ed-ict.comed-ict.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Seale_Ed_ICT… · Web viewProfessor Jane Seale, Open University, UK. Leader of ED-ICT International Network. [email protected]

Disability, ICT, post-compulsory education & employment: in search of new designs for

technology

Version 1.6: 4th March 2018

Professor Jane Seale, Open University, UKLeader of ED-ICT International Network

[email protected]@jane.seale

http://ed-ict.com/

Disclaimer: This paper has been produced exclusively for the Ed-ICT International Network Symposium and is in draft form. It will be re-worked and published more formally following symposium discussions and feedback. Please do not cite this work beyond the network.

ED-ICT International Network, Third Symposium, The Open University of Israel, 13th to 14th March 20181

http://ed-ict.com/

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to two-fold. Firstly to orientate readers to the main aims of the Leverhulme funded International Network on ICT, disability, post-secondary education (PSE) 1 and employment (Ed-ICT) and secondly to provide an underpinning critical framework for the third symposium of this network in which we examine the challenges and opportunities around designing ICTs that serve to include rather exclude disabled students in PSE from high quality learning experiences.

The Ed-ICT International Network define disability broadly to include physical, sensory, mobility, social and cognitive disabilities, but also acknowledge 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. Within this paper I will use the term ‘disabled students’ but in using this terms, I am aware that there are differences of opinion regarding which term or label is the most appropriate to use. My justification for preferring the term ‘disabled student’ to the term ‘people with disabilities’ is that the latter implies that the person’s impairment or condition causes them to be ‘disabled’ (and consequently that it is their responsibility to overcome it), whereas ‘disabled person’ implies that the person is disabled not necessarily by their condition or impairment, but by society and its inability or reluctance to cater effectively for that person (and consequently that society must effect change to remove that disability). (Phipps, Sutherland and Seale 2002, iii). This reflects a social model of disability2 which is well understood in the UK and Europe, but less so in other parts of the world. The focus of the Ed-ICT International Network is on those disabled students who meet the regular admissions requirements of post-secondary institutions; these encompass further education (e.g. colleges), technical schools (that offer certificated programs) and higher education institutions (e.g., universities). We also define ICT 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.

Overarching aim of the Ed-ICT International Network

The overarching aim of the Leverhulme funded International Network on ICT, post-secondary education and employment is to seek ways in which research can inform practice (and vice versa) in the field so that the disadvantage that disabled learners experience can be reduced or better still eliminated. We know that disabled students are less likely than non-disabled students to stay enrolled, earn higher degrees and secure employment (See Seale, 2014 for a review of the evidence and research). We also know that disabled learners 1 Alternatively known as higher education, post-compulsory education or tertiary education.2 http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/UPIAS-fundamental-principles.pdf


can experience discrimination when institutions expect them to use inaccessible ICTs as part of their studies or fail to utilise potentially supportive ICTs (Asuncion et al. 2009; Fichten et al. 2014). This is despite the fact that accessibility standards exist and many countries have disability discrimination legislation in place that directly or indirectly requires educational institutions to address how their use of technologies mediates disadvantage for their disabled learners (Seale, 2006; 2014).

The network has funding to run five international symposia that explore four interconnected themes of: Models; Stakeholders; Design and Practice. The first symposium was held in Seattle and focused on examining models, frameworks and approaches that might transform accessibility practices3. The second symposium was held in Montreal and focused on examining how different stakeholders can and should contribute and collaborate to ensure the accessibility of ICT in PSE.4 The third symposium, which is the focus of this paper, will examine the extent to which lack of access to supportive ICTs or inaccessible ICTs can be solved by new or better ICT designs.5

Specific focus of the Tel Aviv Symposium: Technology Design

The ICT, disability and PSE research and practice communities have argued for a long time that ICTs can have both a positive and negative impact on disabled students. In terms of the positives, the communities has talked about how the flexibility and adaptability of ICT means that it has the potential to remove barriers to PSE for disabled students (e.g. O’Connor 2000). We have evoked powerful metaphors images such as that of a ‘bridge’ (Purcell & Grant 2004), ‘gate or door’ (Klein et al. 2003) and ‘level playing field’ to emphasize the potentially equalizing effect of e-learning (Banks et al. 2003; Evans 2002). Furthermore, we have argued that of the key consequences of the removal of barriers to inclusive and equitable education is that e-learning can also promote freedom, independence and individualized learning (Bain et al. 2002; Theofanos & Reddish 2003) as well as empowerment (Schmetzke 2001; Horton 2002).

