respect to ICT How Can Research Help to Measure the Success of Any Paradigm Shift? In preparation for the first symposium of the Ed-ICT International Network, Seale (2017) developed a list of questions that she suggested should be asked to evaluate the potential of the range of models that exist in the field of disability, ICT, and HE. She argued that it is important to examine both the validity and efficacy of models for the purpose of developing informed practice. The validity of models can be judged based on whether or not they are logical, factually sound, and convincing. This involves examining how the models are derived, as well as looking for evidence that the models have a positive impact on practice and outcome. In evaluating the efficacy of the models, she proposed that two components be addressed: the level of details within the model and how widely a model is being implemented. She presented her findings based on her literature review of nine selected models and the application of her framework of questions. As there is a dearth of critical analyses of models, additional research is warranted. This could entail others using the same framework of questions, to replicate Seale’s research from their unique perspectives. As well, there may be

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future opportunities to examine models other than those already studied, but again applying the same criteria regarding validity and efficacy. If the common goal of the models we have examined is to facilitate the successful inclusion of disabled students in HE through provision of accessible and inclusive ICTs, an obvious research question to ask is whether any of the models actually accomplish this? Mole (2013, p. 76), in her examination of UD as a model for inclusion of disabled students in HE settings, concludes that “Despite the emerging popularity of UD with disability service provision, there is a notable lack of research with regards to outcomes for stakeholders.” The same can be said for any of the models presented here. In conducting further research, the first challenge would be to define indicators of successful inclusion of disabled students, followed by identifying the means by which to measure them. Should one be looking at retention/graduation rates of students, the competency levels of students’ ICT use, a reduction in the need for accommodations, student satisfaction, and so on? Some stakeholders may have a very different perspective in terms of efficacy. For example, senior administrators of an institution may be interested in what impact a model has on the financial and human resources required to sustain the provision of accessible and inclusive ICTs. In other words, the question for future research needs to revolve around “which model work best for which stakeholder”? According to Radermacher (2006, p. 23) “Engaging in a participatory action research approach can provide a practical way in which to embrace a social model of disability.” It can easily be rationalized that it also provides an excellent approach to further examine other models that relate to disability. This might be particularly true if the largest participant group were composed of students with disabilities who are ICT users and who could benefit the most from the findings. Seale (2017) has already expressed concern about researchers and practitioners who have been critically silent by either criticizing other models in a superficial way, or by focusing only on the strengths and not the weaknesses of their preferred model. Students in HE, who are unlikely to hold such biases, are ideally positioned to participate in the whole research process, from selecting the models to be studied, setting the research questions, gathering and analyzing the data, and most importantly, advocating that the research findings be implemented in practice.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we discussed various approaches to accessibility practices in institutions of HE that might promote a paradigm shift to a more inclusive campus, especially with respect to the procurement, development, and use of ICT. We also made the case for the benefits of exploring a variety of potential frameworks and models for service provision and perhaps even combining them to best fit a specific institution, where the selection is informed by views of disability, accessibility, inclusion, responsibility, and change. And, of course, selection of frameworks or models will not instigate a paradigm shift unless they are actually implemented and evaluated in practice. Acknowledgements  This chapter is based on work supported by the UK Leverhulme Trust and the US National Science Foundation (grant numbers CNS-­ 1539179 and DRL-1824540). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the funding sources, and you should not assume their endorsement.

Notes 1. https://www.washington.edu/doit/videos/ 2. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/seattle/programme/ 3. https://alludl.ca/

References Beaver, A. (2017). Creating a culture of sustainable accessibility: Stakeholders, models, and methods for change. Presentation at the Ed-ICT Montreal symposium on Stakeholder perspectives. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict. com/workshops/montreal/programme/ Beck, T., Diaz del Castillo, P., Fovet, F., Mole, H., & Noga, B. (2014). Applying universal design to disability service provision: Outcome analysis of a universal design (UD) audit. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 27(2), 209–222. Black, R. D., Weinberg, L. A., & Brodwin, M. G. (2015). Universal design for learning and instruction: Perspectives of students with disabilities in higher education. Exceptionality Education International, 25(2), 1–16. Boticario, J. G., Rodriguez-Ascaso, A., Santos, O. C., Raffenne, E., Montandon, L., Roldán, D., & Buendía, F. (2012). Accessible lifelong learning at higher

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education: Outcomes and lessons learned at two different pilot sites in the EU4ALL project. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 18(1), 62–85. Burgstahler, S., & Greear, K. (2017). Tips for collaboration between disability & technology services. Accessing Higher Ground conference, Boulder, CO.  Resource document. AHEAD. https://accessinghigherground.org/ tips-for-collaboration-between-disability-and-technology-services/ Burgstahler, S. E. (Ed.). (2015). Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. CAPRES. (2015). La conception universelle de l’apprentissage  – CUA. Resource document. CAPRES. http://www.capres.ca/dossiers/la-conceptionuniverselle-de-lapprentissage-cua/ Center for Universal Design. (1997). The principles of universal design. Resource document. CUD. https://projects.ncsu.edu/design/cud/about_ud/udprinciplestext.htm Fovet, F., Mole, H., Jarrett, T., & Syncox, D. (2014). Like fire to water: Building bridging collaborations between disability service providers and course instructors to create user friendly and resource efficient UDL implementation material. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 7(1), 68–75. https://doi. org/10.22329/celt.v7i1.3999. Hadley, W. M. (2011). College students with disabilities: A student development perspective. New Directions for Higher Education, 154, 77–81. https://doi. org/10.1002/he.436. Hockings, C. (2010). Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education: A synthesis of research. Resource document. Evidence Net. http://www.advance-he. ac.uk/knowledge-hub/inclusive-learning-and-teaching-higher-educationsynthesis-research International Network on the Disability Creation Process. (n.d.). The model. https://ripph.qc.ca/en/hdm-dcp-model/the-model/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Jorgensen, M., Fichten, C., King, L., & Havel, A. (2018). Proceedings of the Ed-ICT International Network Montreal Symposium: Stakeholder Perspectives. Resource document. Montreal, Canada: Adaptech Research Network. https:// eric.ed.gov/?id=ED580147 Kelly, B., Nevile, L., Draffan, E., & Fanou, S. (2008). One world, one web but great diversity. Paper presented at the 2008 international cross-disciplinary workshop on Web accessibility (W4A), Beijing, China. https://eprints.soton.ac. uk/267205/1/p141-kelly.pdf. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Kelly, B., Phipps, L., & Swift, E. (2004). Developing a holistic approach for e-learning accessibility. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 30, 3. http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/26513/19695. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Kouroupetroglou, G., Pino, A., & Kacorr, H. (2011, February 8–11). A model of accessibility services provision for students with disabilities in higher educa-

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CHAPTER 4

New Perspectives on Stakeholders: Who Needs to Step Up to the Plate and How? Laura King, Sheryl Burgstahler, Björn Fisseler, and Dana Kaspi-Tsahor

Abstract  The focus of this chapter is those practitioners (stakeholders) operating in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), disability and higher education who have a potentially important role to play in developing and implementing ICT-related practices that can facilitate positive learning experiences for students with disabilities in higher education. In order to examine the contribution that these stakeholders can make (both individually and collectively), this chapter will describe two case examples of what is considered to be effective practice in engaging all the relevant stakeholders; identify those stakeholders who tend to avoid engageL. King (*) Cégep André-Laurendeau and Adaptech Research Network, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] S. Burgstahler University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA B. Fisseler FernUniversität, Hagen, Germany D. Kaspi-Tsahor The Open University, Ra’anana, Israel © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_4

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ment; examine how new and existing stakeholders might be effectively engaged in developing effective accessibility and ICT-­related practice and discuss the implications for future research and practice. Keywords  ICT • Disability • Higher education • Accessibility • Stakeholders • Organizational learning

An Overarching Framework for Examining Stakeholders’ Roles Influenced by Seale’s (2006) argument that metaphors can be useful conceptual tools for exploring the future of accessible e-learning, we will employ a base-ball metaphor to emphasize the points we are making, where the players in a base-ball match are equated with the stakeholders in developing accessible ICT-related practice in higher education (HE). Base-ball is generally played on a grass field and in order to win a game, a base-ball team needs some players who can hit a ball with a bat, some who can run fast around a circuit, some who can catch a ball and some who can throw a ball with accuracy. A team might jeopardize their chances of winning if they don’t ‘maintain a deep bench’ and have players available who possess all of these skills. Furthermore, the players need to be willing to ‘step up to the plate’ and do their bit for the good of the team. Using this base-ball metaphor the argument that we will develop is that all relevant stakeholders need to be identified and engaged (getting everyone on the field, so that there is more than one player capable of holding the ball), but at the moment this is not happening because not all stakeholders are taking responsibility for accessibility issues (they are dropping the ball). Successful engagement of all stakeholders will require maintaining a deep bench through: proactive targeting of key stakeholders; engaging ignored stakeholders and creating new stakeholder roles.

Getting Everyone on the Field: More Than One Player Needs to Hold the Ball Many stakeholders need to use their unique positions to promote the procurement, development and use of accessible Information Technologies (IT) on their campuses in order to achieve systematic change in these areas

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(Burgstahler, 2015). Unfortunately, some people in powerful stakeholder positions actually inhibit progress by dropping the ball in this area. For example, administrators and policy makers have the power to set policy and allocate funds toward practices that improve the availability of accessible ICT, but may not understand or do not put the same high priority on accessibility as they do on security and other IT issues. As beneficiaries, individuals with disabilities can push for access to assistive technology (AT) and accessibly designed mainstream technology but most do not self-identify as disabled and therefore do not push. As for those who do self-identify, many do not ask for accessible IT because of limited awareness or lack of self-advocacy skills (to see how this situation might be improved, see Chap. 6, for a case study of how the Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) Center at the University of Washington (UW) prepares high school and college students for this type of advocacy for themselves and others). Disability services staff may embrace helping students with disabilities registered in their office to gain access to AT and remediated ICT, such as videos and documents. However, many tend to rely on an accommodation approach, resulting in little infrastructure change with respect to the accessibility of mainstream technology. One reason for such reliance is that they have not achieved effective collaborative relationships with the appropriate staff in the central ICT unit. Technology staff have high technical skills that could be used to make accessible IT available to more people and may also have access to a large pool of funds. Despite this, they may not view accessibility to be their job and can be difficult to convince that they must change their workflow to address accessibility at each stage. Procurement personnel may be in a position to encourage units to build accessibility into contracts with vendors, but are not necessarily enthusiastic to add more rules. In addition, if they are on a campus where ICT decisions are made within campus units, they do not know what is purchased by these campus units. Even if they did, they may not be versed on how to evaluate products for accessibility or how to establish a collaborative relationship with the campus ICT unit which has this expertise. Faculty have a high level of interest in student success overall but many do not feel it is their job to handle issues related to the accessibility of ICT, even when it comes to the inaccessibility of the videos and documents they create. Instead, many feel that it is up to the disability services to take care of accessibility issues, thus promoting the accommodations model for delivering services. Some professors also do not have the expertise or the

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time to implement accessibility practices regarding the procurement or development of the digital technology they include in their teaching. Finally, the technology industry could make the work of HE institutions easier if they sold and licensed products that were designed to be accessible to individuals with disabilities. For most IT companies though, this is not the case because they are unaware of accessibility requirements at educational institutions, they consider the market too small to be concerned about, they do not know how to design accessible products and/ or they do not receive enough complaints from institutions who buy their products. What Might Be Considered To Be Effective Practice in Engaging All the Relevant Stakeholders? One example, that we suggest represents effective practice in engaging all the relevant stakeholders (getting all the players on the field), is that provided by the University of Boulder, who in response to legal claims of discrimination, approached digital accessibility for those with disabilities using a project management model (Sieben-Schneider & Hamilton-­ Brodie, 2016). Both internal and external stakeholders participated in a process that included identifying clear objectives and measurable outcomes, as well as effective communication practices such as having the same stakeholder hold roles on several different committees. Three components were identified as being key to ensuring the accessibility of digital technologies within an institution: having a chief digital accessibility officer, ensuring representation on governance, policy and standard committees, and creating new positions within the offices of communication and technology to allow for validation and testing. Lessons learned included the importance of commitment from senior managers, active engagement of individuals with disabilities, transparent communication, as well as a help line (accessible by phone or in person) to report issues and get help. In the end, it was determined that to achieve success, stakeholders needed to recognize that, although they each had a clear sense of their ­responsibilities, they needed to work within a sustainable system (e.g., create a plan for digital accessibility which includes short-term goals, leadership and an opportunity for institution growth), they also had to work together (Sieben-Schneider & Hamilton-Brodie, 2016). A second example is that provided by the University of Washington in Seattle. It has engaged in accessible IT efforts since 1984. That year, they

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began to officially offer central consulting services dedicated to the support of faculty, students and staff who use desktop computers; this group embraced disability-related accessibility issues and made it part of their consulting responsibility. Over many years, the group has developed a model for policies and practices in this regard that engage key stakeholder groups (University of Washington, n.d.). Key stakeholders that play a leadership role within the organizational structure include: The IT Accessibility Coordinator, an Accessible IT Task Force, an IT Accessibility Team and IT Accessibility Liaisons. The IT Accessibility Coordinator, who is also the director of Accessible Technology Services (ATS) within the central IT unit at the University, leads IT accessibility efforts. The Accessible IT Task Force includes representatives from key stakeholder groups that, besides Accessible Technology Services, include disability support services, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, procurement services, online learning and IT staff who maintain UW’s central online resources and templates. Members meet monthly to discuss campus-wide efforts currently taking place, determine others that they or colleagues can implement and make recommendations to high level administrators within annual reports. Finally, more than 100 IT Accessibility Liaisons who are volunteer staff, faculty and students have agreed to the following: promoting accessible IT in their units, learning more about accessible IT through training (most notably that Information Services (IS) offered at three half-day liaison meetings per year) and engaging in an online community of practice. Practices that result from these stakeholder engagement and leadership initiatives include training on the development of accessible videos, documents and websites as well as accessibility training integrated within existing IT courses and consulting. There are also presentations to departments and other units on campus, negotiation of contracts for a web accessibility checker, software to convert documents to more accessible formats, an add-on to our learning management system that offers guidance to faculty teaching online and that captions videos. There is a showroom of AT and ergonomic furniture for testing and use and consultation services for the following areas: disability support services, procurement, the teaching and learning center, and other units with respect to IT. In addition, ATS offers incentives that promote the use of accessible IT. For example, ATS has a pool of funds to which faculty and staff can apply for free captioning of high impact videos: they address an important need, they are usually public-­facing and they are viewed by many people. Finally, they also rec-

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ognize units for work well done with IT Accessibility Capacity Building Awards. Lessons learned at the UW that might benefit other campuses who seek to promote the procurement, development and use of accessible IT include: creating a leadership structure; engaging key stakeholders; undertaking both top-down and bottom-up efforts; crafting clear policies and procedures that rest on the vision and values of the institution. Other key lessons include ensuring a broad commitment to inclusive practices in all campus offerings, supporting a core highly skilled group that energizes others to promote the cause, providing a rich set of resources online, delivering training and support tailored to different audiences and refusing to buy, or at least complain to, the companies that develop products that are not accessible to people with disabilities. Finally, the DO-IT Centre at UW has created a model that presents examples of how stakeholder groups can contribute to the success of students with disabilities. Presented in Fig. 4.1, aspects of this model have been applied in many DO-IT projects.

Fig. 4.1  University of Washington Stakeholder engagement model

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Identifying Everyone Who Needs To Be on the Field: Maintaining a Deep Bench In this section, we will illuminate our claim for the importance of maintaining a deep bench by discussing the need to: target key stakeholders, engage ignored stakeholders and bring in new stakeholders. Targeting Key Stakeholders Four primary issues need to be addressed by multiple stakeholders in order to ensure the procurement, development and use of accessible IT on a HE campus: procurement, development, remediation and use. Targeting procurement staff as key players in enhancing the accessibility of ICT, including e-learning tools, is essential for future practices in this field. One approach for gaining their support is to use data. A recent study by Fichten et al. 2016, found that 16% of the students in the sampled higher education institutions in Canada have a disability. In a school of 50,000 students this equals 8000 students, of whom fewer than half are registered for disability-related services. One way to reach all of them is by having procurement officers purchase accessible campus technology. One of the challenges in creating accessible courses is that the disabled population is not a homogenous group; it is helpful for procurement staff to understand that these students include, in order of the most common to the least common type of disability, students with learning disabilities and/or Attention Deficit and HyperActivity Disorder (ADHD), mental illness, chronic health problems as well as sensory and mobility impairments (Fichten et al., 2016). Fichten, King, Havel, Jorgensen and Lussier (2017) during the International Ed-ICT Symposium on Stakeholders, advised being proactive rather than reactive when it comes to technology purchases such as the services of a school web page designer, course management systems’ licenses, technology for campus labs and courses, as well as the technology for students to complete their exams and assignments. A final way to bring procurement officers on board, as well as senior managers and government officials, is to provide them with information on socially responsible public procurement. In a comparative analysis of the United States, Canada and the EU, Cravero (2017), explains that public procurement policy has moved beyond economic concerns toward another consideration, that of social linkage. Examples of social linkages in public procurement include affirmative action programs in the United

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States for individuals with disabilities and in Canada for the development of Aboriginal businesses. In Israel, there is a legal requirement to employ a defined percentage of workers with disabilities within public institutions such as schools (extension order to encourage and increase the employment of people with disabilities, 2014). In Germany, not only public institutions, but also business and companies of a certain size must employ a certain quota of people with disabilities. Targeting the social use for public procurement can positively impact both employment and education by offering opportunities to populations that encounter accessibility barriers. Recently institutions in the EU which previously only valued full and open competition, have taken frameworks with set asides as a way of providing economic opportunities to disadvantaged groups (Cravero, 2017). Given this new but increasingly common trend, educational institutions can also consider embracing this model when procuring their technology. Targeting IT staff as key players in the development of accessible ICT and remediating inaccessible ICT is also essential for future practices in the field. How many times have disability-service, technician, teacher and student stakeholders been frustrated by accessibility issues with their institution’s ICTs, including e-learning tools? Of course some of these problems can be resolved; however, solutions may take time and can be costly. Sometimes, there is no solution and stakeholders are ‘stuck’ with the technology, as this is what the department has purchased. Indeed, Martiniello et al., 2012, presented findings from two cross-Canadian studies in which participants were all students at the post-compulsory level and self-­ identified as either being blind or having low vision. Both studies indicate that ICT products used to deliver e-learning tools, including PDF documents, videos and websites, have accessibility issues. Many times faculty who create these materials do not know how to design them to be accessible to students with disabilities. Ideally, IT personnel are made available to help faculty make their digital materials accessible; for instance, workshops such as ‘Making Your PowerPoints and Course Packs Accessible’ or ‘How to Give Digital Exams that Require Extended Time’ should be offered. Besides increasing faculty awareness, to remediate this problem for ICT procured by the institution, a recommendation was in the area of procurement: institutions must evaluate the accessibility of their ICTs and e-learning tools before and during the purchasing process. An institution could design checklists to make the process of the procurement of accessible ICT easier and by including the following: information that may include ensuring that the technology producers know how to apply the

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principles of universal design to products and the accessibility needs of students with various types of disabilities. Questions to vendors could include ‘Has the product been tested for accessibility by end users?’, ‘Does the product comply with established accessibility guidelines?’, ‘Does the product include textual alternatives for graphics, images and other non-­ text content?’ and ‘Does web and document content use meaningful and semantic ‘markup’ like headings, lists and tables? If knowledgeable stakeholders intervene before and during the procurement process by targeting accessibility via user-friendly checklists (content inspired by Martiniello et al., 2012), accessibility problems could be eliminated or reduced. It is also important to target IT personnel who work with the institution’s technology and to guarantee the accessibility of all of the HE institution’s web presence, including websites and course management systems. They too need training tailored to their specific roles. Ideally, a campus can hire an access technologist or assign the task of learning accessibility content to an existing staff member. If this is not practical for a small HE institution, perhaps partnership with other small schools could make gaining access to this expertise feasible. Access issues exist regarding ICT that is not procured or developed by the institution but are simply used by staff and faculty. For example, online instructors may refer students in their courses to websites, documents or videos that are not fully accessible to students with disabilities and even use online tools that are not designed in an accessible manner. Staff members from campus units like Student Services might also link to web resources that are not accessible. To reduce this problem, faculty and staff need basic instruction and resources regarding how to determine if ICT products are accessible to individuals with disabilities. Such instruction might be provided by staff development units within a HE institution, IT staff or access technologists. Engaging Ignored Stakeholders At the Ed-ICT Symposium held in Montreal in May 2017, the role of stakeholders in ensuring the accessibility of technology for students with disabilities in HE institutions was debated. (Jorgensen, Fichten, King, & Havel, 2018). There were four themes: identifying barriers to preventing stakeholders from being engaged (1), facilitating accessibility for students with disabilities (2), finding invisible stakeholders (3), identifying future research and practice which will engage more diverse stakeholders (4). To

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address theme 1 regarding barriers, Jane Seale, principal investigator for Ed-ICT international network emphasized the following: ICT related practice in HE for students with disabilities requires the engagement of stakeholders and yet, there are key stakeholders who are not typically engaged in improving practice because they are either silent or silenced (Seale, 2017). This silencing may be caused by a lack of disability awareness and negative attitudes toward disability. Remediation of this problem requires education and training, but it also requires self-advocacy, group advocacy and inclusive research. As for theme 3, examples of stakeholders who have not been traditionally identified include those who are external to the institution such as book publishers and family members of students with disabilities, as well as some who are within the institution such as librarians and students with disabilities who do not self-disclose. Indeed, the latter represent as much as 66% of the population (Fichten et  al., 2018). Often identified traditional stakeholders include students with disabilities, faculty, senior managers, disability support officers and learning technologists; however, it is important to also include the institution’s web masters, support staff, instructional designers, laboratory technicians, e-learning professionals and assistive technologists. Bringing in New Stakeholders In order to highlight the value that ‘new’ stakeholders can add to institutional accessibility efforts we will present a case study from Israel. The context for the case study is the bringing of new disability legislation. This new legislation brought about the creation of two new stakeholders: a Licensed Service Accessibility Expert and a Licensed Buildings, Infrastructure and Environment Accessibility Expert. No one disputes the critical role that legislators play in achieving greater accessibility for diverse populations. In fact, the Disability Rights Movement led to a change that anchored equal rights and social integration for people with disabilities. These acquired rights are reflected in regulations such as the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in the United Kingdom and The General Act on Equal Treatment (AGG) in Germany (Bundesamt für Justiz, 2006). In Canada, legislators have created federal acts like the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) and at the provincial level, for example, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

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These positive developments, now part of the legislation in four countries, can also be seen in the country of Israel. The Equal Rights Act for People with Disabilities Act, which came into effect in Israel in 1998, constitutes a framework for regulating accessibility for people with disabilities in all public buildings and services. Up until then, accessibility was dependent on the good will of companies and employers. The prevailing view was the “paternalistic perception”, based on the medical model, that people with disabilities are entitled to medical treatment and rehabilitation but not much more. They were paid disability funds and were not expected to work, let alone attend higher education institutions. The social and legal arrangements established for them were determined by “normal” people without disabilities. As a result, people with disabilities were excluded from social life, public buildings and public services (Admon, 2007). Improvements to the 1998 legislation were instituted in the 2005 “Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Law Amendment No 2”. It defined accessibility as the ability to get to a place, move and find one’s way in it, enjoy and make use of the service and information provided in it, use the facilities or participate in the activities there, in an egalitarian, respectful, independent and safe way. It was not until 2011 that the regulations for HE institutions were first drafted by two powerful stakeholders: the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor. These legislators set out provisions such as required accessibility accommodations, in order to provide a person with disabilities reasonable accessibility to HE campuses, and the learning services provided by these institutions, including the installation of auxiliary devices and auxiliary services (Sachs & Schreuer, 2011). In 2013, detailed regulations were finally published. The document was arranged by chapters and sub-articles that included almost all aspects of life. HE was one of the final areas to be addressed and thus the special regulations related to it were almost the last to come into effect. Until then, those stakeholders who were responsible for making HE accessible, had worked according to the General Accessibility regulations. Once the HE regulations were published, all universities and colleges were required to be fully accessible by November 2017. This of course moved the accessibility of ICTs for HE students to the forefront of Israel’s campuses. The HE regulations are more stringent than the General Accessibility regulations, and include special service areas for universities and colleges. These HE regulations oblige every school to establish a support center for students with disabilities which must have personal and professional accom-

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paniment, learning-skill development and accommodation training, including the use ICTs. The support center also accompanies and instructs the teaching and administration staff regarding these adaptations and how to support these students in general. The regulations also require accessibility in the following areas: parking spots, routes to classrooms, restrooms, signage, cafeterias, telephone assistance, websites and software applications. Further, the HE institutions have to hire employees who are trained to provide accessible service such as librarians. HE institutions are required to provide personal wireless systems to enhance hearing in laboratories and exercise rooms as well as two accessible desks for students who require it and two seats for supporting personnel in all lecture halls. Finally, every institution must appoint an accessibility coordinator (see Accessibility Adjustments for Higher Education Institutions and Higher Education Services (2016), for a complete detailing of the regulations). HE institutions are not entitled to an exemption from accessibility, as are some other public bodies. A person who is obliged to implement accessibility accommodations shall be exempt from the implementation of a specific accessibility accommodation, if one of the following applies: (1) The accessibility accommodation is impossible to implement due to engineering circumstances and a Licensed Buildings, Infrastructure and Environment Accessibility Expert has confirmed this; (2) The accessibility accommodation causes an undue financial burden. The new regulations brought into play two new stakeholder groups whose supervision, confirmation and signature are necessary for any process of accessibility. The first group are “Licensed Buildings, Infrastructure and Environment Accessibility Experts” who are required to have an academic degree in structural engineering or in architecture. Their task is to make sure that every building constructed after 2009 is built according to accessibility regulations, and that every building that was built earlier, will undergo a renovation to allow accessibility. No confirmation of occupancy for new buildings is available without their signature. The second new stakeholder group in Israel is the “Service Accessibility Expert” whose role is to ensure that all services provided in public places are accessible—for example, accessible furniture, ICTs, study materials and websites. These experts are required to have an academic degree in an area related to the health professions: social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists, nurses, and so on. After meeting the requirement that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor has established, including practical training, 200  hours of advanced studies and certification exams, they are issued a license. Today

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it is not possible to conduct HE courses or other multi-participant events without the signature of a Service Accessibility Expert. In Israel there are 9 universities and 57 colleges. As with any organization of 25 employees or more, legally, all HE institutes must appoint an important stakeholder: an “Accessibility Coordinator”. This person is responsible for recruiting stakeholders and promoting the process of accessibility and raising awareness among the employees in general and the academic staff in particular. The Accessibility Coordinator also addresses student complaints regarding inaccessibility. Contrary to many other campuses in the world, there is meaningful cooperation between the Accessibility Coordinator and other stakeholders responsible for students with disabilities in HE, with the goal of learning from each other and promoting the field together. Prior to powerful stakeholder legislators making changes to the law, accessibility in Israel’s HE institutions was a choice. Given a model of a civil rights law without specific regulations such as the American Disabilities Act in the United States, implementation of the law is subject to interpretation by each institution. With no explicit regulations, the accessibility of services is sometimes changed due to precedent-setting claims by people with disabilities who feel that they have been discriminated against by not receiving adequate services. In the past decade, there has been significant development regarding the integration of people with disabilities into HE, a trend that signifies many advantages for individuals and society (Ganim, 2014). The introduction of two new stakeholders to this process has brought nothing but progress to this area. However if key players drop the ball then the winning combination is lost. One example of players dropping the ball is Professors. One study found that a fundamental factor in the success of students with disabilities was raising the awareness of teaching staff in HE in order to make adjustments to their teaching methods (Ankeny & Lehaman, 2010).

Implications for Future Research and Practice In this chapter we have offered examples of what might be considered to be effective practice in engaging all the relevant stakeholders; identified those stakeholders who tend to avoid engagement and examined how new and existing stakeholders might be effectively engaged in developing effective accessibility and ICT-related practice. In this section, we will discuss the implications for practice by examining what new practices might

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be needed in order to effectively engage all stakeholders. We will also discuss the implications for research by examining how it might further our understanding of how to bring about change in stakeholder practice. Creating New Practices In order to effectively engage all stakeholders, we suggest that two new practices will be required: combining bottom-up and top-down approaches and silo-crossing. Approaches that rely solely on external drivers such as legislation to bring about change have been labeled as ‘top down’. This is largely because the passing of new legislation tends to mobilize senior administrators within a HE institution who then issue edicts to those that they manage, mandating some kind of response. In the absence of key drivers such as legislation and mandates from senior managers, another approach to accessibility is that of attempting to bring about change at the local level— often called a ‘bottom-up’ approach. Many HE institutions in Canada do not have digital accessibility as one of their priorities (Thomson, 2018). Both Canada and Germany have used a bottom-up approach to help make accessibility a priority, and in most cases, we would suggest, they have eventually reached the ceiling. For Israel, the opposite is the case. Accessibility defined by regulations and implemented in educational institutions has been an ongoing process of top-down implementation since 2013. The legislation requires schools to appoint an accessibility coordinator and establish a support center for students with all types of disabilities. This process would be more effective though, if it were accompanied by a parallel process that included a grassroots movement (D.  Kaspi-­ Tsahor, personal communication, March, 2019). In the United States, relevant legislation is at the federal level (Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and its 2008 Amendments). However, some states have relevant accessible IT laws and policies which come from state government entities (the top down). For example, in Washington state, Policy #188 (Washington State, 2017) reinforces the requirements under Section 504 and the ADA and presents additional requirements for public HE institutions such as to have an IT accessibility coordinator, adopt a policy for the procurement of accessibility IT, apply WCAG 2.0 Level AA as a standard (Web Accessibility Initiative, n.d.) as well as offer training. This policy resulted in added attention to IT accessibility efforts on the part of IT organizations state-­

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wide and led to the establishment of a state-wide online community of practice and annual collaborative meetings. In the United States, grassroots initiatives at some institutions have resulted in more inclusive practices but many campus accessibility IT personnel report lack of high-level support. Combining bottom-up and top-down efforts has greater potential to initiate changes in practices that may lead to the procurement, development and use of accessible ICT (Jorgensen et al., 2018). It is our observation that many professionals are experts in their own field but often have limited understanding of others’ expertise. For example, disability-focused service providers often have a profound understanding of disability issues but may have little knowledge of ICT, while IT staff master mainstream technology issues but rarely those related to accessibility. According to A. Havel, more people who understand both perspectives are required as well as cross-training initiatives (personal communication, March, 2019). Although it is still relatively rare, in recent years, some experts have been undergoing dual training of the kind that Alice Havel calls for.1 Encouraging this trend and augmenting the number of experts with a broad view of the field may contribute to a holistic understanding of all aspects of accessibility. We labeled this as an example of silo-crossing (see Glesson & Rozo, 2013); another related term is boundary-­crossing. Whatever the label, the outcome is cross-fertilization of ideas and practices between two or more groups of stakeholders. Other examples of silo-crossing include working cooperatively as illustrated by the Israeli case study where two separate types of stakeholders (for physical accessibility and for service accessibility) are required to work cooperatively (see Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Regulations: Accessibility Adjustments for Service, 2013). In the United States, disability services often take responsibility for providing disability-related accommodations for students with disabilities, for example, remediating the problem of inaccessible documents, and captioning videos. However, the IT organization does not always take responsibility for their part in the procurement, development and use of accessible ICT. Similarly, the libraries have responsibilities for library database software purchases and use, but may not take responsibility for ensuring that they are accessible to students with disabilities. To institutionalize accessible practices that can lead to a paradigm shift toward a more inclusive campus, leaders need to establish the responsibilities of each stakeholder group, ensure that training and resources are available to them, adequately support staff in these efforts, and establish regular ways for them to interact. A combined-efforts

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framework and cross-training initiatives can both serve to remediate this tunnel-vision concern; for example, professionals can be required to have diverse skill sets so they can understand and communicate effectively with other stakeholders. Their managers can support them in their efforts to be open and willing to deal with topics that are not related to their field of expertise. These criteria suggest the need for new approaches in institutionalizing accessibility, which we will discuss in the next section. Developing a Game Plan for Institutional Change Making changes in HE institutions is not an easy task which is reflected in the literature where discussions over the last 20 years have focused on a variety of topics to make change easier such as New Managerialism, New Public Management, and the university as a learning organization and organizational learning as a management approach (Deem, 1998). As mentioned in the previous sections, new stakeholders have to be effectively engaged to make ICT in HE more accessible and inclusive to students with disabilities. Therefore, we would argue that future research can make a valuable contribution by analyzing effective international practices in order to identify ways of engaging stakeholders responsible for improving the accessibility of ICT. Doing so will require researchers to theorize stakeholder practice and theorize institutional practice, something we are calling organizational learning. Firstly, with regard to the need to theorize stakeholder practice, in the field of accessibility and ICT, the concept of stakeholders is often used without defining what is actually meant by this. Stakeholders are frequently mentioned in the context of the Community of Practice Theory as well as the Activity Theory (Seale, 2014, p. 56). In contrast to these is the stakeholder theory (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, & de Colle, 2010), originally developed in economics as a theory of organizational management and business ethics, but it is becoming more popular in HE research (Fowler & Gilfillan, 2003; Kettunen, 2015; Logermann & Leišytė, 2015). Thus, when arguing that we need to engage more or different stakeholders in order to make ICT accessible, future research in this area should pay more attention to stakeholder theory. When talking about stakeholders, we must start to ask who or what a stakeholder really is? In the context of ICT and accessibility, is a stakeholder simply anyone who is interested in the topic? This is a rather vague definition and leaves much room for interpretation, hence the observed

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missing or disengaged stakeholders. The stakeholder theory itself says that a stakeholder is an individual or group without whose support the business would no longer be possible (Freeman et al., 2010, p. 26). Another definition is even broader, stating that “a stakeholder is any group or individual that can affect or be affected by the realization of an organization’s purpose” (Ibid.). But then again, what is “the business” or “organization’s purpose” in our case? Is it accessibility per se, academic access and inclusion, study success? These would be other interesting questions for future research to address. Stakeholder theory offers normative and instrumental grounding for the inclusion of stakeholders into managerial decision making; it provides a framework to recognize relevant stakeholders and concepts so as to integrate and prioritize their interests into the institution’s decision making (Freeman et al., 2010; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997). Another question for future research could be to identify stakeholders using a variety of different frameworks. Traditional ways to identify stakeholders are as follows (Crane & Ruebottom, 2011, p. 79): • Instrumental: A stakeholder is any person, community or group who has a relationship with the organization. • Normative: Stakeholders are all those that participate in the cooperative effort. As this approach of stakeholder identification is very close to the instrumental approach, main stakeholders, identified based on a relationship with the organization, are accompanied by a secondary group called “community” or “activities groups”, which are not specifically identified. • Descriptive: This approach tries to identify the stakeholders that are currently managed in practice. For HE, this means that the university itself defines these in its mission statements. In addition to this, there are often secondary stakeholders that have a relationship with the organization because of the emergence of specific issues or claims staked. These stakeholders are often difficult to identify. • Integrative: This approach combines several attributes to identify stakeholders relevant for an organization. Perhaps one of the best known is Mitchell et al.’s (1997) concept of stakeholder salience. It identifies and describes stakeholders using the attributes power, legitimacy and urgency. • Social identity: All the former approaches share the deficit of focusing on economic roles and relationships, ignoring the fact that many

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groups interact with organizations based on their shared social identities. Therefore, Crane and Ruebottom (2011) developed a model of stakeholder identification based on specific social identities, for example, age, ethnicity, disability or role. They link these identities with traditional stakeholder roles to develop a new stakeholder theory which decenters the organization and replaces it with a network of societal relationships. Another question for future research on stakeholders in the context of ICT and accessibility would be to identify all stakeholders that have to step up to the plate. This immediately leads to the next question of how to identify the stakeholders? Existing lists of stakeholders involved in ICT and accessibility often list the same stakeholders (e.g., lecturers, students with disabilities, managers, IT staff), but what happens when we compare these stakeholders using the approaches mentioned above? Perhaps we will discover that they substantially differ, and this difference might help explain different levels of engagement or stakeholders’ views on the issue of ICT accessibility. Finally using the stakeholder theory hopefully helps to not only identify stakeholders but also provide a richer description of these individuals, groups and organizations. Inspired by the questions Freeman et al. (2010) ask, the following questions could guide future research in this field: 1. What are the effective practices that illustrate stakeholder engagement in HE institutions? Can we build a theory (s) around these practices? 2. Do all stakeholders have to be engaged all the time or not? 3. What are the key elements of stakeholder relationship and how do we qualify and quantify them? 4. What framework should be used to identify and assess stakeholders in HE institutions? 5. What is in it for the stakeholders, what is the value for the organization? 6. What is in the focus of such a description? Is it about accessibility, the HE institution as an organization, or something more abstract like study success? 7. What are the views of the different stakeholder groups on the issue of ICT and accessibility? While we know relatively a lot about students with disabilities and their views, as well as the lecturers’ per-

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spective, not much is known about the other stakeholder groups, for example, senior management and external stakeholders. Research on stakeholder theory in the context of ICT and accessibility should be accompanied by research on the question of how to change HE institutions. These two topics are interconnected, as stakeholders are often those groups who have the power, will or idea to change organizations (Jongbloed, Enders, & Salerno, 2008; Örtenblad & Koris, 2014). As many countries are still facing the problem that HE and especially ICT in colleges and universities is often not accessible to all students, despite all the guidelines, rules, legislation and recommendations, it is worth considering different approaches to these problems. At the same time, there are projects such as the Accessible Technology Initiative of the California State University (California State University, 2004) or the Accessible Technology and Information Committee of Pennsylvania State University (The Pennsylvania State University, 2014) which seem to have successfully transformed educational institutions into more accessibly minded places which are open toward a diverse student body. Given that many HE institutions have not achieved this goal, it is important to reflect upon the following: how did they do this, in what ways were these projects successful and what can we learn from such examples? With regard to the need to theorize institutional practice, we suggest that the concept of organizational learning (Smith & Parker, 2005) is potentially helpful and that future research should explore this further. Organizational learning represents an alternative approach to the “projectitis” (Shireman, 2003) that many universities have a tendency toward for a variety of different reasons, such as their supposed manageability or their strong focus on results. In contrast to this, organizational learning is defined as asking “whether thoughtful people mindful of the institutional context and using relevant and available information can facilitate needed change” (Smith & Parker, 2005, pp. 115–116). It is based on empirical research on the questions of whether, how and under what conditions organizations are learning (Kezar, 2005, p. 10). Issues of accessibility can also be tackled as a goal for organizational learning, as this approach combines easily with the stakeholder theory in HE institutions mentioned above (Örtenblad & Koris, 2014). Following the approach of organization learning, a lack of accessibility can be described as a non-reduction of inequalities and as a learning problem for stakeholders involved, just like Bensimon (2005) explains for the