In terms of the negatives, the communities have talked about how ICTs can also cause problems or difficulties when their poor design leads to inaccessible learning resources or opportunities; leading some to describe ICT as a ‘double-edged sword’ (Byerley & Chambers 2002:169; Katseva 2004). Thus there is a paradox: ICTs can liberate, but they can also confine. ICT confines and hinders freedom where barriers to equity and accessibility are not addressed and ignored (Schmetzke 2001; Banks et al. 2003). These barriers may therefore lead to experiences and feelings of inhibited opportunities (Pilling et al. 2004), lost independence and fettered freedom (Bohman 2003). Therefore, for disabled students, even if they do have access to ICT they may not necessarily have access to ICT. These students

3 http://ed-ict.com/workshops/seattle/4 http://ed-ict.com/workshops/montreal/5 http://ed-ict.com/workshops/tel-aviv/


therefore are still ‘have-nots’ and may experience what Burgstahler (2002) describes as the ‘second digital divide. The potential of ICT is therefore seen to be highly influenced by its design and its designers. As Seale (2002:84) argued:

[..] the potential that technologies hold to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of tertiary education for disabled students will be highly influenced by the staff that design, develop, use and support them.

The premise, is therefore that if we in the ICT, disability and PSE research and practice communities do not design and develop accessible ICTs, then the gap between disabled and non-disabled students will widen and ICT will not achieve its potential to facilitate access to learning, curricula, independence and empowerment. I would argue that there are four key assumptions underpinning this premise:

1. That we in the community are willing to design better, more accessible ICTs2. That tools exist to assist us in the design of better, more accessible ICTs3. That all stakeholders need to be involved in the design of better, more accessible

ICTs and we know how best to involve them.4. That more accessible ICTs will in fact lead to better outcomes for disabled students.

In this paper I will review the research and practice literature in order to examine and problematize these assumptions in more detail and to provide a critical framework for symposium delegates to use when engaging with the presentations and discussions that take place.

IS THE COMMUNITY WILLING TO DESIGN BETTER, MORE ACCESSIBLE ICTs?

It may seem strange to question the willingness of the research and practice community to design, better and more accessible ICTs, particularly when it is relatively easy to find new research, reporting new ICT 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 TBI. The apps are designed to provide psychological interventions. Goldberg et al. (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 to provide a system, which they call IMAGINE, that make recommendations to physically disabled students about which learning resources or activities would best meet their needs. Collins et al. 2016 describe how they have used a portable Wi-Fi network and mobile technologies to support the inclusion of physically disabled students in field study courses.


Other research has focused on developing new technologies that assist disabled students 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 based at Southampton university in the UK have developed a web based application called Synote that enables a student to create synchronised bookmarks or ‘Synmarks’ that 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.6

Developed by a research-based consultancy organisation in Denmark, Sensusaccess 7 automatically converts documents into alternative media including audio, ebook and digital braille. Sensusaccess is currently being trialled in the Open University, UK. While, Vines et al. (2017) outline how they have investigated the use of sonification as an alternative to figure descriptions and tactile graphs for representing numerical data that is displayed in a plot or a graph8.

These examples, whilst encouraging; I would argue, do not reflect the activities or willingness of the whole of the community. The evidence I point to in order to support my argument is the continued high levels of inaccessible websites that PSE institutions are designing and publishing.

Inaccessible PSE web sites: a case in point

In a review of web accessibility studies published between 2000 and 2011, I noted that in PSE there had been three main approaches to evaluating web accessibility. Firstly, evaluating the core or main home page of PSE institutions (See Appendix 1) secondly, evaluating library home pages and thirdly evaluating programme or course specific pages. Other approaches include comparing higher education institutional websites to those of non- educational organisations or comparing the accessibility of institutional websites across time. Analysing the results across all of these studies, I concluded that evidence for inaccessibility of university websites had not decreased over time. (Seale, 2014).The studies included in my 2014 review, focused largely on university web sites in countries such as US, Canada, UK, South East Asia and Australia. An inspection of web accessibility studies conducted since 2011 reveal a wider geographical focus with universities in countries such as Portugal (e.g. Espadinha et al. 2011); Spain (Chacon-Medina et al.2013); Cyprus (e.g. Iseri et al. 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 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; leading researchers such as Kimmons (2017 p448) to conclude:

6 https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/projects/synote/7 http://www.sensusaccess.com/service-description8 http://users.mct.open.ac.uk/chris.hughes/sonification-phase1-report/final_report.html


“These types of errors are simple to correct and seem to reflect systemic willingness to ignore basic accessibility requirements”.