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unequal educational outcomes for minority groups in HE. In terms of the topic of accessibility, this means that universities and other HE institutions should use organizational learning to bring about change among the stakeholders such as changing their beliefs, expectations, values and practices, which create or maintain the current accessibility problems. Organizational learning focuses on the process of the effort and tries to ensure that changes and corrections are made when necessary (Smith & Parker, 2005, p.  116). Central concepts of organizational learning are single-loop and double-loop learning, inquiry and action and theories-in-­ use. Single-looped learning happens when an organization detects errors in its alignment with the environment. This learning process results in incremental changes, as the organization reacts in accordance with existing assumptions and values. When applied to the topic of accessibility, this could mean, for example, that the university provides a reasonable accommodation to students who complain about an accessibility problem. In comparison to the above, a double-loop learning questions existing assumptions and beliefs: it changes the institutions to align it with the environment which requires transformational change (Kezar, 2005, p. 11). In the context of accessibility, this would mean, for instance, that a university must provide resources, for example, for captioning videos and at the same time, a working group would begin to develop a policy for accessible learning materials. An additional key question for future research is how organizational learning can help to change the accessibility of ICTs. One possible approach could be to generate more data on currently observable practice, like the above-mentioned accessible technology initiatives at the California State University and the Pennsylvania State University. Using a case study approach, such examples for the successful implementation of accessibility of ICTs in HE institutions can help to identify not only learning processes, communities and theories-in-use but also stakeholders. Another example comes from Sieben-Schneider and Hamilton-Brodie (2016), who describe one university’s approach to digital accessibility. After students with disabilities filed a complaint with the Department of Justice (DOJ), this university addressed the problematic areas as well as fostered a culture of accessibility and inclusivity. The university created a project structure with three levels of teams: an executive team, a steering team and four working group teams, where each team consisted of different stakeholders from different departments. The executive team and the steering team were the leadership which is an integral part of organiza-

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tional learning. The working group teams were communities of practice, where individuals participate in a situational learning process. The learning process forms a double-loop process, as the goal is not only to directly address the problematic areas but also to change the way the university as a system operates. As the outcome, the authors describe that the project “resulted in significant changes to the daily operations of the university and organizational adjustments” (Sieben-Schneider & Hamilton-Brodie, 2016, p. 223). This university’s approach to digital accessibility the authors describe has all the characteristics that Smith and Parker (2005, p. 121 ff) set out for organizational learning in the field of diversity: an institutional framework is developed and established, data is used to monitor the progress, leadership at many levels is engaged to ensure the success of the institutional efforts, and the work of all the different teams is linked to the mission and culture of the organization. Nevertheless, the authors do not describe these measures as organizational learning. Therefore, it would be of interest for future research in the field of accessibility to leave behind the focus on the single individual and turn instead toward concepts that see the organization as a whole where stakeholders are important and interconnected individuals. Finally, a combination of the two lenses of stakeholder theory and organizational learning can help to improve research and practice on accessibility and ICT in HE institutions. Both stakeholder theory and organizational learning are lenses that are increasingly used in current research on HE (Fowler & Gilfillan, 2003; Kettunen, 2015; Örtenblad & Koris, 2014). Using these lenses to analyze and research accessibility in the context of HE could make this research more compatible with research on HE as well as additional areas of research. This could attract the interest of other researchers, who might have ignored accessibility because it was too ­technology focused, or too practical minded. Our hope is that we do not only research how to make other stakeholders step up to the plate, but also to make other researchers step up to the plate too.

Conclusion In this chapter we have examined the potential contribution that a range of stakeholders can make to the development of effective accessibility and ICT-related practice and how new and existing stakeholders might be effectively engaged in developing such practice. As part of this examination we have argued that new practices need to be developed, but that in

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order to develop such practices that might succeed across a whole organization and all its stakeholders, we need a better understanding of stakeholders and how the organizations they work in learn to change.

Note 1. http://cambriancollege-public.courseleaf.com/ldgc/

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Cravero, C. (2017). Socially responsible public procurement and set-asides: A comparative analysis of the US, Canada and the EU. Arctic Review on Law and Politics, 8, 174–192. https://doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v8.739. Deem, R. (1998). ‘New managerialism’ and higher education: The management of performances and cultures in universities in the United Kingdom. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 8(1), 47–70. https://doi. org/10.1080/0962021980020014. Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Regulations (Accessibility Adjustments for Higher Education Institutions and Higher Education Services). (2016). Resource document. Commission for Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities. https://www.nevo.co.il/law_html/Law01/501_479.htm Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Regulations (Accessibility Adjustments for Service). (2013). Resource document. Commission for Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities. https://www.justice.gov.il/En/Units/Commission EqualRightsPersonsDisabilities/Accessibility/What-is-an-Accessibility/ Pages/Service-Accessibility.aspx Fichten, C., in collaboration with King, L., Havel, A., Jorgensen, M., & Lussier, A. (2017, May). Stakeholder perspectives: A professor’s Canadian experience. Paper presented at the 2nd Ed-ICT International Network Symposium, Montréal, Québec. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/montreal/programme/ Fichten, C. S., Havel, A., King, L., Jorgensen, M., Budd, J., Asuncion, J., et al. (2018). Are you in or out? Canadian students who register for disability-related services in junior/community colleges versus those who do not. Journal of Education and Human Development, 7(1), 166–175. https://doi. org/10.15640/jehd.v7n1a19. Fichten, C. S., Heiman, T., Havel, A., Jorgensen, M., Budd, J., & King, L. (2016). Sustainability of disability-related services in Canada – Israel: Will the real universal design please stand up? Exceptionality Education International, 26(1), 19–35. Fowler, A., & Gilfillan, M. (2003). A framework for stakeholder integration in higher education information systems projects. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 15(4), 468–489. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 095373203000136051. Freeman, R. E., Harrison, J. S., Wicks, A. C., Parmar, B., & de Colle, S. (2010). Stakeholder theory: The state of the art. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ganim, R. (2014). Career guidance, training and education for people with intellectual developmental disabilities: Modeling trends and proposing policy and application models in Israel. Resource document. Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services. https://www.molsa.gov.il/CommunityInfo/ResearchAndEvaluation/ Pages/MehkarVehaaracha_Mechkarim1996_2007.aspx

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Glesson, B., & Rozo, M. (2013, October 2). The silo mentality: How to break down the barriers. Resource document. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ brentgleeson/2013/10/02/the-silo-mentality-how-to-break-downthe-barriers/#554ae74c8c7e Jongbloed, B., Enders, J., & Salerno, C. (2008). Higher education and its communities: Interconnections, interdependencies and a research agenda. Higher Education, 56(3), 303–324. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9128-2. Jorgensen, M., Fichten, C., King, L., & Havel, A. (2018). Proceedings of the Ed-ICT International Network Montreal Symposium: Stakeholder Perspectives. Resource document. Montréal, Québec: Adaptech Research Network. https:// eric.ed.gov/?id=ED580147 Kettunen, J. (2015). Stakeholder relationships in higher education. Tertiary Education and Management, 21(1), 56–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/13583 883.2014.997277. Kezar, A. (2005). What campuses need to know about organizational learning and the learning organization. New Directions for Higher Education, 131, 7–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/he.183. Logermann, F., & Leišytė, L. (2015). Students as stakeholders in the policy context of the European standards and guidelines for quality assurance in higher education institutions. In A. Curaj, L. Matei, R. Pricopie, J. Salmi, & P. Scott (Eds.), The European higher education area: Between critical reflections and future policies (pp. 685–701). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_43. Martiniello, N., Jorgensen, M., Fichten, C. S., Asuncion, J., Ferraro, V., Wolforth, J., et al. (2012). Meeting the e-learning and information and computer technology needs of post-secondary students with visual impairments: An overview of two studies. In T. Bastiaens & G. Marks (Eds.), Proceedings of E-learn 2012 – World conference on E-learning in corporate, government, healthcare, and higher education (pp. 726–730). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853–886. https://doi. org/10.5465/amr.1997.9711022105. Ontarians with Disabilities Act. (2014, April 22). The act (AODA). https://www. aoda.ca/the-act/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Örtenblad, A., & Koris, R. (2014). Is the learning organization idea relevant to higher educational institutions? A literature review and a “multi-stakeholder contingency approach”. International Journal of Educational Management, 28(2), 173–214. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-01-2013-0010. Sachs, D., & Schreuer, N. (2011). Inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education: Performance and participation in student’s experiences. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(2). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1593/1561. Accessed 26 Sep 2019.

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Seale, J. (2006). The rainbow bridge metaphor as a tool for developing accessible e-learning practices in higher education. Canadian Journal of Learning Technology, 32(2), 79–98. https://doi.org/10.21432/T29K5J. Seale, J. (2017). Issues of stakeholder engagement: Who are the stakeholders of disability and ICT related practice in postsecondary education and how can they be effectively engaged? Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Seale_Ed_ICT_paper_Montreal_21052017.pdf Seale, J. K. (2014). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Shireman, R. (2003, August 15). Ten questions college officials should ask about diversity. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/ article/10-Questions-College-Officials/22781. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Sieben-Schneider, J. A., & Hamilton-Brodie, V. A. (2016). Doing the right thing: One university’s approach to digital accessibility. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 29(3), 221–230. Smith, D. G., & Parker, S. (2005). Organizational learning: A tool for diversity and institutional effectiveness. New Directions for Higher Education, 131, 113–125. https://doi.org/10.1002/he.191. The Pennsylvania State University. (2014). Accessibility and usability at Penn State. http://accessibility.psu.edu/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Thomson, G. (2018, February 13). A lengthy 14 months after finally promising to develop an education accessibility standard under Ontario’s Disabilities Act, the Wynne Government finally convenes the first meetings of the promised Education Standards Development Committees. University of Washington. (n.d.). Accessible technology at the UW. https://www. washington.edu/accessibility/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Washington State  – Office of the Chief Information Officer. (2017, September 12). Policy #188 – Accessibility. Resource document. Washington State – Office of the Chief Information Officer https://ocio.wa.gov/policy/accessibility Web Accessibility Initiative. (n.d.). Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) overview. Resource document. WAI. http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.

CHAPTER 5

New Designs or New Practices? Multiple Perspectives on the ICT and Accessibility Conundrum Tali Heiman, Tim Coughlan, Hadi Rangin, and Markus Deimann Abstract  There is considerable evidence to suggest that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can make a positive contribution to students’ experiences in higher education. Students with disabilities therefore have a positive outlook and attitude to ICT. Despite all these positive things, the ICT, disability, and higher education community have been wrestling with what they consider to be a massive question: is the design of ICT good enough? In particular, a certain section of the community believes that as long as specialist, assistive technologies exist, design

T. Heiman (*) The Open University, Ra’anana, Israel e-mail: [email protected] T. Coughlan The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK H. Rangin University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA M. Deimann FernUniversität, Hagen, Germany © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_5

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­ ractices will have failed. This chapter will explore, from multiple perspecp tives, a different argument that the eradication of specialist technologies is not necessarily required to improve ICT design. Keywords  ICT • Assistive technologies • Disability • Higher education • Accessibility • Design

AT Is Essential In this section Hadi Rangin, who is a blind information technology accessibility specialist at the University of Washington, offers his perspective based on his personal and professional experience. While there is always a need for more specialized ATs to handle new innovations in the web environment, in order for continued development to be sustainable, existing and future technology needs to support accessibility from the ground up. We do not need companies to reinvent the wheel by attempting to create specialized environments for users with disabilities, as such solutions are merely workarounds. Invoking the concept of universal design (UD), the idea is that offering special accommodation for people with disabilities will marginalize them while simultaneously offering a single working solution offers a smoother experience for all audiences. Consider a classroom using an audience engagement application. An inaccessible, poorly designed application may not only decrease the participation of students with disabilities, but also prevent other students from actively participating in discussions simply due to the unwieldiness and/or complexity of the software. By adopting accessibility as a component of the overall product that is just as important as security, overall user experience, and every other functional criterion, companies will find that they will not only meet accessibility guidelines, but also increase the overall usability of their product. The existing technologies, when utilized properly, can indeed address many accessibility challenges. Some technologies, such as screen readers, have no comparable replacement at the moment and are essential for any person with blindness who has to work on a computer. However, when we consider technology as a whole, one might realize that many underlying

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mainstream technologies have yet to mature to a point where accessibility can be properly implemented. For example, studies have shown that websites for essential tasks are commonly inaccessible (Blanck, 2014; Lazar, Olalere, & Wentz, 2012; Lazar et al., 2012). These findings highlight a wider challenge that software and online services are still commonly produced without consideration for accessibility.

Even if Mainstream ICTs Are Made More Accessible, Some AT Will Be Required to Compensate for Inaccessible Environments For designers and ICT developers, there is always the question—do students with disabilities need a special device? For some students with specific access needs, the answer can be—yes. For example, at the Ed-ICT symposium in Tel Aviv Zeltzer-Fallah (2018) gave an example of Yuval, a student with a “severe physical disability” who could only use his tongue: “The technology offered him a microlight to put on his head. Therefore, he can be a full participant in study class and to communicate with his family”. In this section, Tali Heiman reports on the perspectives of two high-­ tech inventors and developers (Orcam Company, and Right Hear Company) in Israel who presented at the Tel Aviv Symposium in March 2018.1,2 Both companies had concluded that for blind people there is also a need for specialist devices (Meir, 2018; Rodman, 2018). The representatives of both companies described their technologies as revolutionary and sophisticated and suggested that they might be useful in various contexts including education and work. In addition they argued that technologies such as social media, applications, and so on are already accessible, yet society as a whole is not (Meir, 2018), hence the need for specialist devices. Orientation and object recognition are of paramount importance to our daily lives and the Orcam Company has developed special glasses technology that can read text, recognize faces, and read information labels on products and scan money (coins and notes). It can “tell” which is the right bus number or can order a taxi; it can identify steps, money, the exact hour, and so on. “Thus, we enable blind and visually impaired people to become independent; we need to establish a holistic approach to accessibility issues” (Rodman, 2018). The “Right Hear” company develops software that aims to promote accessibility for the blind and visually impaired by making specific objects and processes, as well as entire environments, recognizable and accessible (Meir, 2018). Right

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Hear maps specific environments, using multiple sensors and auditory guidance to inform visually impaired people of their immediate physical surroundings, providing both general factual information (i.e. “This is room 301”) and specific instructions (i.e. “three stairs are ahead”). Meir (2018) offers an example of how this new software has assisted one particular student: Adam, a blind student at The Open University of Israel, use this technology. His daily life is enormously improved. Thanks to this technology, blind and visually impaired people can have accessibility to different applications, such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Gett, Moovit, etc. Yet, many environments such as shopping malls, museums, and universities remain essentially inaccessible, forcing the visually impaired to rely on the assistance of sighted people. (Meir, 2018)

The Design of Mainstream Devices Needs To Be Improved In this section, we will offer two perspectives on why mainstream devices need to be better designed: so that the workflow of people is not interrupted and so that they integrate better with ATs. Ensuring Workflow Is Not Interrupted In this section, Hadi Rangin, who is a blind information technology accessibility specialist at the University of Washington offers his perspective based on his personal and professional experience. In my opinion, it is a common misconception to simply assume that providing or developing accommodations to those with disabilities solves all problems. Regardless of the individual disability status, these are people who live in the same society and desire seamless experiences just like any other person without disabilities. When technologies fail to incorporate accessibility from the initial stages of conception, the workflow for those with disabilities is heavily disrupted. For example, PDFs have become the standard format for professional documents, however from an accessibility standpoint, they are inherently inaccessible. Major work has been done to improve accessibility through the addition of specialized tags post-PDF creation. The issue with post-content creation solutions however, lies in the fact that it is reactive. Every time the source document is changed it

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must be remediated which is frequently not sustainable. Adobe has created software that was not designed with accessibility in mind and therein lies the problem. As a result, students using digital technology still have to go through a process that is often cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive to make PDFs reasonably accessible. At this point, the optimal solution is for Adobe to implement checkpoints during PDF creation such that individual users would be forced to consider accessibility (and at the very least, make the PDF searchable). However, in order for such features to make it into production, companies are in desperate need of a paradigm shift in favor of creating content that is usable for all audiences. We do not want to just attempt to inject accessibility into inaccessible products. Ideally, we would want to incorporate accessibility into the design process of a new product. Ensuring Mainstream Technologies Integrate Better with AT In this section, Tim Coughlan and Hadi Rangin put forward their arguments for why they think it is preferable to aim for better designs of mainstream devices. It is necessary to consider the ways in which specialist and mainstream technologies are used together, and the issues that emerge with either of these types of technologies, in order to create accessibility in a world where technology use is almost ubiquitous (Newell, 2003; Vanderheiden, 2008). It may be possible to design an entirely new and independent solution for a particular set of needs, but in general, the utility of AT is dependent on its integration with other tools, platforms, formats, and content. Take, for example, the integration of the native screen reader provided by Apple: VoiceOver. Regardless of the type of Apple product someone owns, the presence of VoiceOver allows users to access system operations like any other customer might. There is no need for third party solutions, which are often expensive, fail to be fully compatible with various platforms, or stay up to date with system upgrades. It is then perhaps more essential to focus on the ways in which mainstream technologies, which all students are expected to use, can support or hamper accessibility. We may have more impact by improving mainstream tools, either through their built-in accessibility, or through their compatibility with AT. By default, working with current AT and other mainstream technologies is a workaround solution for handling software and applications that are not fully accessible. Newell (2003) argued that even if we aim to follow

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a UD agenda when creating mainstream products, we cannot fully cater for all users without adaptations or ‘hooks’ through which accessibility is achieved. When we observe the nature of AT, the designs seem to be highly reactive to accessibility issues that arise rather than embedded well as extensions of mainstream technologies. For example, there is software available that is capable of scanning mathematical equations and rendering them for screen readers. While certainly helpful, it is rather inefficient when the original equation could have been made accessible in the first place without the help of additional software. This could have been achieved through methods such as including the formula written in MathML within the same document, providing direct access to that equation for a screen reader. However, the fact of the matter remains that reinventing and redesigning tools to be fully accessible takes significant time and tremendous shifts in company paradigms in order to completely integrate accessibility into development cycles and culture. Even as accessibility awareness continues to grow, new design patterns and interactions that present-day AT cannot interpret are being designed into new technologies. The growth of Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence technologies has great potential to assist people with disabilities, who, for example, may be able to operate doors, lights, or heating via voice or other appropriate means. However, key areas for accessibility, such as the interoperability of these technologies with AT, or the ability to discover and use alternative means of display according to the user and device, are an immediate concern that needs consideration as these developments happen (Abou-Zahra, Brewer, & Cooper, 2017). In educational settings, there are further trends that suggest a need to better integrate with mainstream technologies. Classrooms are shifting away from simple lectures and toward more interactive styles of learning, leading to the creation of classroom engagement tools that can often pose usability challenges to those with disabilities. Social aspects of the study experience may be ignored in AT design and in mainstream integration, perhaps because they are seen as ‘wants’ rather than ‘needs’. However, AT technologies are very important in providing an equitable experience for students as it is not just providing the same materials to a student in a different format. If, for example, the learning is intended to include activities such as discussion or sharing work with other students, then the mainstream technologies used for this need to be accessible to provide the learning experience. The social acceptability of AT, how it can mark out a

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person as having a disability, or suggests that they are dependent on a specialist device and unable to interact through mainstream technologies, is something that designers should attend to in order to avoid people with disabilities being excluded unnecessarily from group activities (Shinohara & Wobbrock, 2011). Even to achieve a basic level of inclusion, the expectation is that current AT can interface with the mainstream technologies selected for these purposes. Unfortunately, this tends to have limitations. These limitations may not be understood by educators or other students. For example, a web conferencing platform may support the use of a screen reader to read the text chat used by students as a communication channel. In this way, it is assumed to be accessible. It may also support presentations by educators or students using slides, but the content of these slides, when shown in the platform, is not accessible to the screen reader. This issue cannot be resolved by adjustments to the design of the screen reader, because the web conferencing platform does not share the presentation slides in a form that can be read. Workarounds are possible, such as providing the students with a file containing the slides which could be compatible with the screen reader. However, viewing these separately would take them away from the web conferencing platform and the interaction with other students and educators. Situations such as these are a common reality for disabled students when learning with mainstream technologies. Raising awareness amongst staff about accessibility may help, but there is often an assumption that common technologies will be accessible, or there is simply no thought given to the gaps in the learning experience that could emerge because of these choices, during the processes of choosing and procuring technologies. While some AT have a fairly large user base, these technologies are specialist by nature. It is not feasible to expect designs to emerge that can overcome the barriers raised by mainstream technologies if these are not designed with accessibility in mind. In addition, there is continual change and various options for mainstream technologies that AT would need to adapt to if it were to solve the problems of integration independent of these technologies. When new or updated mainstream technologies emerge, accessibility is often left to be addressed later (Foley & Ferri, 2012). This allows exclusion to re-emerge rather than be dealt with in any permanent way. It remains necessary to stay alert to new technologies that are becoming part of the student experience. When these are in the process of being adopted or procured, there is sometimes space to react,

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assess, and request changes to the design such that they are able to include all students.