So how can the design of websites be improved? Researchers continue to offer standard but vague individual-focused solutions such as developers needing to give more priority to accessibility during web-site development (Iseri et al. 2017) or ensuring products meet accessibility standards before they are purchased (Billingham, 2014). Some researchers are developing localised guidelines that are sensitive to variations in the contexts that websites are developed. For example, Alayed, Wald & Draffan (2016) provide a justification for why culturally localised guidelines are needed for Arabic countries such as Saudi Arabia re needed. However, if we are to fully understand what contributes to a ‘systemic unwillingness’ to design for accessibility, I would argue that we need to focus on nuancing our understanding of the institutional level factors that contribute to the success or failure of universities to make web-sites accessible. For example, Ismailova & Kimsanova (2017) found that private universities violated accessibility check-points more often than state universities. Thompson et al. (2013) tried to analyse the extent to which having an IT accessibility policy could predict the accessibility of the websites of all higher education institutions in the United States. Their analysis showed that: 1) institutions with formal, stand-alone policies had significantly higher accessibility ratings than institutions with other types of policies; 2) having an accessibility policy in place, being a master's or doctoral-granting institution, and being in the state of California accounted for about 3% of the variance in overall accessibility and 3) the remaining 97% of variance cannot currently be accounted for.

Whilst further research is needed in order to identify other factors that may contribute to institutions' willingness to develop and implement accessible websites; results like these lead me to question the extent to which there is any point in the community developing new technologies such as lecture capture or sonification of graphs if the institutions into which they will be introduced are systemically inaccessible.


DO TOOLS EXIST TO ASSIST US IN THE DESIGN OF BETTER, MORE ACCESSIBLE ICTs?

One of the ways in which the community responds to evidence of poor design practices, is to argue that community members need ‘tools’ to help them improve their practices (See for example, Seale, 2006). The typical tools that we point to are design models and design guidelines. But these tools are not without their problems and issues which I will discuss further in this section.

Design models

In the first Ed-ICT Symposium in Seattle last year, I identified a range of models that exist and distinguished between them in terms of the different levels they focus on (Seale, 2017a):

i) Micro level: the practices involved in making learning resources and activities accessible

ii) Meso level: the delivery of services within a post-secondary education institution that play a role in promoting the use of supportive ICTs that contribute to successful education and employment outcomes for disabled students

iii) Macro level: the institution in which those services (meso) and practices (micro) take place and the internal and external factors that influence or drive the institutions development and organisation of those services and practices.

Using this distinction, it would appear that no model exists which focuses specifically on the design of technologies (See Table 1). The closest we have is the Universal Design for Learning or Instruction Model which tends to focus on the design of resources that may be incorporated into a technology (e.g. for example, pdf documents or PowerPoint slides which are hosted within a Learning Management System).

It is also interesting to note that none of the studies that I reported on in the previous section when discussing what new technologies had been developed, refer to Universal Design as a tool that informed their design decisions (Rumrill et al. 2016; Goldberg et al. 2016; Collins et al. 2016; Vines et al. 2017).


Name of Model or framework Focus LevelUniversal Design for Learning/Instruction Blended learning resources and

activitiesMicro

Holistic Model Blended learning resources and activities

Micro

The VIVID (Vision Impaired using Virtual IT Discovery) Model

Blended learning resources; internal and external influencing factors

Micro/Macro

Composite practice model Service Level: Assistive Technology Services

Meso

The provisional staff development model Service Level: Staff development Meso

A Model of Accessibility Services Provision for Students with Disabilities in Higher Education

Accessibility services Meso

EU4ALL Service level: E-services Meso/Macro

Contextualised Model of Accessibility Institutional Level Meso/Macro

Model of professionalism in accessibility. Institutional Level Macro

Table 1: Distinguishing the focus and level of the different models and frameworks that have been developed for a post-secondary education context.

Design guidelines

If models are not the right tools to look to, then perhaps design guidelines are. The most obvious ones to consult are the WCAG2.0 developed by WAI but as I have discussed elsewhere, there are a number of problems with these including the fact that they are too technical and focused only on web accessibility rather than the accessibility of a wider range of ICTs (Seale, 2014). So what other design guidelines exist?

Some guidelines mirror the Universal Design Model and focus on the accessibility of resources. Resource focused advice is predominantly aimed at lecturers and concentrates on making resources that tend to be uploaded to Learning Management Systems accessible. For example, Tandy and Meacham (2009) offer advice on making PowerPoint and pdf files accessible and Case and Davidson (2011) address the accessibility of Word documents.

Some guidelines focus on impairments and offer advice that addresses the accessibility needs of learners with visual, auditory or mobility impairments. However, they tend to relate to websites rather than other kinds of ICT and as such are probably as (un)helpful as the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. Polanka and Gorman (2000) for example, offer advice for creating accessible library pages that is based largely on the WAI guidelines. Advice in relation to


visual impairments includes: provide a text equivalent for every non-text element; avoid using blinking, flashing or moving text because screen readers cannot read this and place navigation bars at the bottom of the page. Advice regarding hearing impairment suggests that the use of audio files should be limited and where used, text versions should be provided. Advice regarding mobility impairments addresses issues such as allowing for large areas or hot spots on image maps and making sure all links are device independent and can be followed using mouse, keyboard or other device. Buzzi et al. (2009) base their advice for improving the interaction of blind users on the Human Processor Model which incorporates perceptual, motor and cognitive systems. In doing so, they offer more specific advice. For example suggesting that web designers seeks to understand how blind users engage with different aspects of web design, such as tables and context. They explain that if the table’s content is organized by columns the screen reader (which reads by rows) announces the content of the page out-of-order, and consequently the information might be confusing or misleading for the user. When navigating by screen reader, a blind user can access only small portions of text and may lose the overall context of the page, requiring them to reiterate the reading process; which can be time consuming.

A few technology related guidelines do exists. For example, general advice on making multimedia accessible is offered by Klein and Thompson (2007); Sloan et al. (2006) and Case and Davidson, (2011). Advice relating to specific examples of multimedia includes podcasts (Zdenek, 2009; Kallis & Patti, 2009) and vodcasts (Gkatzidou et al. 2007). Buzzi et al. (2009) and Case and Davidson, (2011) give advice on enhancing the accessibility of Learning Management Systems.

However good or well-used the guidelines are that I have outlined here, they are limited in the sense that they generally help designers to improve the design of existing technologies; they don’t necessarily help designers to develop new designs for new technologies. In other words they don’t’ necessarily promote creativity and innovation.

Do we need a design movement?

If there is a limit to the extent to which design ‘tools’ such as models and guidelines can help the community be creative both in how it improves design practices and how it develops new designs, then perhaps we are looking for the wrong solution to our problem. Perhaps we don’t need tools aimed at improving the design practices of every single member of the community. Perhaps we need something else instead. Perhaps we need a movement, where those who are willing and able to produce new ICT designs are enabled to share these designs with the whole community so that those who can design, design and those who can’t design (so to speak) copy or adapt the design. One of the things I have been intrigued by in recent times for example is the rise of the popular non-education focused ‘maker movement’.


The ‘maker movement’ is defined as “the growing number of people who are engaged in the creative production of artefacts in their daily lives and who find physical and digital forums to share their processes and products with others”. Through the sharing of the products of ‘making’, the maker movement is conceptualised as democratising in nature and the spaces in which these products are made are conceptualised as ‘maker spaces’ or communities of practice (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014). Do such ‘maker spaces’ exist in the ICT, disability, and PSE community are these maker spaces? One small ‘maker space’ I would argue that exists is the space where researchers and practitioners develop free and open-source technologies. For example the CALL Centre at Edinburgh University has developed three freely available Scottish voices9 so that disabled students in Scotland can read and listen to educational and informational resources spoken using Synthetic Scottish voices. At Southampton University, accessibility researchers have developed an app they call ATBar which helps users customise the way they view and interact with web pages10. Functions of the Toolbar include a magnifiers button to increase or decrease the size of text; a text-to-speech button to read out either the whole page or the highlighted text and a styles button to change the eAssessment web page colours to one of a selection of pre-set styles (Bacigalupo et al. 2010). The team have also linked the ATBar to a freely available app called STEMReader which reads maths equations and symbols aloud11. Another freely available suite of accessibility apps is ‘EduApps12 which include ‘AccessApps’ that are aimed at disabled students.

There is also evidence to suggest that there is a market or appetite for freely available and/or open source technologies. For example, Zdenek (2009) describes using a range of freely available captioning tools to help him create accessible podcasts including NCAM 'MagPie; 'CC for Flash' and URU Works 'Subtitle Workshop'. Seale et al. (2008) in their study of how disabled students used their technologies noted that some students made use of freely available apps:

I was given a Merriam Webster CD dictionary when I had a Disabled Students Allowance assessment. It is so slow and will not allow me to scroll down when I use the glide pad on my laptop. It is also not as easy to use as the free one available with every Apple Mac computer, which loads in half the time and is always available.

Due to the amount of equipment and support I needed, my DSA had run out so I used pacing and positioning strategies for typing as well as freeware or shareware such as the Windows system onscreen keyboard.

A design movement based on making new technologies freely available and open-source is not unproblematic. Critics of such movements point to challenges such as there being no 9 http://www.thescottishvoice.org.uk/Home/10 https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/projects/atbar11 https://stemreader.org.uk/stemreader-demo/12 http://eduapps.org/


guarantee that the products shared will be of high quality; freely available apps tend to have poorer user-support and can have a limited life-span if the ‘makers’ do not regularly upgrade or update them. Despite these problems, however I personally find the idea of cascading the new design products of a relatively few able and willing accessible designers to be a more pragmatic approach than somehow hoping we can cascade accessible design practice across the whole community. We have been trying that for the past 16 to 20 years, with limited success.

DO ALL STAKEHOLDERS NEED TO BE INVOLVED IN THE DESIGN OF BETTER, MORE ACCESSIBLE ICTs AND DO WE KNOW HOW BEST TO INVOLVE THEM?