Students with Disabilities Are Happy to Use Both Mainstream and Specialist ICTs In this section, Tali Heiman reviews evidence from research literature and the ED-ICT Symposia regarding responses of students with disabilities to mainstream and specialist ICT (AT). ICTs can support writing, spelling, planning, organizing, editing, and calculation, facilitating users with disabilities to study and express their needs (Heiman & Precel, 2003). There is evidence that ICTs can create positive impacts for people with disabilities in their lives and in education (e.g. Maor, Currie, & Drewry, 2011; Stumbo, Martin, & Hedrick, 2009). Schreuer, Keter, and Sachs (2014) examined the effectiveness of ICT programs for students with severe disabilities and concluded that ICT can make a significant positive contribution to students’ academic endeavors as well as their social and leisure activities. Furthermore, research indicates that students with disabilities in Israel and Canada have quite a positive attitude to ICT (Heiman, Fichten, Olenik-Shemesh, Keshet, & Jorgensen, 2017) From views expressed during the students’ panel at the Tel Aviv Ed-ICT symposium (Heiman, Olenik-Shemesh, Kaspi-Tsahor, & Regev-­ Nevo, 2018), it appears that the new digital technologies have a variety of advantages that enable independence in learning and for daily life. For example: “Technology gives me the ability to progress, to succeed, to express myself and utilize my potential”; “Without technology I would not be able to succeed as a university student”; “With a recorded book, I can prepare for the test independently”. Furthermore, technologies enable students to study from home (distance learning): “Distance learning enables me to be a full-time student because I have a hard time attending all the lectures due to mobility limitations”; “The course site enables me to be at home and still feel part of the classroom”. Students with disabilities from all the five countries (USA, Canada, Germany, Israel, and UK) represented in the Ed-ICT International Network mentioned using mainstream apps. For example, “Apps like Google are very helpful, I can learn not only at home, but also while traveling”; “Radio-broadcast lectures allow you to actively participate in class by speaking and do not require typing”; “I use recordings of the lectures”;

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“By using Google Drive, I immediately receive the summaries of the lectures”. They also appeared to be implicitly endorsing a combined approach: of both mainstream and specialist technologies. For example, one student said: Usually I use technology such  as  an mp3 player, or if the battery (of the mp3) ends, I have windows software recording. In addition, I have JAWS technology. I use it during class when I am typing, and  summarizing the lesson using with headphones so that the software does not interfere with speech during class. In addition, I have other accessories like Applications that really help me to learn, not only at home but also outside, such  as Google drive. I also use Zoom to hear the lecturer. The technologies and all applications are helpful for a person with disability.

When students are asked about the barriers or disadvantages of ICT— their response is varied and does not necessarily focus on issue relating to the design of mainstream or specialist technologies. For example, in a study by Dahan, Melzer, and Hadas-Lidor (2013) students with disabilities expressed feelings of insecurity; lack of personal attention, anonymity and that there is no one to turn to for technology or academic help. At the Ed-ICT symposia students commonly raised the issue of training and cost. From the point of view of students with disabilities, technology can facilitate their coping during their academic studies. However, they need to spend time for training themselves and learning how to use the technology, to adopt or to modify the technology for their purposes, or to get help from friends, family members, and technicians in order to successfully use the software or the device. This long process is not always convenient and user-friendly, and might frustrate students with disabilities. I learned to use most technology by myself. It is all trial and error, to figure out what the software is capable and able to do. When I had my first program, I went through several hours of training but now I have my habits and techniques, and I know how software can optimally help. Some people need more training. I myself have more access to techno, I learned things on my own over time. Sometimes, I got more information from my class colleagues.

In addition, the students referred to the cost of technology as a crucial disadvantage of the ICTs. Their ongoing expenses are a central aspect that

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concerns the disabled students, requiring them to rely on support from others: I am a blind student; I started to study at the University three years ago. The blind service also helped me to purchase screen-reading software called JAWS; the software converts the written texts to on-screen voice output, which is very helpful and gives me a lot of independence. I cannot read and get tired very quickly so I used these audio-books which help me read academic materials.

Implications for Research and Practice So far, in this chapter we explored from different perspectives the argument that the eradication of specialist technologies is not necessarily required in order to improve ICT design. In making this argument we have introduced caveats such as even if specialist technologies are not eradicated, the design of mainstream technologies still need to improve. Furthermore, by giving voice to the experience of students with disabilities we have learnt that good design for them can be more about affordability and training than UD. In this section, we will discuss the implications of these perspectives on improving the design of specialist and mainstream technologies. Improving Design Issues Related to Specialist Technologies While promoting the potential of their new designs, the representatives from IT companies in Israel acknowledged that newly designed technologies are expensive and that without the help of social security, the welfare governmental department, or special associations for special needs, individuals might not have the financial resources to purchase it. Future research might usefully explore the potential of different models for specialist technologies that don’t rely on welfare or charity. This may require the community to cross boundaries and engage with researchers with backgrounds in business and economics. Based on his personal experiences of working with developers and engineers from a variety of companies in the USA, Hadi Rangin argues for an improvement in the education and training of designers. It is clear the lack of knowledge and experience in the field of accessibility is hindering progress. Higher education (HE) curriculums such as the University of

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Washington Informatics3 and HCDE (Human Centered Design and Engineering) departments as well as the University of Illinois Information Accessibility Design and Policy (IADP) program4 provide limited education on accessibility and best practices, while some may exclude the topic completely. Design and development graduates enter their respective fields without a clear understanding of the problems those with disabilities face. We can hardly blame developers and designers for their lack of understanding when they have  simply never encountered accessibility issues before, however this lack of knowledge affects all aspects of product development: software design, implementation, testing, and more. In order for developers and designers to create solutions, they need to understand the problem at hand. Accessibility is not something that can just be tacked-on to a final product. Considering accessibility as a functional criterion throughout the development cycle is the key factor in ensuring the accessibility of an application. In this sense, the responsibility to educate developers and designers falls not only on HE but also on companies with both experienced and inexperienced staff. If it can be understood that providing accessibility features not only protects against law suits and increases the marketability of a product but also creates a user experience that is more desirable across all demographics, much of the technology we use today would be less of a headache and would liken itself to the idealized versions shown to us in commercials. The answer to the question of whether or not we need new technologies or new design practices is not straightforward and answers can, in a way, be highly idealistic. It is not reasonable to assume that accessibility will become ingrained in software development culture overnight, nor is it reasonable to assume that AT can keep up with new interactions, modules, and technology both within and outside of the web environment. However, when posed with how we can best address the lack of accessibility in present technologies, implementing new design practices in existing companies and workforces and demonstrating the power of UD can greatly improve the sustainability of accessibility in product releases. Accessibility needs to be considered a part of the user experience, not just a feature, and in order to help companies adopt this mindset, educating them in the form of collaborations can be very valuable. Once accessibility is viewed as integral in software design and development, we have overcome the biggest hurdle. It is acknowledged however, that there is little evidence to show that design or accessibility training actually improves

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practice or what aspects of education and training are effective (Seale, 2014) and this does require further research. Improving Design Issues Related to Mainstream Technologies In many respects, the perspectives presented so far about the design conundrum of specialist versus mainstream technologies reflect the age-­ old debates surrounding the benefits and practicalities of UD. It appears that little progress has been made and that the community is in a cul-de sac—so how do we get out? We suggest that we look wider than our own community or silos for the solution. In this section, Tim Coughlan and Markus Deimann argue that we need to look wider for solutions to our design conundrum—and point ourselves in the direction of the Open Education Movement. In looking to progress improvements in designing for accessibility in education at scale, we should ask what movements exist that offer similarities. Who could be helping to champion accessible design and reach areas in which it is currently amiss? What inspirational movements are there which aim to create greater inclusion in education? In this section, we explore Open Education as a movement with parallels with the desired characteristics for a movement toward accessible design. Open Education and Accessibility both aim to bring progress in the potential for participation in education. They are thus manifestations for the disregard of legal, technological, social, and architectural aspects in current programs, modules, or materials, which constitute constraints to the claim “education  is a social good to which everybody should have access”. Yet although there are common goals, the Open Education and the Accessibility movement operate as separate discourses that rarely speak to each other. Therefore, we attempt to identify commonalities, understand the reasons for the separation, and suggest some steps toward integration of ideas and approaches. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are by definition educational resources that are within the Public Domain or attributed with an open license (UNESCO n.d.; Creative Commons, 2016). This allows that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt, and re-share them. As we now have entered the digital age, OERs are an important instrument to benefit from the possibilities offered by interconnected IT-infrastructures, mobile/smart devices, and social media. An enormous amount of content is produced every day and published on platforms such as YouTube or

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Flickr, which can be used in teaching and learning contexts without asking permission. OERs can thus be used to augment and differentiate existing educational approaches in schools, universities, or continuing education. While we would argue that there is value in connecting these communities, the Open Education Movement and the Accessibility Movement, there are distinct economic and social characteristics, which lead to silos around OERs and around accessibility rather than connections. An economic example of this is that specific philanthropic agencies have funded a large proportion of OER projects and also support networking amongst these through conferences. This leads to strong awareness between projects that sit within the OER space, but does not offer opportunities for links to accessibility to be developed. Much of the activity around OER or accessibility is linked to specific shared artifacts, but between the two areas, there is little shared attention on the same objects. As an indicator, the annual OER-conferences do not usually include much reference to accessibility or related topics. OER is strongly defined by the adoption of Creative Commons licenses for the shared resources, and by platforms, tools, and initiatives that provide a basis for greater use of shared resources. Communities around accessibility have in common their use of shared standards, most notably Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and may engage in the development and refinement of these. They could also have a shared engagement with national legislation or sector guidance as a means to develop a shared focus. However, there are limited overlaps between these concerns. When overlaps between open education and accessibility do emerge, they could actually serve to highlight differences in the ways in which widening access goals are achieved. One example of this is the legal case brought against Berkeley, which found that the OER they shared was not accessible and judged that the university needed to act to make the open content it shared meet accessibility standards. This led to the university deciding to stop sharing these resources and to remove them.5 While other OER sites have shown an awareness of the importance of serving disabled audiences and embedding accessibility (Law & Perryman, 2017), the Berkeley case shows that there is potential for tension and distance between the communities despite the general desire to widen participation. The practices of OER could have much to offer accessibility in terms of sharing and reusing what is produced. This basic notion allows good practice and innovation to proliferate more easily. For example, a resource can be produced in one institution that is known to be effective to support

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disadvantaged learners to develop essential skills, and this can then be adopted and adapted to other contexts where similar issues are pressing (Coughlan, Pitt, & McAndrew, 2013). It could be argued that ­accessibility suffers from a need to fix the same, or similar, problems repeatedly in many cases and does not make full use of sharing and reuse of resources that constitute good accessibility practice to overcome this. Both OER and accessibility communities have a need to advocate and both aim to create change in the world. It has already been noted that open education has managed to make arguments that meant that it has received substantial philanthropic funding. It is also the case that the open education community have explored and experimented with various ways of creating resources that increase the understanding and acceptance of OER. A notable example is that of Open Textbooks, which builds on a well understood artifact in education (the course textbook) and tackles the specific barrier of the financial costs involved which is recognizable and easily argued for in wider society. In looking to develop effective change, both OER and accessibility have seen a shift from the product to process focus. Accessibility in education has included moves to conceptualize user-centered, practice, and process-focused approaches (Cooper, Sloan, Kelly, & Lewthwaite, 2012; Coughlan & Lister, 2018; Coughlan, Ullmann, & Lister, 2017) and to understand the stakeholders of accessibility in education (Seale, 2014). In this regard, OER has moved toward a recognition of the importance of understanding open educational practices. In this the community is recognizing, exploring, and researching the ways in which an individual, group, or institution can integrate ways of working and thinking that are appropriate to achieving openness, sharing, and inclusion. Accessibility practitioners could be inspired by such approaches. What needs to be done to bridge the gap? As we have argued above, OER and the accessibility movement are two progressive projects with little interconnections. It could be assumed that people who are engaged in one of the communities are too busy pushing forward their political agendas that there is no time and energy left to make connections with the other network. From an outside position, there are some possible links for interchange, which we have briefly discussed. A pragmatic means would be to invite scholars and practitioners across the two movements to academic conferences and/or other community activities to present their views, to share, to discuss, and to integrate the two perspectives. One potential result of these activities could be position

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papers that identify common ground and discuss arguments that emerge from a sharpened perspective.

Conclusion This chapter has explored from different perspectives the argument that the eradication of specialist technologies is not necessarily required in order to improve ICT design. As part of this exploration we have argued for the need for new designs (e.g. improving the design of mainstream technologies) and new practices (e.g. training IT professionals in how to improve their designs). Perhaps most importantly of all, our exploration suggests that students with disabilities don’t particularly care if they are using specialist or mainstream technologies, or if they are using the latest technology to come on the market. What they care about is whether they can afford the technology and whether they (and their professors) can use it easily and effectively.

Notes 1. https://right-hear.com 2. https://www.orcam.com/en/ 3. See the textbook for the Client-Side Web Development Course: https:// info340.github.io/standards-and-accessibility.html 4. See http://iadp.ahs.illinois.edu/ 5. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-californiaberkeley-delete-publicly-available-educational-content

References Abou-Zahra, S., Brewer, J., & Cooper, M. (2017). Web Standards to Enable an Accessible and Inclusive Internet of Things (IoT). Proceedings of the 14th Web for All Conference, W4A 2017. Resource document. ACM and MIT. https:// www.smartcitieslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Web-Standardsto-Enable-an-Accessible-and-Inclusive-Internet-of-Things.pdf Blanck, P. (2014). The struggle for web eQuality by persons with cognitive disabilities. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 32(1), 4–32. Cooper, M., Sloan, D., Kelly, B., & Lewthwaite, S. (2012). A challenge to web accessibility metrics and guidelines: putting people and processes first. Paper presented at W4A 2012: 9th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility. Lyon, 16/04/12–18/04/12. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207016.2207028.

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Coughlan, T., & Lister, K. (2018). The accessibility of administrative processes: Assessing the impacts on students in higher education. Proceedings of the 15th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (Web4All 2018). ACM Press: New York. Coughlan, T., Pitt, R., & McAndrew, P. (2013). Building open bridges: Collaborative remixing and reuse of open educational resources across organizations. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 991–1000). ACM Press: New York. Coughlan, T., Ullmann, T. D., & Lister, K. (2017). Understanding accessibility as a process through the analysis of feedback from disabled students. W4A ’17 Proceedings of the 14th Web for All Conference on The Future of Accessible Work, article no. 14. ACM Press: New York. Creative Commons. (2016). What is OER? Resource document. Creative Commons. https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/What_is_OER%3F Dahan, O., Melzer, Y., & Hadas-Lidor, N. (2013). Forum of Managers of Support Centers for students with learning disabilities. Journal for Educational Initiatives in the Training of Teachers, 8 (in Hebrew). Foley, A., & Ferri, B. A. (2012). Technology for people, not disabilities: Ensuring access and inclusion. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12(4), 192–200. Heiman, T., Fichten, C. S., Olenik-Shemesh, D., Keshet, N. S., & Jorgensen, M. (2017). Access and perceived ICT usability among students with disabilities attending higher education institutions. Education and Information Technologies, 22(6), 2727–2740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-017-9623-0. Heiman, T., Olenik-Shemesh, D., Kaspi-Tsahor, D., & Regev-Nevo, M. (2018, March). In search of new designs. Proceedings of the Ed-ICT International Network Israel Symposium. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/ wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ProceedingsEd-ICTIsraelSymposium.pdf Heiman, T., & Precel, K. (2003). Students with learning disabilities in higher education: Academic strategies profile. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 36(3), 248–258. https://doi.org/10.1177/002221940303600304. Law, P., & Perryman, L. A. (2017). How OpenLearn supports a business model for OER. Distance Education, 38(1), 5–22. Lazar, J., Jaeger, P. T., Olalere, A., Algarne, M., Augustine, Z., Brown, C., et al. (2012). Still up in the air: Government regulation of airline websites and continuing price inequality for persons with disabilities online. Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (pp. 240–245). ACM Press: New York. Lazar, J., Olalere, A., & Wentz, B. (2012). Investigating the accessibility and usability of job application web sites for blind users. Journal of Usability Studies, 7(2), 68–87.

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Maor, D., Currie, J., & Drewry, R. (2011). The effectiveness of assistive technologies for children with special needs: A review of research-based studies. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 26(3), 283–298. Meir, I. (2018). Open your eyes: How technology improves the lives of the blind and visually impaired. Presented at the 3rd Ed-ICT International Network Israel Symposium: In Search of New Designs. Tel Aviv, Israel. http://ed-ict.com/ workshops/tel-aviv/programme/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Newell, A. (2003). Inclusive design or assistive technology. In J.  Clarkson, S. Keates, R. Coleman, & C. Lebbon (Eds.), Inclusive design (pp. 172–181). London: Springer. Rodman, E. (2018). See for yourself: A camera for blind and visually impaired individuals. Presented at the 3rd Ed-ICT International Network Israel Symposium: In Search of New Designs. Tel Aviv, Israel. http://ed-ict.com/ workshops/tel-aviv/programme/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Schreuer, N., Keter, A., & Sachs, D. (2014). Accessibility to information and communication technology for social participation of youth with disabilities: A two-­ way street. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 32, 76–93. Seale, J.  K. (2014). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Shinohara, K., & Wobbrock, J. O. (2011). In the shadow of misperception: Assistive technology uses and social interactions. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp.  705–714). ACM Press: New York. Stumbo, N.  J., Martin, J.  K., & Hedrick, B.  N. (2009). Assistive technology: Impact on education, employment, and independence of individuals with physical disabilities. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 30(2), 99–110. UNESCO. (n.d.). Open Education Resources (OER). Resource document. UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer Vanderheiden, G. C. (2008). Ubiquitous accessibility, common technology core, and micro assistive technology: Commentary on “computers and people with disabilities”. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), 1(2), 10. Zeltzer-Fallah, H. (2018, March). Assistive technology  – From trying to doing. Presented at the 3rd Ed-ICT International Network Israel Symposium: In Search of New Designs. Tel Aviv, Israel. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/telaviv/programme/. Accessed 26 Sep 2019.