In the second ED-ICT Symposium we focused on stakeholder perspectives and I argued that disability and ICT related practice will not improve unless all stakeholders are engaged (Seale, 2017a). I identified a range of stakeholders within a post-secondary institution:

Disabled students, Lecturers, Learning technologists, Student support services, Staff developers, Senior managers.

All of these could potentially have a role to play in improving the design of technologies. For example, senior managers can influence the design practice of technology companies through the inclusion of accessibility requirements in procurement contracts; student support services (e.g. Assistive Technology Services) have a role to play in testing and evaluating assistive technologies and giving feedback to the companies and learning technologists have a role to play in ensuring they strive to improve the accessibility of technologies that they have a role in developing (e.g. web sites, Learning Management Systems). However for the purposes of this paper I want to focus on two particular stakeholders: design students and disabled students. I will argue that these two stakeholder groups do need to be involved in the design of better and more accessible ICT’s but that this involvement needs to be significantly different to that which is typically assumed.

Design students

The accessibility community have agreed for some time now that there is a need for lecturers to transform their curricula so that design students- designers and developers of the future- are more able and inclined to proactively design with disability in mind. For example, in his PhD thesis Bohman (2012) conducted three case studies of university teaching of accessibility and Design for All in the ICT curriculum. As part of his rationale for why it was important to conduct such case studies he wrote:


The failure to include accessibility and design-for-all in the ICT curriculum perpetuates the cycle of ignorance among ICT developers and maintains the status quo of exclusion and marginalisation of people with disabilities who cannot use the inaccessible products created by the ignorant developers. At some point, this cycle needs to end, and the ICT curriculum is one way to start. (p5).

Arguments like these resonate strongly with Freire's notion of critical pedagogy where students are provided with the skills and knowledge necessary for them to challenge and alter disempowering practices (Giroux, 2010).

ICT curricula that could potentially include accessibility issues include Information and Communication Technologies (Nicolle & Darzentas, 2003); Computer Science or Information systems (Keller et al. 2000); Web design and development (Ludi, 2002; Lazar, 2003; Ortner et al. 2004); Art and design (Gheerawo et al. 2004); Human Computer Interaction (McEwan et al. 2003); Engineering design (Piket-May & Avery, 2001) and Business and information systems (Bohman, 2007). Oravec (2002) argues that the professional training of students often focuses on narrow technical considerations that exclude accessibility concerns and can make them ill-equipped to understand the importance of accessibility approaches once qualified and in employment. Oravec believes that the grass-roots support of the youngest members of technical professionals (e.g. students) is required if accessibility initiatives are going to be successful. He sees students therefore as potential agents of change. If design and engineering students have the potential to be agents of change there probably needs to be some agreement as to what core skills and abilities these students need and what needs to be incorporated into the curriculum in order to enable students to gain and demonstrate these skills and abilities. A common response to this issue is to include Universal Design (or Design for All) in the curriculum. For example, in 2002, 25 research universities sent a letter to the US President pledging to make universal design and accessibility part of the education provided to computer scientists and engineers at all (Olsen, 2000) Nicolle and Darzentas (2003) describe an EU project called ICDnet, which was attempting to identify core knowledge and skills for ‘Design for All’ (universal design) model curricula. Workshops with academic and industry experts had produced a taxonomy of knowledge and skills involving awareness of ‘Design for all’; understanding of ethical, legal and commercial considerations; interpersonal skills for teamwork; knowledge on how to make content (documents and multimedia) accessible; knowledge about accessible interaction: input and output including assistive technologies; new paradigms of interaction; User-centred design and application domains and research.

It is not surprising that proposed curriculum content includes knowledge about universal design and legal considerations. However, if we are to overcome a systemic unwillingness to change design practice, there is probably also a need for curriculum designers to develop new and different teaching and learning activities that will enable students to learn and demonstrate the interpersonal skills required to work with disabled users and really understand their needs. Putnam et al. (2016) interviewed 18 professors from some of the


top universities in the US and undertook a content analysis of their syllabi and other teaching materials. They found that instructors emphasized the need for students to develop awareness and understanding for a diversity of ICT users through multiple different experiences; experiences that included research projects that directly involve users with disabilities, guest speakers, field trips, simulating disabilities, and the use of videos/movies. Putnam et al. (2015) suggested that direct contact with disabled people and/or disability simulation would help to build empathy, which they argue is a pre-requisite for good design practices. In a similar vein, Tomberg and Laanpere (2014) implemented what they called an ‘empathic modeling approach’ in a HCI study programme by letting the students simulate users with disabilities in the physical settings in order to increase their understanding of ‘Design for All’ in their work as HCI designers. They argued that empathy involves: seeing the world as others see it; being non- judgmental; understanding another's feelings and communicating the understanding. Wanting to be empathic without any ‘real’ experience is not sufficient to transform design practice and therefore “special activities are required to place the designer "in the shoes" of a person with different abilities. This focus on empathy echoes components of the staff development framework for inclusive learning design proposed by Papadopolous et al. (2012).

I support the need for engaging design students in developing the new designs of the future and I also believe that promoting empathy is an important way to facilitate their engagement. I am concerned however, that using disability simulations is the wrong way to do this. In the earlier part of my career I trained rehabilitation professionals such as Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists. It was then that I came across the tensions inherent in running disability simulations such as encouraging able-bodied people to sit in a use a wheelchair for a few minutes, or be led around a short route blind-folded for a short-time. I learnt that disabled people can view such activities as offensive and disrespectful if students are left with the impression that after only a few moments of ‘temporary self-imposed’ disability, they can possibly understand what it is like to experience life 24/7 as a disabled person. Poorly designed technology-based disability simulations may also fall foul to the same criticism. In addition, one of the key objectives of simulations is to help non-disabled designers understand how disabled ICT users have different needs. Unless this is handled carefully, this emphasis on ‘difference’ may be counter-productive and result in the ‘othering’ of disabled students, though exclusionary practices such as labelling and stigmatisation (See for Seale 2017b for an expansion of this argument).

Whatever the rights or wrongs of disability simulations, I would also argue that the focus on transforming design related curricula should not detract attention away from other important initiatives such as increasing the number of disabled people who enter design related professions. For example, Lazaar et al. (2017) argue that despite the long-term focus on making technology accessible for people with disabilities, the computing profession has not focused on making itself inclusive of disabled people and disabled people remain highly underrepresented at all levels and roles. Lazaar et al. offer some statistics to support their


claim. For example, it is estimated that less than 1% of students who earned Ph.D.’s in computer science (as of 2011) identified themselves as disabled.

Disabled Students

One common design practice aimed at ‘seeing things’ from the disabled persons’ point of view is to involve disabled students in the usability testing of new technologies (Power et al. 2008; Badge et al. 2008). For example, Menzi-Cetin et al. (2017) report on how they engaged five visually impaired students to evaluate the usability of university websites. Foley (2011) conducted automated accessibility tests and user testing with four disabled students. Comparing the automated results with the disabled students' experience of using the web pages he concluded that:

Automated validation tools are great resources for quickly assessing the overall status of a page; however, these tools do not provide robust information on more subjective issues like the appropriateness of ALT text. In addition to their limitations assessing accessibility, these tools do not assess usability at all. Information on the strategies and techniques users employ when navigating a site can only be obtained through user evaluation and testing (p.381).

However helpful it is to involve disabled students in usability testing; usability testing has its limitations, the foremost of which is that it involves disabled students in testing products after the initial design idea has been developed. In other words it does not give disabled students an opportunity to influence the initial design idea or concept. Furthermore it does not involve disabled students in other aspects of the design process such as analysing the usability data and making decisions about what to do next. I would argue therefore that we need to find better ways than usability testing to involve disabled students in the design of ICTs. Two particular approaches that I would advocate are participatory design and participatory research.

Participatory design is commonly used in the fields of Human Computer Interaction, computer science and engineering design. One example relevant to disability is the design of assistive technologies (Moffatt et al. 2004; Wu et al. 2005). Participatory design incorporates the related fields of inclusive design (Dewsbury et al. 2004); co-design (Druin, 2007) and user-centred design (Newell et al. 2007). Participatory design can be defined as active involvement of users throughout the entire research and development process (Hanson et al. 2007) and is generally understood to involve: working directly with users; early and continual participation of users; engaging with real users in their real contexts; iterative cycles of development and evaluation until an agreed solution is reached and collaborative partnerships between users and designers. Participatory design methods are varied but have a strong ethnographic tradition with regards to conducting intensive observations of the user and how they use technologies in their everyday lives (Davies et al. 2004).


The strong narrative and in-depth insights offered by participatory design methods would appear to be highly applicable to design practices that are attempting to be empathic by hearing the 'disabled student voice' in relation to their technology ideas, preferences and experiences. For example, Gkatzidou and Pearson (2011) adopted a participatory approach to the design of personalised learning applications in a project called WIDE (Widgits for Inclusive Distributed Environments). The project adopted a participatory approach in that it enabled researchers and technologists (WIDE team) to work together with disabled students and practitioners (in teaching or support roles), to identify a student need and to explore the potential solutions to that need. The ideas were then translated into a design document, which represents a learning design for a widget that would best support the student. The WIDE development team then produced iterative prototypes of the widgets in close cooperation with the designers to produce a bank of widgets that could be incorporated into a range of learning environments, developed by and for those responsible for supporting disabled students in further and higher education and in specialist colleges.