CHAPTER 6

New Practices: Promoting the Role of ICT in the Shared Space of Transition Christian Bühler, Sheryl Burgstahler, Alice Havel, and Dana Kaspi-Tsahor

Abstract  Making the transition from class to class, primary to secondary education, high school to college, two-year to four-year college, college to graduate school, and from higher education to employment can be challenging for all students, but is particularly challenging for students with disabilities who face additional challenges such as accessing physical environments, technology, learning and employment procedures and services. Not adequately addressing these issues can lead to slower academic progress, poorer academic attainment and problems securing employment. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) may have the

C. Bühler (*) Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany e-mail: [email protected] S. Burgstahler University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA A. Havel Adaptech Research Network, Montreal, QC, Canada D. Kaspi-Tsahor The Open University, Ra’anana, Israel © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_6

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potential to improve the situation and also to introduce further risks of exclusion. This chapter considers elements for effective transitions for disabled students by examining examples from Canada, Germany, Israel and USA and the particular role of ICT in transitions. Keywords  ICT • Disability • School • College • Higher education • Employment • Transition

What Makes a Successful Transition Program? Successful transition programs appear to have some common components. Because teachers and parents are less involved in day-to-day decisions as a student transitions to higher education (HE), self-determination and self-­ advocacy are considered essential skills (Asselin, 2014). A systematic review of 18 studies to understand the best practices and components of HE transition programs found that all of them reported an improvement in at least one of the following: college enrollment, self-determination, self-confidence, social and vocational self-efficacy, autonomy, social support, career exploration, and transition skills. The higher transition programs themselves varied in duration, number of sessions and delivery format, including curriculum-based, online, residential experience and mentoring (Lindsay et al., 2018). Although transition strategies originate in the secondary school system, often as a component of government mandated individualized educational plans, it appears that the responsibility for supporting the transition once a student leaves secondary school rests with the HE institution, often with the office for students with disabilities taking the lead. Some institutions may offer transition support because they understand that students with disabilities face a variety of challenges upon entering HE and are concerned both with the well-being of their students and their retention rates. Some institutions, however, offer minimal transition support because they do not consider it to be within their responsibility. One drawback of having transition support within the disability services office is that upon leaving secondary education, it has been estimated that 50% or less of students with disabilities choose to disclose their disabilities to the HE institution (Fichten et al., 2016, 2018). Thus, they do not participate in any ­transition

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activities offered by the disability services office at their institution. Based on their findings, Garrison-Wade and Lehmann (2009) concluded that what was needed for effective transition was high quality preparation in HE planning before entering college as well as ongoing communication between the secondary school and HE institution. Such communication between secondary and HE institutions is uncommon, at least in the USA and Canada, and probably elsewhere (NEADS, 2012). The Role of ICT in Successful Transition Information and communication technology (ICT) can be the modality through which a transition program is delivered. However, such ICT-­ delivered transitions programs are not always designed to be accessible to individuals with disabilities. This can create barriers for certain students without prerequisite computer skills or access to assistive technology (AT). Although some college students with disabilities may require specific AT to access mainstream technology, general use computer technology is omnipresent in the educational environment and in today’s digital society. For these very reasons, mastery of both AT and broader computer skills should be integrated into a transition program (Madaus, Banerjee, & Merchant, 2011). Accessibility to ICT provided to all students is clearly a responsibility of the institutions. AT can be owned by institutions, individuals or third parties. The fact that so many levels are involved in the implementation of ICT and AT (e.g., institutions are responsible for their ICT infrastructure, departments for the setup of educational ICT platforms, services for disabled students for AT, educators for content) can make the transfer to a new setting particularly difficult. It may even be necessary to adapt existing ICT/AT or to purchase new AT. User and institutional experience from the previous setting should be taken into consideration, requirements for the new phase must be identified, measures including ICT infrastructure and AT have to be defined, and funding must be secured. It is obvious that time plays an important role in this context: if a transition is not well coordinated to allow for timely provision of the necessary adaptations and updates a student may fall behind in class, and in a worst-case scenario may need to redo one or more trimesters or semesters. To avoid such a situation gives all the more reason for campuses to design their ICT to be accessible to students with disabilities and to have commonly used AT and support staff readily on hand.

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International Examples of Transition Practice Involving ICT The following cases from four countries highlight different aspects of transitions with a particular emphasis on ICT. Each case reflects practice from the respective country and elaborates on critical issues. Although the contexts and legal situations in the countries are different, cases have been chosen which have the potential for representing good practice for transfer to other contexts. Evidence-Based and Skills-Building Transition Programs: A US Case Study For individuals with disabilities in the US key transitions include those from high school to college; two-year to four-year college, college to graduate school, HE to career. Individuals with disabilities face challenges, including those related to ICT, that are common to others but also some that are unique to this group. The root of some specific challenges faced by K-12 (Kindergarten to 12th Grade), HE and employment lies in differences in legislation that apply to each domain. In K-12 settings, every child is assured a free, appropriate education in as integrated setting as possible that includes needed academic adjustments (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and its 2008 Amendments, ADAA). However, in higher studies and careers, students and employees with disabilities must meet relevant institution, program, and course entrance, graduation, and employment requirements with or without reasonable accommodations that they must request (Section 504; ADAA). Responses to legislation that apply to various levels lead to transition challenges for individuals with disabilities that include diminished support systems after high school; little access to successful role models; inadequate self-advocacy skills; lack of or ineffective accommodations, including access to ICT; and low expectations on the part of people with whom they interact. Particularly troubling is inadequate access to ICT, both mainstream and AT, because of the important role ICT has to play in supporting independence and productivity with respect to participation in education, careers, family life, community and recreation. One challenge for students at all educational levels is that ICT a student uses at school typically cannot be taken home. Also, the availability of ICT and support varies greatly

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from one institution to another. Exemplary practices can be found, but no nationwide or even statewide coordinated programs fully address transition issues with respect to ICT.  For example, ICT a student uses at an institution at one level rarely transitions with them to the next. Most efforts for students with disabilities are for securing AT for individuals. Broader efforts toward the procurement, development and use of mainstream ICT that is accessible to individuals with disabilities are increasing nationwide, in part because of lawsuits and civil rights complaints against schools with inaccessible websites, videos, documents and applications software (EDUCAUSE, 2015). Challenges reported by educational entities and employers to make improvements to the accessibility of their ICTs include inadequate expertise of ICT personnel, training and support for stakeholders, and funding. Students with disabilities complain that their schools do not provide AT; they cannot use the school’s AT at home; AT prices are high; often AT does not integrate well with mainstream ICT at school; and the design of many websites, videos, online documents; and online courses erect barriers to them. Strategies that hold promise for supporting successful transitions for individuals with disabilities between educational levels and employment include those that undertake efforts that are student-centered and promote self-advocacy skills, engage multiple stakeholders, promote accessible technology design, build on an inclusive culture; use bottom-up and top-down approaches; and address transition issues in ICT policies and practices. AccessSTEM is a project that aims to increase the participation of people with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It uses technology as an empowering tool in supporting the success of individuals with disabilities as they succeed in and transition to various educational levels (high school, two-year and four-year college, graduate school) and employment. AccessSTEM began with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and continues to be hosted by the DO-IT Center at the University of Washington in Seattle, where DO-IT stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology (DO-IT, n.d.-a). AccessSTEM practices are supported by a review of the literature on evidence-based transition support practices for various underrepresented groups in STEM (DO-IT, n.d.-b); ongoing formative evaluation of DO-IT activities; suggestions from practitioners; and input from students with disabilities, parents and other allies. From these sources the following evidence-based practices for AccessSTEM emerged: summer academic enrichment programs; mentor, peer support; academic,

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career awareness/advising and networking (e.g., conference attendance); skills-building programs (e.g., ICT use, study skills); work-based learning (e.g., internships) and research experiences. One example of research that informed AccessSTEM is the work of Test et al. (2009) that identified a range of predictors for positive academic and employment transition including: inclusion in general education; paid employment/work experience; independent living skills; student support; career awareness; ­interagency collaboration; occupational courses; self-advocacy/self-determination; social skills; and community experiences. Arguably, ICT can play a role in all of these areas; online communication can contribute to provide student support, increase career awareness, support interagency collaborations, deliver occupational courses. One specific program that began under AccessSTEM and was later institutionalized within the DO-IT center with funding from Washington State, is the DO-IT Scholars program. In this program, participants who represent a wide range of disabilities, begin as high school sophomores and continue through college, employment and beyond. They are loaned computers and AT that they may use throughout their engagement in education and employment; for online mentoring and peer support, internships, and so on. AccessSTEM’s model for applying evidence-based interventions at critical junctures is presented in Fig. 6.1. During two summer study programs on the University of Washington (UW) campus, DO-IT Scholars learn independent living, self-determination/advocacy and social skills as they engage in website design, searches for career information, and other computer activities, academic labs and lectures, college and career preparation activities, and field trips. In their third year of engagement, they can participate as interns to assist with the summer study for younger participants. Year round, they engage online with mentor and peer support, which evolves into mostly mentoring for the older participants. They can also participate in on-site meetings for networking and support, engage in individual advising and consultation with staff, participate in leadership opportunities, as well as internships that involve the use of ICT. DO-IT also sponsors a parent support group that engages on-site and online. Long-term, participants in the DO-IT Scholars program advocate for and mentor others, and make efforts to ensure that other programs and employment opportunities are more welcoming and accessible to people with all types of disabilities wherever they may be.

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AccessSTEM: Progress of Teens with Disabilities Toward STEM Careers Project Inputs Leading Students to Critical Junctures

Project Inputs

Transition from home to elementary school and progression to high school

High school and STEM success Inputs: 1-8

Graduation from high school with STEM strength Transition to 2-year college Inputs: 1-6, 8

Success in 2-year college courses, including STEM Inputs: 1-7, 10, 11, 13

Graduation from 2-year college in STEM field

Transition to employment Inputs: 1, 2, 10, 11, 13

1

Peer, near-peer, mentor, & family support

2

Identification & utilization of resources

3

Technology access

Academic-Related

Transition to 4-year school Inputs: 1-6, 8

Success in 4-year college courses, including STEM Inputs: 1-7, 10-13

Graduation from 4-year college in STEM field

4

Activities to develop STEM interests

5

Activities to develop self-determination

6

Academic accommodations, including in STEM

7

Academic support, including in STEM

8

College preparation activities

9

Preparation for graduate school

Transition to graduate school Inputs: 1, 2, 9

Career-Related Career

& work-based 10 preparation learning activities

STEM career position

STEM career success, with possible transitions between positions Inputs: 1, 2, 13

Success in graduate school Inputs: 1, 2, 6, 7, 11-13

Graduation from graduate school in STEM

11 12 13

Paid internships in STEM

Research experiences in STEM

Employment accommodations

Copyright © 2011, 2008, 2006, Sheryl Burgslahkr, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational, noncommercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged.

Fig. 6.1  The AccessSTEM model for applying evidence-based interventions. (Copyright © 2011, Sheryl Burgstahler, University of Washington)

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Other examples employs include:

of

promising

ICT-related

practices

DO-IT

• Faculty Interaction: Participants learn strategies for interacting with faculty and then in small groups they introduce themselves to a faculty member (including their disability in functional terms); tell about something they do to make themselves successful, including technology use; and request an accommodation and describe who will do what, including the campus office of disability services; • Website Design Training: Participants receive technical training and develop self-advocacy and employment skills; some are offered part-­ time employment to practice their skills in making websites of non-­ profit organizations more accessible; • Internships: Participants engage in summer internships with high tech companies such as Microsoft; • ICT Accessibility Reviews: Participants use a checklist developed by DO-IT (DO-IT, 2019) to review the accessibility of informal STEM museums (e.g., the Microsoft Museum) or other programs and make recommendations for improvements, including for the ICT used to deliver content and activities. Using multiple evaluation strategies and instruments, students have reported that DO-IT participation helped them prepare for college, employment and independent living; develop ICT, self-advocacy and social skills; experience higher self-esteem; and persevere. They reported that facilitated online communication helps them stay close to friends and family; get answers to specific questions; meet people from around the world; communicate quickly, easily, with many people at one time, and independently without disclosing their disabilities; and further their academic and career interests. Students who participated in work-based learning opportunities reported increased motivation to work toward a career; knowledge about careers and the workplace; job-related skills; ability to work with supervisors and coworkers; and skills in self-advocating for accommodations. In a 2009 external evaluation of DO-IT, SRI International found that the most important things that participants gained from the program are a sense of belonging (both academic and social integration), involvement (in academic and social life), a sense of purpose (through internships, workshops, networking and mentoring) and self-determination skills (development and practice). Other relevant

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outcome data has been collected through the AccessSTEM/DO-IT Longitudinal Transition Study (ALTS) that began in 1993. As a group, the 472 participants enrolled in the study are more successful than other students with disabilities. When ALTS data is compared to college-bound respondents in the National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS), 96% in ALTS enrolled in college, 31% of NLTS and ALTS respondents are achieving higher levels of high school and college graduation (DO-IT, 2016). Although the precise role of ICT in contributing to their success cannot be measured in this study, ALTS respondents reported that their access to AT increased from 31% to 64% and access to mentors, where most communications occur over the Internet, increased from 55% to 92% as a result of the program. ALTS respondents also rated access to computer technology to be the most valuable intervention, with 74% of the respondents reporting that intervention to be very valuable. Internships and other work-based learning were rated the next most valuable intervention (and for that category ICT use was generally required), followed by college transition workshops/camps, mentoring and career transition workshops/camps. Transition-Related Skills-Building Delivered Through ICT: A Canadian Case Study The following section describes issues that impact on the transitions of Canadian students with disabilities, along with a case study describing one province’s response through the implementation of online transition programs. In Canada, it is difficult to consider the context in which individuals with disabilities transition between different levels of education from a national perspective as education is under provincial authority. Additionally, although the Canadian government put forth a bill in July 2018, “The Accessible Canada Act” (Government of Canada, 2018), it has yet to become legislation. Apart from three provinces that have implemented their own disability legislation, all other provinces and territories only have human rights legislation which necessitates that those who believe they have been discriminated against in an educational or work setting prove, on a case-by-case basis, that their rights have been denied. As well, there are the Canadian Human Rights Act (Government of Canada, 1985) and federal employment equity legislation (Government of Canada, 1995) that protect individuals who are employed by the federal government or

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private companies that are regulated by the federal government such as banks, transportation and telecommunications companies. These make up only a small percentage of the workforce and undoubtedly, the lack of widely encompassing legislation impacts negatively on the transition from HE to employment. Compulsory education falls under a different ministry than HE and this can present certain challenges with regards to transition. An example in Quebec is the Ministry of Education’s notion of the “at-risk” student. The intent was to ensure that all students experiencing difficulties would be given support, without necessarily being labeled as having “learning difficulties” (Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, 2007). Consequently, many of these students arrive at a HE institution without the required documentation for eligibility to services and accommodations, including AT, to which they have been accustomed. The greatest burden falls on students with undiagnosed learning disabilities (LDs), as costly psycho-educational assessments are not covered by government health plans. Usually students in compulsory education use technology that belongs to the school board, but when starting HE, they must provide their own computers. They can, however, borrow software and apps from their HE institution, which sometimes employs Assistive Technologists who provide guidance and technological training. In some cases, the rehabilitation institutions provide specialized equipment and training for their clientele. For example, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (2019) offers an intensive summer program designed to provide blind and visually impaired students with skills needed for transition to college or university, including training on technological aids. Unfortunately, the AT provided by rehabilitation centers does not always match the needs of the student as they transition into more advanced levels of education (e.g., specific apps for mobile devices). With regards to transition from HE to employment, government programs exist that provide incentives for employers to hire persons with disabilities and offer tax deductions for those who modify their workplace and purchase specialized equipment. Despite such initiatives, a study by Zarifa, Walters and Seward (2015) noted that young Canadians with disabilities continue to face barriers related to employer attitudes around disability. This may be due in part to the fact that only recently have large numbers of these graduates with disabilities been seeking employment. While enhancing government programs and strengthening legislation is

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essential, graduates with disabilities will still face challenges. Participants of a study examining the employment experiences of recent graduates (Gillies, 2012) mentioned that while accessibility center staff gave them informal advice, they felt their institutions could have provided more formal transitional support to address specific issues regarding disclosure and accommodations. Recently many HE institutions have been preoccupied with arranging accommodations, including AT, in order for students to complete required internships and work-study programs. Hopefully, some of the advances made will be transferrable to regular employment. As significant geographical disparities exist with respect to institutional and government policies and practices around accessibility and inclusion in education and employment, it is difficult to make generalized comments about the strengths and weaknesses of transition approaches in Canada. The primary objective of the report entitled “Landscape of Accessibility and Accommodation in Post-Secondary Education for Students with Disabilities” was to inform the government on the development of a new federal disability act (NEADS, 2018). Some conclusions from this document can readily be applied to transition issues. It was noted that legislation, policies, practices and guidelines need to recognize the interaction over time among disability, technology, and the learning and workplace environments. It was also stated that accessibility and inclusion in the HE environment are lagging behind technological advances because the focus remains on specialized assistive solutions, as opposed to mainstream technological solutions. In other words, transition programs at all levels should place a greater emphasis on mainstream technology. Ontario has addressed some of the challenges for students transitioning to HE institutions by developing two primarily, web-based transition programs: On-Line to Success (OLTS) and Successful Transition Online and Mentoring Program (STOMP) (Queen’s University, n.d.). OLTS is for students diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), whereas STOMP is for students with diagnosed or self-identified mental health disorders. OLTS was developed based on recommendations made by Ontario’s five-year pilot project, Learning Opportunities Task Force (LOFT), which concluded that students must have training in the best AT available for their specific disability (Nichols, Harrison, McCloskey, & Weintraub, 2002). To participate, students must have an email address and daily access to a computer and the internet because the major component of either program consists of a web-based, eight-week course completed online over

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several months. Students are also required to attend in-person opening and final day sessions. The OLTS program was initially offered in-person during the summer time but it was difficult to recruit students as those with LD often find school challenging and may be reluctant to spend their summer in an academic setting. For some students, including those with neurological and mental health disorders, the online platform allows more readily for self-disclosure. In addition, since HE institutions are offering more online courses, completing these programs helps students prepare for this approach to course delivery. One goal for the opening day is to teach students how to access the online course, submit assignments, post to the discussion board and contact the moderator when they need assistance. Each student receives feedback online and learns how to read and respond to it. Students in the OLTS program take part in an AT workshop to learn about programs such as Microsoft OneNote and Livescribe, as well as various apps such as Google Keep. STOMP students take part in a different workshop regarding various organizational and wellness apps. In both online programs, students are introduced to Google Read and Write which they can then use to complete their transition program assignments. The blended online and in-person delivery of the OLTS and STOMP programs is noteworthy as the online aspect can be convenient and flexible for students (Heiman, Olenik-Shemesh, Kaspi-Tsahor, & Regev-Nevo, 2018) and may be less costly for all involved. In turn, the in-person component provides a better environment for fostering social support. A potential economic barrier may be the purchase of computer and internet services if these are not already available to the student. Law-Based, Third-Party Support: A German Case Study The case study form Germany concentrates on the transition from education to work. As labor is considered a very crucial element for participation, the German law provides instruments, players and financing for the transition to the labor market. This includes technical and financial support for workplace adaptations including ICT. In the German context, a complex legally based set of instruments supports people with disabilities with regards to education and employment. Further assistance is implemented in the social legislation (Code of social law—SGB) for medical support, care, livelihood and so on. Most of the individual AT is paid by the statutory health insurance (SGB V) and

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workplace-­related technology via SGB IX. In this context, money is not the predominant problem although economic efficiency is always required. Instead, a big issue is the readiness of institutions and members of faculty and staff to address the requirements of people with disabilities. Access to infrastructures such as buildings, facilities, digital networks, ICT and so on is an issue which is still not proactively addressed through barrier free access and universal design. New educational ICT services are seldom fully accessible. Institutions tend to purchase the most recent high-end solutions without consideration of accessibility issues. This can lead to ICT infrastructures providing a lot of inaccessible elements. Unfortunately, necessary post hoc improvements are often not possible or are ineffective and expensive. Even if the ICT infrastructure is basically accessible, educational procedures, tools and materials still need to be adapted. Administrators, teachers and staff need to be informed and trained appropriately. Here, working time seems to provide a narrow bottleneck. When it comes to the labor market the readiness of companies to hire people with disabilities needs to increase along with barrier free accessibility of company ICT and built infrastructures. For individuals with disabilities it can become difficult to find out who is responsible to support them in the transition processes. Here, the website “Einfach Teilhaben” with the sections on education and labor provides a good starting point.1 It is important to initiate and prepare transition early, because it can take much time until the necessary decisions are made and measures are implemented in practice. Otherwise, starting the job without having the necessary ICT, AT and workplace adaptation ready and operational can be a consequence. A certain danger exists that parents, advisors, educational institutions and companies take decisions (on behalf of the person with a disability) and the self-determination of the individual becomes limited. To this end, peer initiatives of people with disabilities and disability organizations play a vital role for empowering people. Good case examples, experience of similar situations, judicial support, peer groups (PGs) are important elements. In Germany, third-party agencies play an important role in supporting transition to work. Transitions can be supported by the organization a person is leaving (LO) or heading to (TO). For university students the LOs and TOs provide support in student services, for example, 57 “Studentenwerke” at German universities or departments of disability and studies of universities.2 But third-party organizations which are independent in the process also provide counseling, placements, advice, technical and financial support.