Participatory research methods may also have a role to play to involving disabled students in the whole design and development process. At the heart of participatory research is the principle that it is research with rather than on people (Reason & Heron, 1986; French & Swain, 2004)). Participants are encouraged to own the outcome of the research by setting the goals and sharing in decisions about processes (Everitt et al. 1992). Like participatory design, participatory research attempts to engage participants in the whole research process from design through to evaluation. There is a particular emphasis on disabled people, as participants, identifying the research problems and questions to ensure that disabled people consider the research 'worthy of investigation' (Chappell, 2000). Just like participatory design, participatory research emphasises collaborative partnerships, but it goes beyond this to emphasise non-hierarchical relationships (Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995; Zarb, 1992) where researcher and participant have equal status and power. Cocks and Cockram (1995: 32) however, stress that any alliances between researcher and participant must be 'under the control and primarily in the interests' of disabled people. Participatory research is therefore inclusive and addresses concerns such as those raised by Foley and Ferri (2012) regarding the lack of user involvement in the design of accessible learning resources and experiences.

One example, of a research project that used participatory research methods to involve disabled students was the LEXDIS project that I was involved in. The LEXDIS team defined learner participation as:

Involving disabled learners as consultants and partners and not just as research subjects. Where disabled learners help to identify and (re)frame the research questions; work with the researchers to achieve a collective analysis of the research issues and bring the results to the attention of each of the constituencies that they represent (Seale et al. 2008a, p.11)


The project had three participatory phases one of which was the participation of disabled students in the design of the project website, the aim of which was to share with disabled students the different technological strategies that could be used to support learning. This website was driven by a database populated by student ‘stories’ that exemplified a wide range of ICTs and strategies for getting the most out of these ICT’s. One major way in the students influenced the design of this database and how it interface with the front-end web page was to insist that users should not be asked to search this database just by using disability labels such as blind, hard or hearing or learning disability. Instead the database would also be searchable on learning activities or needs such as note-taking. This was important to the students in order to avoid stigmatisation through labelling13.

WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE THAT BETTER ICT DESIGNS WILL LEAD TO BETTER OUTCOMES FOR DISABLED STUDENTS?

Part of our examination of the requirement for ‘new designs’ of technologies for disabled students in post-secondary education should be an examination of whether these new designs actually lead to better outcomes for disabled students. It is my position that this examination should go beyond the prophesies of benefits based on values and beliefs that accessibility advocates were making nearly 20 years ago (e.g. O’Connor, 2000; Purcell & Grant 2004; Klein et al. 2003; Banks et al. 2003; Evans, 2002; Bain et al. 2002; Theofanos & Reddish, 2003; Schmetzke, 2001; Horton, 2002). Instead it should involve two different kinds of investigations.

1. Collecting qualitative, ethnographic evidence directly from disability students about their experiences of using new designs and how this impacts on their lives.

2. Collecting more quantitative evidence, using standardised tools to measure outcomes that everyone agrees are important.

I have discussed the first kind of research in-depth elsewhere (Seale, 2014; Seale 2017a, b); so in this paper I will focus instead on the second kind of research. In order for more quantitative quasi-experimental research to be useful to the community we first need to agree on what outcomes we are looking for and how we are defining them. Some researchers are beginning to focus on retention. For example, Cooper et al. (2016) argue that Learning Analytics14 may help us to ascertain the extent to which the accessibility of online courses contributes to the retention of disabled students. Others are starting to look at psychosocial outcomes related to well-being. For example, Heiman and Shemesh (2012) examined the relationship between online course usage and well-being for 964 undergraduate students with and without learning disabilities studying in higher education.

13 https://www.lexdis.org.uk/14 the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about the progress of learners and the contexts in which learning takes place


Findings indicated that students with learning disabilities were more familiar with assistive technology and used it more than the comparison group. This is in itself is not surprising. What is interesting however is that students with learning disability reported higher scores on the Hope scale, suggesting a relationship between technology use and well-being, where in the context of this study well-being was conceptualised as feeling an increased drive to find different pathways to attain goals and being motivated to pursue those goals. Other researchers point to academic success as a desired outcome of ICT use for disabled students. However, there is as yet no commonly accepted definition of academic success and few, if any, validated instruments for measuring academic success. The closest example, is the work by Malcolm and Roll (2017) who used a validated instrument called the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure to assess the impact of AT services for disabled college students. Even if this tool could also be used to measure of the impact of technologies rather than AT services, there may be a limit to its usefulness given that the tool merely seeks to examine impact on the ‘doing of academic work’ which would seem to be a very vague definition of academic success. Other possible conceptualisations of academic success could include performance in academic assessments, retention of lecture information; quality of note-taking and could depend on the kind of ICT being used by a disabled student and the context or purpose of its use.