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In Germany, social legislation (SGB) plays a strong role in connection to disability and education/labor. Funding for additional demands are provided according to SGB by various schemes (health related, disability related, study related). The statutory health insurance (SGB V) takes care of most of the individual AT during education and employment but is complemented by other schemes. SGB III deals with labor and SGB IX with rehabilitation and disability including workplace adaptation. SGB II and XII address social security issues.3 Two organizations have a legal assignment to support individuals with disabilities (I) on their way to and through the labor market. The “Agentur für Arbeit” (Labour Agency—AA) has to support companies and individuals in the job placement by various services including specific support instruments for the placement of persons with disabilities. “Integrationsämter” (inclusion offices—IOs) have by law the mission to support people with disabilities during their work life (e.g., by workplace accommodation, saving job opportunities). Both institutions also have a mandate and instruments to support the educational institutions or companies. Here, it becomes obvious that the support starts not only at the entrance to the labor market but during previous phases, for example, apprenticeship as skilled worker or university studies. A third organization “Deutsches Studentenwerk” (DSW) supports students during their lives at University. DSW runs services specifically targeting students with disabilities. AA, IO, DSW and universities have regional and local offices for the individual advice and support of individuals, institutions and companies. This is very important as individual solutions can jointly be discussed and elaborated—including financial subsidies. Further support is provided by disability organizations and similar initiatives (peer groups)4,5 which is important but not further elaborated in this case presentation. Figure 6.2 shows the service and advice network around the individual. Main support from all parties target the individual with disabilities, but institutions and companies also receive advice and support. The AA provides several advisory services for people between school, secondary and higher education, the transition to the labor market and development during work life. For people with disabilities, special services complement the general services.6 Rehab/disability advisors of the AA provide counseling and assistance for students with disabilities and their schools preparing the transition to next steps in education, practical education (dual system) and the labor market.7 For the transition of university graduates to the labor market the ZAV of AA (Zentrale Arbeits- und

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Fig. 6.2  Transition service and advice network in Germany. (Copyright © 2019, Christian Bühler, TU-Dortmund University)

Fachvermittlung der Bundesagentur für Arbeit) runs a central support service. Besides the service for employers, important emphasis is put into the support of the future academic employees. It comprises an overview of the labor market, hints for the application strategy, tips for designing application materials, information on support options and information on open positions.8 DSW runs a competence center on studying and disability (IBS), which provides information for (prospective) students and advisors.9 One important source of information is the handbook on studies and disability (“Studium und Behinderung”) which presents concentrated information about different support measures.10 The IO closely supports the final step into the labor market as well as staying in the labor market. The IO provides support instruments including awareness raising, advice, counseling, financing and protection against dismissal. Much of the available finances are gained by a fine which has to be paid by companies which do not employ persons with disabilities. An important element of the IO is the technical advisory service (Technischer Beratungsdienst—TB).11 The advisors of TB support employers, individuals with severe disabilities and local inclusion teams on-site the respective company workplace. They help to identify appropriate workplaces and adapt them according to disability requirements. This includes technical solutions, ICT, AT and necessary training. In case of potential dismissal,

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TB also assesses the options for keeping the employment. The primary goal is to allow people with disabilities to do their job independently with the help of all sorts of AT. ICT is playing an increasing role in this context. Employers need to provide accessibility to the company software and networks. The TB gives advice and complements it by individualized suitable sets of ATs. The AT (e.g., screen reader, input devices, communication devices, wheelchairs) and devices based on the individual disability-related requirements (larger displays, mobile computers, air conditioning, adjustable seats and work tables, robots, etc.) are financed by the service. If necessary, work processes are analyzed and organizational measures, assistance or job-related measures can be recommended.12 A second important element of IO is the Inclusion Service (Integrationsfachdienst—IFD).13 It provides assessments, support for career orientation, job search and placements, accompany people with severe disabilities at the workplace (if needed), intervention in case of crisis and psycho-social support and so on. IFD comprises a network throughout Germany with representatives available as local contacts. Concerning ICT, it cooperates closely with TB and has a responsibility to support the transition of persons with disability from school to work. Providing Support for Different Transition Pathways: An Israeli Case Study Students with disabilities in Israel face the same social and technical barriers as their peers worldwide, but their transition from high school to employment includes an extra stage: transition to and from mandatory military service: . Transition from high school to mandatory military service. 1 2. Transition from military service to HE. 3. Transition from HE to careers. With some exceptions (e.g., Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) for HE—see next section) during transitions, students with disabilities may use personal ATs (usually purchased by the National Insurance Institute (NII) as part of their funding) or those provided by the institutions as required by law. Accessibility of construction and services was first regulated in Israel in the “Equal rights act for people with disabilities” law in 1998. In 2005, The “Equal Rights For Persons With Disabilities Law

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Amendment No 2” defined accessibility as “the ability to get to a place, move and find one’s way in it, enjoy and make use of the service and information provided in it, use the facilities or participate in the activities there, in an egalitarian, respectful, independent and safe way”. “Accessibility Regulations” were enacted to interpret and add detailed instructions to the law (2013). HE institutions were required to comply with “the Student Rights Law” (2008), creating a revolution by recognizing the right of students with learning disabilities to accommodations in matriculation examinations. In 2015, website accessibility regulations were enacted. Legislation for HE was finally completed in 2016 with the “Regulation of Higher Education Institutions” which required full accessibility starting November 2017. The continuum of transition from education to HE or employment ceases for Israeli students due to two to three years of compulsory mandatory service, a civil obligation that calls all men and women over the age of 18 to enlist, with few exceptions, including being disabled. Service in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is considered an important setting for participation and equality and many adolescents with disabilities volunteer to the service that allows them to deal with developmental tasks of forming self-­ identity, independence and separation from parents (Werner, Katz, Ayalon, Merrick, & Tenenbaum, 2018). The “Intelligence Classification Test” is conducted to determine a military profile and accommodations for people with disabilities include: extra time on tests, exemption from some tests, breaks between tests and more (Shani, 2005). During service, soldiers with disabilities make use of special software or ICTs (e.g., accessibility solutions for the visually impaired such as Right Hear, Zoom Text, screen reader, artificial vision and computer vision technologies, assistive listening devices). These are all provided by the army or by the NII. Transition to HE in most academic programs requires high achievements in the matriculation exams (Bagrut) and in the Psychometric Entrance Test that covers three areas: mathematics, verbal reasoning and the English language (the PET is equivalent to the SAT in USA). Accommodations throughout high school and in matriculation examinations (Bagrut) include: extra time, ignoring spelling errors, text enlargement, using an electronic dictionary, testing by listening to a recorded examination (via MP, disc or the computer) or typing answers (via the computer). However, for the matriculation examinations, ICT use is subject to special approval of professional Ministry of Education committees.

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Accommodations in the Psychometric Entrance Test are authorized by the Israeli National Institute for Testing and Evaluation (NITE) and may not be the same as in matriculation exams.14 The Special Test Accommodations Unit at the NITE provide, “to as great an extent as possible, test conditions that will allow examinees to overcome difficulties stemming from their disabilities without jeopardizing the test’s validity”. Accommodations are given to people with: general medical or physical disabilities or issues; visual impairment; hearing impairment; mental health issues; severe learning disability during their early years of school and severe attention deficit during early years of school. Accommodations are not given to examinees with test anxiety or any problem related to their environment, such as a lack of schooling. Since unlike the Bagrut, the PET is assessing different aspects related to the efficiency of cognitive processing, allotting extra time is not approved for applicants whose main issue is slowness in processing information. Accommodations are given separately for each part, and do not enable the use of custom technologies of the examinee or ICTs provided by the examination center in most parts. PET scores are heavily weighed for university admissions and therefore constitute a major barrier for young people with disabilities. This problem does not exist in some of the colleges that accept students based on matriculation grades only. Those who are accepted, may use ICTs during their exams (with prior approval of the Dean of Students), online course materials (as web links and course notes), online tools (collaborative work online and videos), communication tools (chat room and email), social networking (blogs and Twitter), computer technologies used in class (simulations and presentation software—grammar/spelling checkers, dictionaries and English text-to-speech (TTS) software). Some of the ICTs are provided to students by the institutions, in libraries, on course sites and some for individual use during lectures or throughout the semester. With regard to transition from HE to employment, in Israel, the Prohibition of Discrimination in Employment law (2016) states that “An employer shall not discriminate between his employees or persons seeking employment including among others in hiring (and hiring tests) and training, by reason of their disabilities, provided that they are qualified for the position”. The law mandates that the State shall participate in the cost of all adjustments made by an employer for each employee with disabilities for the following services: initial training for the employer; physical adjustments and accommodation; required equipment (e.g., Braille keyboard, accessible workstation, Zoom Text, screen reader, stand-alone on-screen

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virtual mouse); translation and transcription services and compatibility tests & adjustment of job requirements. Understanding the importance of entering the workplace and the joint liability for that transition, higher education institutions expand their collaboration with NITE and together with their “Professional Career Unit” offer job placement and career counseling services that are provided free of charge to students with disabilities from all universities.

Implications for Future Research and Practice In this chapter we have considered elements for effective transitions for disabled students by examining examples from Canada, Germany, Israel and USA and the particular role of information and communication technology in transitions. These examples suggest that good transition practices are evidence based, include ICT skills-building programs which can be delivered face-to-face or online and involve third-party agencies that have a specific role in advising on ICT solutions to transition and support all possible transition pathways. In this section, we will discuss the implications for practice by looking at the similarities and differences in the transition processes and support structures of the different countries. We will also discuss the implications for research by examining the role research might play in evaluating the outcomes of ICT-related transition programs. In examining the four case studies, it is apparent that similarities and differences exist in the transition process from compulsory education to HE and from HE to employment across the countries. These can provide meaningful direction for future practice. In certain countries, such as Canada, the mainstream and specialist technologies used by students do not belong to them but to their educational institutions. In other countries most AT is the property of the individual, but mainstream technologies and particular AT is provided and owned by the institution. Therefore, some but not all equipment can be taken along when transitioning. Frequently, this results in a long delay in the funding and purchasing of the needed personal equipment and software. Furthermore, different AT is often needed after transition to a new ICT environment for education or work. Regardless of how the new technology is acquired, most students need a period of training and adjustment. Any resulting delay can cause a student to fall behind in their studies or on the job. An example of an effective practice to solve the above challenges is the DO-IT Scholars program which lends computers and AT that students may use throughout

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education and employment as participants in their program (DO-IT, undated). One concrete suggestion is to consider the benefits of a case management approach in which the ICT needs of individuals with disabilities, regardless of their level of schooling or employment, are coordinated by one single agency. If the equipment is provided based on a long-term loan, and if changing needs are anticipated far enough in advance, timely upgrading of ICTs should be feasible. In conjunction with the case management approach, educational institutions and companies would still need to buy accessible products, provide accessible ICT platforms, develop accessible websites and keep their staff up to date on accessibility matters. A second concrete suggestion is to establish the position of an “accessibility agent” as has been done in Israel. The role of legislation took a primary place in the case discussions of Germany and Israel, and to a lesser extent in those of USA and Canada. This may be because laws provide the framework for what must be done to achieve full inclusion of individuals with disabilities in all aspects of life. Difficulties arise when existing legislation is specific to one educational level or to employment. In Germany social legislation plays a strong role in connecting disability, education and labor, resulting in a comprehensive model of transition support. Strong national disability legislation, including fines for non-compliance, covering all sectors of education and employment under one law, would serve to mitigate certain transition barriers within other countries. Without doubt, the legislation would need to address ICT accessibility requirements. The case studies of USA and Canada focused on two models of a transition program and some lessons can be learned from reviewing these. Essential ingredients appear to be the development of self- advocacy and self-determination skills, along with the acquisition of strong skills in the use of ICTs. Not all students have access to such programs and not all programs that exist follow through to transition from HE to employment. More programs, based on sound research findings (Test et  al., 2009) should be developed and the means to fund them must be acquired to allow greater numbers to participate. A blended delivery of in-person and online transition activities, along with online peer and mentorship support, should be considered as one option. Transition constitutes a shared space between institutions, employers, third-party services and individuals. The transition process has three main challenges: identifying and defining the necessary tasks to be completed, managing the myriad of tasks and determining what level is best placed to

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complete which tasks. Once these challenges have been addressed by means of a transition program there needs to be some agreement on measurable outcomes rather than merely anecdotal feedback. To assess efficacy, variables such as the following need to be examined: • Duration of program (At what point in the student’s educational path should the transition plan be implemented?) • Delivery of program (Should it be in-person, residential, online, blended, asynchronous, other?) • Description of participants (Who is the program reaching and how many? What about those who opt not to participate?) • Engagement of stakeholders (How are secondary school staff, parents, rehabilitation centers, government employment agencies, mentors, etc. engaged? Can/should their involvement be expanded?) • Cost of program (How much does it cost per participant? Who is funding the program? What other sources of funding might be available? Could a similar, but less costly, program be offered that would achieve the same results?) • Measurable outcomes regarding efficacy of obtaining employment (Does participation in a transition program from education to work increase employment rates, duration the job is maintained, job satisfaction, relationship between education completed and job obtained?). As the focus of the Disabled students, ICT, post-compulsory education & employment: in search of new solutions International network is to explore the role that ICTs play—or could play—in possibly removing some of the disadvantages that students with disabilities in HE experience, it would be remiss not the explore the place that ICTs have in transition programs. Particularly, the following question could be asked: Do transition programs need to address solely the skills related to the use of AT, the development of mainstream technology skills required by all higher students, or both? The transition from education to labor is an important step and movement between these sectors can create challenges for many students. Much effort is spent providing good starting positions when one begins a new job. However, employers who have job opportunities and make job offers do not often consider the unique needs of persons with disabilities. Research is needed to find out how employers can be convinced to be more open to employing individuals with disabilities. Can technology sup-

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port awareness and matching processes? Negative and positive incentives are among the instruments in the labor market but it remains unclear whether they serve their purpose. In this context, the role of ICT needs to be investigated more closely. In particular the question is: Is a thoroughly prepared transfer of ICT from the educational setting and dedicated adaptation to the new labor setting achievable? Finally, although Universal Design (UD) (covered in detail in Chap. 4 of this book) provides a foundational framework for many accessibilityrelated models in HE, it is not clear if this approach has influenced transition practices to date. Reviewing existing transition practices to identify the application of any UD principles could inform future practice. Another avenue of research could be to explore if transition programs offered to all students could be of benefit to students with disabilities, particularly with the addition of disability-specific modules.

Conclusions Students with disabilities in many countries face similar, but not identical, conditions that may impede their success. Particular problems arise in the context of transitions, where adequate and timely solutions need to be coordinated. When comparing students with and without disabilities for academic achievement and experiences, differences relate to time constraints, insufficient use of computers and technology, and barriers to social participation of students with disabilities. HE institutions should invest more resources in AT, accessible ICT and training for students with disabilities. It is equally important to qualify and train faculty members in the various uses of ICT and encourage them to help students who have trouble using them. Making computer workstations accessible to students with disabilities is of great importance, as AT can help reduce the barriers they face in the promotion of equal opportunities in HE as well as in employment. To support transition processes and maximize students’ success: (1) employees and students at all levels should have access to the AT and the support they need and (2) all ICTs should be accessible to people with disabilities. Legal obligations, government funding and programs like AccessSTEM have the potential to increase the success of individuals with disabilities in HE and careers, using technology as an empowering tool.

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Notes 1. http://www.einfach-teilhaben.de/DE/StdS/Home/stds_node.html 2. http://www.zhb.tu-dortmund.de/zhb/dobus/de/home/ 3. https://www.sozialgesetzbuch-sgb.de/ 4. http://www.behinderung-und-studium.de 5. http://www.kombabb-internetportal-nrw.de 6. https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/menschen-mit-behinderungen 7. https://con.arbeitsagentur.de/prod/apok/ct/dam/download/documents/handicap-na-und_ba015353.pdf 8. https://www3.arbeitsagentur.de/web/content/DE/service/Ueberuns/ WeitereDienststellen/ZentraleAuslandsundFachvermittlung/Ueberuns/ SchwerbehinderteAkademiker/UnserSer vice/Detail/index. htm?dfContentId=EGOV-CONTENT488317 9. https://www.studentenwerke.de/behinderung 10. https://www.studentenwerke.de/de/handbuch-studium-behinderung 11. h t t p s : / / w w w . i n t e g r a t i o n s a e m t e r . d e / T e c h n i s c h e r Beratungsdienst/500c221/index.html 12. h t t p s : / / w w w. i n t e g r a t i o n s a e m t e r . d e / f i l e s / 1 1 / T B D _ Positionspapier_2017.pdf 13. https://www.integrationsaemter.de/Integrationsfachdienst/501c/index. html 14. https://www.nite.org.il/special-test-accommodations/?lang=en

References Asselin, S.  B. (2014). Learning and assistive technologies for college transition. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 40(3), 223–230. https://doi. org/10.3233/JVR-140687. Canadian National Institute for the Blind. (2019). National SCORE program. Resource document. CNIB Foundation. https://cnib.ca/en/programmes-ets e r v i c e s a p p r e n d r e p r o g r a m m e s - p o u r- l e s - e n f a n t s - e t - l e s - j e u n e s / national-score-program?region=on DO-IT. (2016). 2016 report of the AccessSTEM/AccessComputing/DO-IT longitudinal transition study (ALTS). Resource document. University of Washington. h t t p s : / / w w w. w a s h i n g t o n . e d u / a c c e s s c o m p u t i n g / 2 0 1 6 - r e p o r t accessstemaccesscomputingdo-it-longitudinal-transition-study-alts DO-IT. (2019). Facilitating accessibility reviews of informal science education facilities and programs. Resource document. University of Washington. https:// www.washington.edu/doit/facilitating-accessibility-reviews-informal-scienceeducation-facilities-and-programs

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DO-IT. (n.d.-a). AccessSTEM: Increasing the participation of people with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Resource document. University of Washington. https://www.washington.edu/doit/programs/ accessstem/overview DO-IT. (n.d.-b). Literature review. Resource document. University of Washington. https://uw.edu/doit/about/evidence-based-practices/literature-review/ college-preparation-transition-self-determination EDUCAUSE. (2015). IT accessibility risk statements and evidence. Resource document. Washington, DC: Author. EDUCAUSE. https://library.educause.edu/ resources/2015/7/it-accessibility-risk-statements-and-evidence Fichten, C. S., Havel, A., King, L., Jorgensen, M., Budd, J., Asuncion, J., Nguyen, M. N., Amsel, R., & Marcil, E. (2018). Are you in or out? Canadian students who register for disability-related services in junior/community colleges versus those who do not. Journal of Education and Human Development, 7(1), 166–175. https://doi.org/10.15640/jehd.v7n1a19. Fichten, C. S., Heiman, T., Havel, A., Jorgensen, M., Budd, J., & King, L. (2016). Sustainability of disability-related services in Canada – Israel: Will the real universal design please stand up? Exceptionality Education International, 26(1), 19–35. Garrison-Wade, D.  F., & Lehmann, J.  P. (2009). A conceptual framework for understanding students with disabilities transition to community college. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 33(5), 415–443. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10668920802640079. Gillies, J. (2012). University graduates with a disability: The transition to the workforce. Disability Studies Quarterly, 32(3). http://dsq-sds.org/article/ view/3281/3115. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Government of Canada. (1985). Canadian Human Rights Act, RSC 1985. C.H-­ 6. Resource document. Government of Canada. https://laws-lois.justice.gc. ca/eng/acts/h-6/ Government of Canada. (1995). Employment Equity Act, SC 1995. c. 44. Resource document. Government of Canada. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/ acts/e-5.401/ Government of Canada. (2018, September 7). Rights of people with disabilities. Resource document. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/ canadian-heritage/services/rights-people-disabilities.html Heiman, T., Olenik-Shemesh, D., Kaspi-Tsahor, D., & Regev-Nevo, M. (2018). Proceedings of the Ed-ICT International Network Israel Symposium: In search of new designs. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/wp-content/ uploads/2018/09/ProceedingsEd-ICTIsraelSymposium.pdf Lindsay, S., Lamptey, D.–. L., Cagliostro, E., Srikanthan, D., Mortaji, N., & Karon, L. (2018). A systematic review of post-secondary transition interven-

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tions for youth with disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2018.1470260. Madaus, J. W., Banerjee, M., & Merchant, D. (2011). Transition to postsecondary education. In J.  M. Kaufman & D.  P. Hallahan (Eds.), Handbook of special education (pp. 571–583). New York: Routledge. Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. (2007). Organization of educational services for at-risk students and students with handicaps, social maladjustments or learning difficulties. Resource document. Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/ documents/dpse/adaptation_serv_compl/19-7065-A.pdf National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS). (2012). Enhancing accessibility in post-secondary education institutions: A guide for disability service providers. Resource document. NEADS. https://www.neads.ca/ en/norc/eag/eag_en.pdf NEADS. (2018, July). Landscape of accessibility and accommodation in post-­secondary education for students with disabilities: Report by the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS). Resource document. NEADS. https://www.neads.ca/en/about/media/AccessibilityandAccommodation% 202018-5landscapereport.pdf Nichols, E., Harrison, A., McCloskey, L., & Weintraub, L. (2002). Learning Opportunities Task Force 1997–2002: Final report. Resource document. Learning Opportunities Task Force. https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/266494038_Learning_Opportunities_Task_Force_1997_ to_2002_Final_Report Queen’s University. (n.d.). OLTS & STOMP. https://www.queensu.ca/rarc/ transition-programs-and-services/olts-stomp. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Shani, D. (2005). Learning disabilities who recruiting in the IDF. From the Hebrew Psychology website: https://www.hebpsy.net/articles.asp?id=563. Accessed 26 Sep 2019. Test, D.  W., Mazzotti, V.  L., Mustian, A.  L., Fowler, C.  H., Kortering, L., & Kohler, P. (2009). Evidence-based secondary transition predictors for improving post-school outcomes for students with disabilities. Career Development for Exceptional Individuals, 32(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0885728809346960. Werner, S., Katz, D., Ayalon, A., Merrick, J., & Tenenbaum, A. (2018). ‘Equal in uniform’: People with disabilities in military service in Israel. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 65(5), 569–579. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1034912X.2018.1426099. Zarifa, D., Walters, D., & Seward, B. (2015). The earnings and employment outcomes of the 2005 cohort of Canadian postsecondary graduates with d ­ isabilities. Canadian Review of Sociology, 52(4), 343–376. https://doi.org/10.1111/ cars.12082.

CHAPTER 7

New Solutions, Future Possibilities Jane Seale

Abstract  The purpose of this chapter is to examine the extent to which the chapters contained within this book, and the work of the wider ICT, disability and Higher Education community, has developed new ways of thinking and framing the issue of poor ICT-related accessibility practice. In order to do this, five different ‘futures thinking’ lenses: present futures, questioning, probable futures, possible futures and preferable futures will be applied. This chapter will also consider whether adopting methods from the ‘future thinking’ field can resolve tensions in the ICT, disability and Higher Education field. Keywords  ICT • Disability • Higher education • Accessibility • ‘Futures thinking’

J. Seale (*) Faculty of Wellness, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Seale (ed.), Improving Accessible Digital Practices in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37125-8_7

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Opening Up Spaces for Imagination The previous chapters of this book have been authored by teams of both practitioners and researchers as part of our mission to explore how research could inform practice and practice could inform research. In this final chapter, I am going to quite deliberately and unapologetically adopt a researcher’s perspective—more specifically a theoretical perspective. This may be quite a risky position to take given how cautious practitioners can be about the value of theory in informing current or future practice. One example of such caution emerged during our first symposium at Seattle when we debated the potential role of models and frameworks in transforming practice. In debating the nature of models, some stakeholders saw models as too abstract and not reflecting the reality of practice. For example, participants made comments such as: If a model explains practice, it needs to observe actual practice instead of just create the idea of a practice. Faculty often want to see examples. If a model is just a theory, it’s harder to get people to sign on board with trying it. For me a model needs to go beyond theory Maybe stop worrying about models and abstractions. (University of Washington, 2017)

These quotes reveal a real tension regarding what research in the field of ICT, disability and Higher Education is trying to accomplish. Is it trying to do something incremental, shining a light on potential future practice by building on present practice; or is it trying to do something more earth-shatteringly transformational by refusing to rule out the possibility that current practice may need to completely change? If it is the latter, then creating the ‘idea of a practice’ may be absolutely necessary. We have identified that something is wrong with current practice. If there was not something wrong, examples of students with disabilities struggling to achieve positive learning experiences would not exist; but they do exist. In this chapter, I want to problematize the notion that ‘ideas of practice’ are too utopian to be achieved because they are not grounded in current practice. In doing so, I will draw on ‘futures thinking’; to argue that we need to re-imagine future practice. This is not the first time that I have made such a call. In 2014, I concluded my review of accessibility research and practice by arguing that the

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field had become stagnant and needed to be re-imagined (Seale, 2014). Drawing on Wright-Mills’ (1959) notion of ‘sociological imagination’, I argued that we needed brave and creative new thinking that pulled away from the current situation to think from an alternative point of view. I was particularly influenced by the writings of two inclusive education researchers who referred to the need to strive for alternative futures. Peters (2010) argued that sociological imagination prompts an awareness of alternative futures and that in endeavouring to imagine alternative futures, educators might be drawn to using sociological imagination as a tool for examining the construction of disability. Barton (2001, p. 3) called for an opening up of spaces: The reduction of the space for the imagination and realisation of alternative possibilities to the present system and relations, will only be prevented by the active pursuit of the political dimensions integral to human experience. Without politics, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness comes a more ominous possibility.

In this spirit, I offered two alternative (but not opposing) futures: 1. A future where methods to enable a democratic voice to be heard were used in accessibility research (i.e. participatory or inclusive methods) and 2. A future where accessibility practice embraced the discourse of digital inclusion. Looking back on my arguments and having now introduced myself to the ‘Futures Thinking’ literature, it would seem that what I was trying to do through this work was adopt a questioning, philosophical approach to thinking about the future; by using literature and argument to develop ‘thought experiments’ (Black, 2012). In her examination of the tensions between mainstream and special schooling for children with special educational needs, Black (2012) applied a ‘futures thinking’ lens. I believe that there could be merit in exploring the application of this lens to our field of ICT, disability and HE and examining the tensions that arise when students with disabilities are excluded from experiencing positive learning outcomes. In order to make the case, I will examine the extent to which the field already is, albeit implicitly, applying ‘futures thinking’ approaches.

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Categories of ‘Futures Thinking’ and Their Application to the Field of ICT, Disability and Higher Education In seeking to define and understand ‘futures thinking’, Black (2012) conducted a literature review and, extending the descriptions used by Marien (2002), highlighted six categories of ‘futures thinking’. In this section, I will explore the extent to which the ICT, disability and HE community, including the contributing authors of this book, have implicitly been applying five of the six approaches (see Table 7.1).

Table 7.1  Five categories of ‘futures thinking’ Category

Focus and description

Present changes Analytical: identifying present trends and monitoring change

Typical methods and outcomes

Historical analysis Trend analysis/spotting Analysis of emerging issues Questioning Philosophical: dissenting, Critiquing, reformulation and serial futuring Deconstruction Re-­formulation Probable Strategic: looking at trends and Forecasting, predicting futures drivers to predict the most likely Exploring drivers for change What will be future within a given period, under a Extrapolating trends specific set of contingencies List of recommendations that will achieve a particular vision of the education system required to respond to these trends and recommendations Possible futures Creative: imagining alternative Scenario construction What could be futures, regardless of how ‘far out’ Risk analysis they may seem Deductive forecasting Scenarios and responses to those scenarios Preferable Subjective or values-driven: capturing Planning, futures stakeholder’s hopes and dreams Strategizing What should regarding how the future might be Visioning be or what we improved (typically by requiring a Descriptions of best practices ought to do restructuring of the current education that reflect a notion or a vision system in order to be achieved) of a preferred future

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Present Changes Work that falls under the category of ‘Present Changes’ (where present is used as a verb rather than a noun or adjective) is analytical in nature; and seeks to identify and monitor changes. One example of such an approach being applied to the field of ICT, disability and HE can be seen in Chap. 2 of this book, where the authors discuss ‘new wave’ ICTs and how they have the potential to re-engineer teaching and learning processes for students with disabilities, if they are designed with accessibility in mind. My work and that of others has sought to compare the current accessibility of university websites to past levels of accessibility, which is another example of this approach (Seale, 2006, 2014). In a review of web accessibility studies published between 2000 and 2011, I noted that in HE there had been three main approaches to evaluating web accessibility: firstly, evaluating the core or main home page of higher education institutions; secondly, evaluating library home pages; and thirdly, evaluating programme or course-specific pages. Other approaches include comparing HE institutional websites to those of non-educational organizations, or comparing the accessibility of institutional websites across time. Analysing the results across all of these studies, I concluded that evidence of inaccessibility of university websites had not decreased over time (Seale, 2014). The studies included in my 2014 review focused largely on university websites in countries such as the USA, Canada, UK, South East Asia and Australia. An inspection of web accessibility studies conducted since 2011 reveals a wider geographical focus with universities in countries such as Portugal (e.g. Espadinha, Pereira, da Silva, & Lopes, 2011) Spain (Chacón-Medina, Chacón-López, López-Justicia, & Fernández-Jiménez, 2013), Cyprus (e.g. Iseri, Uyar, & Ilhan, 2017), Argentina (e.g. Laitano, 2015) and Kyrgyzstan (Ismailova & Kimsanova, 2017) now entering the gaze of accessibility researchers. Studies also continue in countries such as the US (e.g. Kimmons, 2017) and Australia (e.g. Billingham, 2014). Across these countries, the studies reveal that a large proportion of university websites are still failing a range of accessibility and usability tests; thereby leading researchers such as Kimmons (2017, p. 448) to conclude: ‘These types of errors are simple to correct and seem to reflect systemic willingness to ignore basic accessibility requirements’. Results like these present a potential future where nothing has changed.

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Questioning Questioning as a form of ‘futures thinking’ involves critiquing current positions and practices as well as reformulating ideas and solutions. One example of a ‘Questioning’ approach can be found in the critical ­examination offered by Seale (2018) of grand claims made about the benefit of ICT for students with disabilities. In this paper, I used a recent study by Kent, Ellis, Latter and Peaty (2018) to illustrate my argument for a reformulation of how we conduct research in the field. In their article entitled ‘The Case for Captioned Lectures in Australian HE’, Kent et al. state: Captions benefit a range of students, particularly those considered to be at risk – such as students who are deaf or hard of hearing (Stinson et al. 2009; Wald 2006a; Maiorana-Basas and Pagliaro 2014; Marschark et  al. 2006; Elliot et  al. 2002), those with learning difficulties (Evmenova 2008; Evmenova and Behrmann 2014; Knight et  al. 2013; Reagon et  al. 2007; Stinson et al. 2009).

Seale (2018) followed up each of the studies cited and concluded that the case for captions (delivered through ICT) benefitting students looked ‘very wobbly’. One of the cited papers was not education focused; two of the papers did not involve students in HE; two of the papers focused more on how the ICT was used rather than the impact or outcome of ICT use; and finally, of the four experimental studies cited, none of them found any evidence that students with disabilities performed better with captions compared to other alternatives or no captions. I argued that examples like this are concerning because uncritical acceptance of the benefits of ICT for disabled students may be symptomatic of a technological determinism which says more about our positive attitudes towards ICT than it does about our positive attitudes towards disability. Future research in the field needs to be more rigorous and transparent than this. Possible Futures ‘Possible Futures’ as an approach to ‘futures thinking’ involves imagining alternative futures no matter how ridiculous they seem to others. In some respect this overlaps with ‘Questioning’ because it can be challenging; dissenting from what is considered to be the norm. One example of such an approach being applied to the field of ICT, disability and HE can be seen

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in Chap. 5 of this book, where the authors challenge the accessibility community to consider the extent to which it might be able to move its research and practice forward by collaborating with and learning from the Open Education Movement. Implicit in this challenge is a reformulation of the mantra: ‘practice is not as it should be, we need to find new solutions’. The suggested reformulated mantra is: ‘practice is not as it should be, can others help us find new solutions?’ For example: In this the community of Open Education Resources (OER) is recognizing, exploring, and researching the ways in which an individual, group, or institution can integrate ways of working and thinking that are appropriate to achieving openness, sharing and inclusion. Accessibility practitioners could be inspired by such approaches. (Italics my emphasis)

The authors of Chap. 5 further invoke ‘possible futures’ with regard to potential collaboration with the OER community: When overlaps between open education and accessibility do emerge, they could actually serve to highlight differences in the ways in which widening access goals are achieved. The practices of OER could have much to offer accessibility in terms of sharing and reusing what is produced. This basic notion allows good practice and innovation to proliferate more easily. (Italics my emphasis)

In a similar vein, in this chapter, I am imagining a possible future where the ICT, disability and HE research and practice community might be able to identify and plan for new solutions to the persistent issue of students with disabilities being excluded from positive learning experience by applying a ‘futures thinking’ lens to its problems. Probable Futures Work that falls under the category of ‘Probable Futures’ tends to be driven by or commissioned by those with a responsibility for policy (Bildungskommission, 1995; Facer, 2009; Ontario Royal Commission on Learning, 1994). For example, Facer (2009) reports on the ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ (BCH) programme in the UK, which explored the potential futures for education that might emerge at the intersection of social and technological change over the coming two decades. Its purpose

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was to map out current and emerging socio-technical trends, challenges or opportunities that such developments might offer. The methods used involved a complex programme of exploring trends and drivers, designing scenarios and having experts contributing papers and reports. Facer (2009, p. 27) sets out 7 key steps taken by the BCH group to create scenarios that would be used with stakeholders to enable them to “take informed and thoughtful decisions about which of these emergent developments we wish to embrace, to challenge or to overcome” (p. 14): 1. The BCH team reviewed all draft challenge reviews and challenge reports, and reviewed findings from the public engagement programme, to develop a set of key contexts and developments which would be assumed to be acting in all future worlds. 2. The BCH team reviewed all draft challenge reviews and identified a set of critical uncertainties which might play out in radically divergent directions and, therefore, would have a significant potential impact on the goals, institutions and processes of education. A shortlist of six potential uncertainties was produced. In addition, a second variable was determined that would be used to structure the scenarios, namely the speed and coherence of the education system’s response to socio-technical change. 3. The recommended predetermined elements and the shortlist of six candidate critical uncertainties were circulated to the challenge leads, the expert advisory group and the Citizens Council who were asked for feedback on the predetermined elements, and to rank the critical uncertainties against their potential significance for education. Comments were also elicited from all groups on their rankings to help ascertain priorities. 4. Feedback from these groups informed the final selection of the key variables and predetermined elements and the final scenario architecture was drafted. 5. The Expert Advisory group and BCH team met for three days to produce first drafts of the scenarios. 6. BCH team members took these drafts, revised them and circulated them to the EAG members for comment. They then revised them again in order to create distinctive worlds and scenarios. 7. These scenarios were translated into easily accessible online scenario toolkits for use by education practitioners (see www.visionmapper.org.uk).

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In the ICT, disability and HE field, there is a strand of work that examines drivers for change such as legislation (see Chap. 1) and trends, particularly with regard to increases in the number of students with disabilities entering HE and patterns of retention, attainment and employment (see Chap. 2). What this work has not done, however, is adopt a systematic data-driven method such as that adopted by the BCH (Facer, 2009) to produce predictions such as: Based on the increasing numbers of students with disabilities and the increasing of accessibility related legislation this is what will happen if HE institutions a) continue to not respond b) respond. Here are some scenarios of what a HE institutions response might look like.

As far back as the 1990s, the ICT, disability and HE community was predicting a future where HE institutions that did not comply with legislation would be sued or threatened with fines. It was assumed that this prediction on its own was enough to trigger change (Seale, 2006). Thirty years on, and with the exception of the USA, there are no public cases of HE institutions enduring any negative consequences as a result of noncompliance with legislation. This weakens the prediction, but to a large extent the community still looks to legislation as a necessary and sometimes sole driver for change. The community has not examined in any great depth other drivers that may be ‘cancelling out’ the positive effect of the legislative driver. One example could be the finance driver. In terms of a financial equation, if A corresponds to the cost to an HE institution of responding to the needs of all of its students with disabilities in an inclusive manner, and B corresponds to the cost to an HE institution of being identified as not complying with accessibility related legislation, is the cost of B less than A? If it is, that might explain the lack of urgency that so many advocates for change observe. However, I don’t foresee a future where the community chooses to rely solely on predictions underpinned by statistics and probabilities. This is because this approach is not valuesdriven and I would argue that much of the stakeholder discourse in this field is values-­driven. Read any paper in the field and there will be references to values such as inclusion, equality, equity, social justice, embracing diversity and eliminating discrimination (see Seale, 2014, for an overview). The chapters in this book are no different; as evidenced by the bold statement in the introductory chapter:

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The overarching aim of the Ed-ICT International Network was to seek ways in which research could inform practice (and vice versa) in the field so that the disadvantage that disabled learners experience can be reduced or better still eliminated. (Italics my emphasis)

It would seem to me, therefore, that much of our community prefers to paint a picture of preferable (better) futures. Preferable Futures Work that falls under the umbrella of ‘preferable futures’ involves exploring ‘what should be’. It illuminates or expresses stakeholders’ hopes and dreams about future systems and practice. Outcomes of this kind of work tend to be descriptions of best practices that reflect a vision of a preferred future. One example from the ICT, disability and HE field is the book edited by Burgstahler (2015) which, according to the foreword written by Michael K. King, President of Texas A & M University, makes a: ‘compelling case for adopting universal design (UD) in all postsecondary offerings in order to support a diverse educational community and an inclusive approach to academic excellence’. The inference is that the authors of the book have a vision of a preferred future where all HE institutions adopt UD. In this book, examples can also be found of authors implicitly applying a ‘preferable futures’ lens. For example, in Chap. 3, the Inclusive Campus Model as developed and practised by the University of Washington is described. Like the cases described in Burgstahler (2015), the description is offered as a vision of what can be achieved by others in the future. One weakness in my suggestion that this is an unconscious positioning of ‘preferable futures’ lies in the fact that Burgstahler fairly and bravely includes in her description of the Inclusive Campus Model and other work at the University of Washington an account of how the practice is not as perfect as she might like it to be: In spite of these efforts, each academic term the most expensive accommodations provided by Disability Resources for Students with respect to online learning are for remediating inaccessible documents and captioning videos.

Nevertheless, Burgstahler in her wider work suggests that any practice that tries to implement UD—regardless of how successful—is preferable to a practice that does not even try (Burgstahler, 2015). Furthermore, it is

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not clear that a vision for a preferable future mandates or expects a massive, immediate and successful transformation of practice. What Burgstahler and the University of Washington have offered the community, through continuous and deep descriptions of practice since 2002, is a chance to compare what ICT-related accessible practice at the University of Washington looks like now, compared to when it first began (not unlike the ‘Present Futures’ approach). In that sense, the change is probably massive. Another example of a potential application of a ‘preferable futures’ lens can be found in Chap. 6, where four international cases of transition practices are presented as exemplars of best practice and a vision of ‘what should be’ is distilled from them: Higher education institutions should invest more resources in AT and accessible ICT and in training for students with disabilities. It is equally important to qualify and train faculty members in the various uses of ICT and encourage them to help students who have trouble using them. Making computer workstations accessible to students with disabilities is of great importance, as assistive technology can help reduce the barriers they face in the promotion of equal opportunities in HE as well as in employment. To support transitions processes and maximize students’ success: (1) employees and students at all levels should have access to the AT and support they need and (2) all ICT should be accessible to people with disabilities. (italics my emphasis)

Black (2012) argues that notions of preferable best practice, particularly those derived from international examples can fall foul of a lack of contextualization. This criticism could potentially be made of the four international case examples in Chap. 6; however, I would argue that the authors have worked hard to provide a context for their cases; for example, by providing an overview of legislation in each country and describing funding models such as National Insurance schemes.

Can ‘Futures Thinking’ Resolve Tensions in the Field? Black (2012) applied future studies to examining the tension between special and inclusive schools. She describes the methods she used in this examination as a mixture of iterations of a ‘thought experiment using

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futures studies methodologies and evaluative techniques’. She developed a vision of the future in the form of a vignette and used it to stir debate around the tensions that would open up opportunities for action. In short, I have consciously imagined and sketched out a vision of the future, had a variety of audiences critique it, and developed the vignette according to this critique, for the ultimate purpose of it stirring debate about potential inclusive educational policy. My aim was not to produce an accurate map of a future world to adapt education systems to, but rather to explore future possibilities and act to influence them.

One of the reasons why tensions can exist is that one stakeholder’s notion of a preferable future is not necessarily shared by all. What I like about the vignette or scenario development methodology as described by both Facer (2009) and Black (2012) is that it involves a systematic approach to consulting with a range of stakeholders. For example, Black (2012) built up her vignette of an inclusive school of the future (2025) from stakeholders’ answers to a series of eleven questions. Unlike descriptions of best practice that are rooted in one stakeholder’s local context (e.g. University of Washington) the context for the vignette and the eleven questions was provided by an analysis of large-scale datasets and a review of policy documents and other literature. This has an advantage in that stakeholders are less likely to say: ‘Well my university is so different to your university that we could never do what you are doing’. The chapters in this book have identified a range of tensions. For example, in Chap. 5, the tension between mainstream and specialist technologies was discussed. Other tensions include: ‘UD versus any other model versus a combination of models’ and ‘Top down versus bottom up approaches to institutional change’. My personal vision for the future is that the community adopts methods similar to Facer (2009) and Black (2012) in order to explore possible scenarios whereby these tensions and others are resolved or reduced; thus eliminating long-standing stagnation in the field.

Conclusion The premise of this book is that ICT has a role to play in reducing the disadvantage that students with disabilities experience within HE. In order to give voice to new possibilities, we have examined and critiqued factors

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that could play a key role in reducing this disadvantage: new models, stakeholder engagement, new designs and new transition programmes. In this chapter, I have explored the extent to which this examination and the work of the wider ICT, disability and HE community has developed new ways of thinking and framing the issue of poor ICT-related accessibility practice. In order to do this, I have applied five different ‘futures thinking’ lenses: present futures, questioning, probable futures, possible futures and preferable futures. I have argued that the approach and methods of ‘futures thinking’ has potential to help ease tensions in the ICT, disability and HE field. Finally, to conclude, I would like to adapt the eloquent words of Black (2012, p. 234) to suggest that the probable future is a continuation of the status quo, where students with disabilities experience significant disadvantages due to poor ICT-related accessibility practices. This will remain the case as long as HE institutions remain the way they are. There are different possible futures, some of which have been discussed in this book, others which have not yet been imagined. Discourses within the community and within the chapters of this book such as ‘ICT should be accessible to all students including those with disabilities’ indicate a focus on what could be considered by some as a preferable future, one that is more equitable for students with disabilities. Finally, there is a need and value for use of the questioning process in which the preferable futures that our community envisages are subject to systematic and wide-scale evaluation and refinement by a variety of key stakeholders.

References Barton, L. (2001). Disability, struggle and the politics of hope. In L. Barton (Ed.), Disability, politics & the struggle for change (pp. 1–10). London: David Fulton. Bildungskommission NRW. (1995). Zukunft der Bildung  – Schule der Zukunft: Denkschrift der Kommission beim Ministerpräsidenten des Landes Nordrhein-­ Westfalen. Berlin, Germany: Luchterhand. Billingham, L. (2014). Improving academic library website accessibility for people with disabilities. Library Management, 35(8/9), 565–581. Black, A. (2012). Future secondary schools for diversity: Where are we now, and where could we be? PhD thesis, Exeter University, Exeter, UK. Burgstahler, S. E. (Ed.). (2015). Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Chacón-Medina, A., Chacón-López, H., López-Justicia, M.  D., & Fernández-­ Jiménez, C. (2013). Dificultades en la Accesibilidad Web de las Universidades

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Españolas de acuerdo a la Norma WCAG 2.0. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 36(4), e025. Espadinha, C., Pereira, L. M., da Silva, F. M., & Lopes, J. B. (2011). Accessibility of Portuguese public universities’ sites. Disability and Rehabilitation, 33(6), 475–485. https://doi.org/10.3109/09638288.2010.498554. Facer, K. (2009). Educational, social and technological futures: A report from the beyond current horizons programme. London: DCSF & Futurelab. Iseri, E.  I., Uyar, K., & Ilhan, U. (2017). The accessibility of Cyprus Islands’ higher education institutions websites. Procedia Computer Science, 120, 967–974. Ismailova, R., & Kimsanova, G. (2017). Universities of the Kyrgyz Republic on the Web: Accessibility and usability. Universal Access in the Information Society, 16, 1017–1025. Kent, M., Ellis, K., Latter, N., & Peaty, G. (2018). The case for captioned lectures in Australian higher education. Tech Trends, 62(2), 158–165. Kimmons, R. (2017). Open to all? Nationwide evaluation of high-priority web accessibility considerations among higher education web-sites. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 29, 434–450. Laitano, M. I. (2015). Accesibilidad web en el espacio universitario público argentino. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 38(1), e079. Marien, M. (2002). Futures studies in the 21st century: A reality based view. Futures, 34(3), 261–281. Ontario Royal Commission on Learning. (1994). For the love of learning. Toronto, ON: Publications Ontario. Peters, S. (2010). The heterodoxy of student voice: Challenges to identity in the sociology of disability and education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(5), 591–602. Seale, J. (2018, March). Making higher education more accessible to disabled students: Do we need new technologies or new technology practices. Discussion paper for Ed-ICT Leverhulme International Network Symposium Tel Aviv. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/workshops/tel-aviv/programme/ Seale, J.  K. (2006). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice (1st ed.). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Seale, J.  K. (2014). E-learning and disability in higher education: Accessibility research and practice (2nd ed.). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. University of Washington. (2017). Symposium one: Effective models, frameworks, and approaches. Proceedings from the Ed-ICT International Network: Disabled students, ICT, post-compulsory education & employment: In search of new solutions. Resource document. Ed-ICT. http://ed-ict.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/06/Symposium-Ef fective_models_frameworks_and_ approaches_0.pdf Wright-Mills, C. (1959). The sociological imagination. London: Oxford University Press.

Index1

A Accessibility Coordinator, 77, 84–86 Accessibility guidelines, 28, 81, 100 Accessibility policies, 35 Accessibility Unit, 59, 60 AccessSTEM, 121–123, 125, 138 Accommodations, 6, 10, 13, 24, 27, 46, 47, 49, 52–54, 57, 58, 68, 75, 83, 84, 87, 92, 100, 102, 120, 124, 126, 127, 130, 133, 134, 152 Achecker, 32 Administrators, 8, 36, 57, 66, 68, 75, 77, 86, 129 Adobe, 103 Affordability, 25, 108 Alternate format materials (e.g., books, hand-outs), 27 The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990 & 2008), 4, 82, 86, 120 Android devices, 24, 27, 28 Apple devices, 27

Apple VoiceOver, 103 Apps, 11, 24, 25, 28, 32, 34, 106, 126, 128 Artificial Intelligence (AI), 30–31, 35, 104 Assignments, 79, 128, 130 Assistive technologies (AT), 2, 12, 13, 23–25, 27, 28, 33–37, 47, 49, 57, 61, 67, 75, 77, 100–106, 109, 119–122, 125–132, 135, 137, 138, 153 Assistive technologists, 24, 35, 82, 126 Attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), 79, 127 Audio description, 50 Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 127 B Bagrut matriculation exam (Israel), 133, 134 Blended delivery, 136

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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INDEX

Blind/blindness, 33, 65, 80, 100–102, 108, 126 Blogs, 25, 134 Book publishers, 82 Browsers, 28 Bundesamt für Justiz 2006, 82 C Camera, 28 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982, 5 Canadian Human Rights Act 1985 (Government of Canada), 125 Career awareness, 122 Career preparation, 122 Careers, 118, 120, 122, 124, 125, 132, 135, 138 Center for Universal Design (CUD), 48, 50 Central ICT unit, 75 The Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST), 26, 48, 50 Centre on Postsecondary Education and Disability at the University of Connecticut, 52 Chronic health problems, 79 Civil right complaints, 53 Closed captions, 50 Cloud services, 29 Cloud technology, 29, 30 Communication devices, 132 Community of Practice Theory, 88 Compliance, 4, 5, 10, 52, 54, 77 Computer labs, 34, 37, 52 Concept mapping, 28, 32 A contextualized model of accessible e-learning practice, 60–61 See also Models Course management system, 25, 79 Creative Commons, 110, 111

D Deaf/deafness, 47, 65, 148 Department of Justice (USA), 4, 52, 53 Design, 11, 24, 46–54, 76, 100–113, 119 Design for All, 58 Desktop computers, 61, 77 Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW), 130, 131 Dictation software, 27 Dictionaries, 133, 134 Digital accessibility officer, 76 Digital books/digital textbooks, 8, 25, 28, 37 The Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) Center, 49, 50, 75, 78, 121, 122, 124, 125, 135, 136 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 (United Kingdom), 82 Disability service offices, 47 Disability services staff, 75 Disabled Students’ Allowances, 31 Discrimination, 6, 7, 76, 151 Distance learning, 30, 106 DO-IT Scholars program, 122, 135 E e-book, 26, 31 Employers, 6, 83, 121, 126, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137 Employment, 6, 7, 13, 23, 36, 46, 80, 120–122, 124–128, 130, 132–138, 151, 153 Equality Act 2010 (United Kingdom), 4 Equal Rights of People with Disabilities Law (Israel), 5, 6, 132 Ergonomic furniture, 77

 INDEX 

EU Directive on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications, 4 The EU4ALL model, 61–63 Exams, 34, 79, 84, 133, 134 F Facebook, 2, 102 Family, 82, 101, 107, 120, 124 Field study courses, 11 Flickr, 111 Frameworks, 8–10, 24, 46–69, 74, 80, 83, 88–90, 93, 136, 138, 144 Furniture (accessible), 84 Furniture (ergonomic), 77 Futures thinking, 15, 144–155 G Games, 28, 74, 88–93 The General Act on Equal Treatment (AGG) 2006 Germany (Bundesamt für Justiz, 2006, 82 Google, 31, 107 Google Drive, 106, 107 Google Keep, 128 Google Read and Write, 128 Google Translate, 34 Governance, 76 H Health professions, 84 Higher Education Framework Act (Germany), 4 The holistic model of accessibility for e-learning applications, 54–56 See also Models The Human Development Model-­ Disability Creation Process (HDM-DCP), 53

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I Inclusive Campus Model, 50–54, 152 Inclusive Design for Learning, 48 Independent living skills, 122 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA (USA), 120 Inspiration, 32 See also Concept mapping Instant messaging, 28 Instructional designers, 82 International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (World Health Organization), 53 International Network on the Disability Creation Process, 53 The Internet of Things, 30, 35, 104 Internships, 122, 124, 125, 127 iOS devices, 24, 28 iPad, 11 Israel Defense Force (IDF), 133 J JAWS, 33, 107, 108 K Khan Academy, 28 L Laboratory classes, 34, 37 Laboratory technicians, 82 Laptops, 28 Lawsuits, 53, 121 Leadership, 66, 76–78, 92, 93, 122 Learning disabilities (LD), 24, 27, 28, 37n2, 53, 79, 126–128, 133, 134 Learning platforms, 35 Learning technologists, 82

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INDEX

Lectures, 12, 14, 25, 30–32, 47, 84, 90–91, 104, 106, 107, 122, 134 Legislators, 5, 66, 82, 83, 85 Libraries, 26, 33, 36, 87, 134 Library database software, 87 Licensed Buildings, Infrastructure and Environment Accessibility Expert, 82, 84 Licensed Service Accessibility Expert, 82 Livescribe, 128 M Mainstream devices/technologies, 12, 75, 87, 101–106, 108, 110–113, 119, 127, 135, 137 MathJax, 32 MathML, 32, 104 MathType, 32 Medical views of disability, 47 Mental health (illness), 127, 128, 134 Mentor/mentoring, 118, 121, 122, 124, 125, 137 Microsoft OneNote, 128 Military service, 132 Mobile technologies, 11, 24, 28, 29, 31, 34, 37 Mobility impairments, 31, 79 A model of accessibility services, 58–61 Models, 8, 24, 46–69, 75, 108, 120, 144 Monitor, 27, 93 MP3 players, 28, 107 MySQL, 28 N National Institute for Testing and Evaluation (Israel), 134, 135 National Insurance Institute (Israel), 6, 132, 133

Networking, 2, 111, 122, 124, 134 New Managerialism, 88 New Public Management, 88 Nurses, 84 O Occupational therapists, 84 Office 365, 28, 29 Office of Civil Rights (USA), 4, 53 Online course, 35, 121, 128, 134 On-Line to Success (OLTS), 127, 128 Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2014 (Canada), 5 Open Educational Resources (OER), 110–112, 149 Open Education Movement, 110, 111, 149 Open Textbooks, 112 Open web service architecture, 61 Optical character recognition (OCR) software, 27, 28 Orcam Company, 101 Organizational learning, 88, 91–93 P Participatory action research, 68 PDF documents, 25, 80 Physical disabilities, 11, 134 Policy, 5, 7, 25, 31, 34, 36, 37, 47, 52, 57, 75–79, 86, 92, 121, 127, 149, 154 Policy makers, 75 Portable note-taking device, 27 PowerPoint, 25, 26, 80 Print impairment, 28 Procurement, 28, 31, 34, 35, 37, 67, 69, 74, 76–81, 86, 87, 121 Procurement personnel/staff, 75, 79

 INDEX 

Prohibition of Discrimination in Employment law 2016 (Israel), 134 Project management model, 76 Psycho-educational assessments, 53, 126 Psychologists, 84 Psychometric Entrance Test (Israel), 132–134 R The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (section 504) USA, 4, 86, 120 Rehabilitation institutions, 126 Right Hear Company, 101 S Scanner, 27 Scanning, 28, 104 Scenario development, 154 Screen, 24, 25, 27, 32, 33, 50 Screen readers, 2, 33, 100, 103–105, 132–134 Self-advocacy, 75, 82, 118, 120–122, 124, 136 Self-esteem, 124 Semantic ‘markup,’ 81 Sensory impairments, 46, 79 Sensusaccess, 12 Sign language interpreters, 47 Smartphones, 24, 27–29, 32 Social media, 27, 101, 110 Social view of disability, 47 Social workers, 84 Sociological imagination, 145 Sonification, 12 Specialist devices, 101, 105 Speech-to-text, 27, 34, 134 Spell checker, 27 Spelling/grammar checker, 26, 27, 106, 133, 134

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Staff development model, 57–59 See also Models Stakeholder theory, 88–91, 93 Studentenwerke (Germany), 129 Student support services, 14 Successful Transition Online and Mentoring Program (STOMP), 127, 128 Synote, 12 T Tablets, 24, 28, 29 Teaching and Learning Support Units, 58 Text-to-speech software, 26, 27, 33 Third-party services, 136 Transcripts, 12, 31, 50 Transition support, 118, 121, 136 Traumatic brain injury, 11 Twitter, 134 U United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 5 Universal Design for Instruction (UDI), 47, 52 Universal Design in Higher Education (UDHE), 49–55 Universal Design of Instruction, 47 Universal Design (UD), 10, 12, 14, 24, 26, 27, 35, 47–50, 52–55, 58, 61, 66, 68, 81, 100, 104, 108–110, 129, 138, 152, 154 Universally Designed Instruction, 48 Universally Designed Teaching, 48 University of Berkeley (California), 26, 111

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INDEX

V Virtual learning environments (VLE), 25, 31, 62 Visual impairment, 27, 33, 57, 134 The VIVID (Vision Impaired using Virtual IT Discovery) model for e-learning applications, 55–57 Voice control software, 27 Voice recognition, 27 W Wearable technologies, 29 Web, 12, 50, 77, 81, 100, 109, 134, 147 Web Accessibility Initiative, 86 Web browsers, 32 Web conferencing, 25, 105 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), 4, 50, 52, 54, 86, 111 WebAIM, 4

Web master, 82 Web page designer, 79 Websites, 4, 8, 12, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 49, 50, 52–54, 77, 80, 81, 84, 101, 121, 122, 124, 129, 133, 136, 147 Wheelchair, 132 Wi-Fi, 11, 25 Wireless networks, 29 Word prediction, 27 WordPress, 28 Work-based learning, 122, 124, 125 World Wide Web Consortium, 50 Y YouTube, 27, 31, 50, 110 Z Zoom Text, 133, 134