As the research and practice community start to generate more of both the qualitative and quantitative evidence that I have advocated for; it will also need to become more skilled at interrogating the evidence upon which ‘grand claims’ of benefits are made. Let me use a recent paper written by Kent et al. (2018) to illustrate my point. In their article entitled ‘The Case for Captioned Lectures in Australian Higher Education Kent at 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).

But if we follow up each of the studies cited, the case for captions (delivered through ICT) benefitting students starts to look very ‘wobbly’ (See Table 2). One of the cited papers is not education focused; two of the papers do not involve students in PSE; 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 disabled students performed better with captions compared to other alternatives or no captions. Examples like this concern me; because they have the potential to keep fuelling a demand for ICTS for disabled students at a time when the community appears to lack sufficient willingness to design inclusively or accessibly. Furthermore, 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.

CONCLUSION

One of the major aims of this paper has been to provide an underpinning critical framework for the third symposium of the International Network on ICT, disability, post-secondary education and employment. In my examination of the challenges and opportunities around designing ICTs that serve to include rather exclude disabled students in PSE from high quality learning experiences I have argued that we need to critically examine four key assumptions:

1. That we in the community are willing to design better, more accessible ICTs2. That tools exist to assist us in the design of better, more accessible ICTs3. That all stakeholders need to be involved in the design of better, more accessible

ICTs and we know how best to involve them.4. That more accessible ICTs will in fact lead to better outcomes for disabled students.

It is my hope that the symposium will expand on my ideas and in doing so question those things that are ‘taken-for granted’ as truth or fact in the field in order to produce new creative spaces where future possibilities and directions can be designed.



Reference15 Context Technology Nature of evidence

Outcomes measured or discussed

Conclusions or Results

Stinson et al. 2009

School and college students

the C-Print speech-to-text support service ™

Experimental Recall and recognition of lecture information

For college students, there was no difference between retention with speech-to-text support, compared to interpreter support or with study of notes, compared to no study.

Wald 2006 PSE online lecture notes, synchronised with speech

Literature Review

Reading and searching learning material

The automatic provision of online lecture notes, synchronised with speech, enables staff and students to focus on learning and teaching issues, while also benefiting learners unable to attend the lecture or who find it difficult or impossible to take notes at the same time as listening, watching and thinking

Maiorana-Basas and Pagliaro (2014)

Adults- non educational context

Internet and mobile-based technologies

Survey Frequency of technology use Findings indicate frequent use of smartphones and personal computers, specifically for text-based communication and web surfing, and little use of Teletypewriter/Telecommunications Device for the Deaf. Web site feature preferences include pictures and text, and captions over signed translations.

Marschark et al. 2006

PSE Real time text: received notes from a speech-to-text support service called C-Print™

Experimental Learning assessment scores It is concluded that neither sign language interpreting nor real-time text have any inherent, generalized advantage over the other in supporting deaf students in secondary or postsecondary settings.

15 For full citations please refer to Kent al. 2018 article


Reference Context Technology Nature of evidence

Outcomes measured or discussed

Conclusions or Results

Elliot et al. 2002

High schoolCollege

received notes from a speech-to-text support service called C-Print™

Interview Study strategy Consistent with research on hearing students, high school students in this study typically would read the notes only, while college students used multiple study strategies with the notes. Teachers tended not to know how their students used their notes for studying, and they were sometimes reluctant to teach students about effective note usage.

Evmenova and Behrmann 2014

PSE Video adaptations including alternative narrations, two types of captions (highlighted text and picture/word-based) and interactive video searching for answers.

Experimental Number of factual and inferential questions answered correctly

Students performed significantly better with adapted and interactive video clips. There was no difference between the types of captions. Furthermore, social validity interviews revealed that all students enjoyed the adapted and interactive videos and found them beneficial.

Knight et al. 2013

Children technology-based interventions (no mention of captions)

Literature review

Academic skills The results suggest that practitioners should use caution when teaching academic skills to individuals with ASD using technology-based interventions. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed

Reagon et al. 2007

Pre-schoolers

Video- with and without embedded text (caption)

Experimental Object labelling While the impact of including embedded text was somewhat unclear, all participants acquired expressive object labelling skills by watching the DVD.

Table 2: Details of studies cited by Kent et al. 2018 in support of the claim that captions are beneficial.


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APPENDIX A

Summary of studies that have evaluated core home pages of higher education institutions (See Seale 2014 for full details of references)

Authors What was evaluated Region Method of evaluation

Results

Kane et al. 2007

Home pages of 100 top international university web sites

International Conducted a manual check for presence of web accessibility policies. Used 4 automated tools: WebXACT; Cynthia Says; Functional Accessibility Evaluator; WebInsight

While some sites approach full accessibility, a large number ' still suffer accessibility problems'.

Zaparynivk & Montgomeri 2002

Home page of 350 post- secondary institutions

Canada Bobby 3.2 14.9% (52) were free from priority one errors- of these 16 were colleges and 36 were universities. The most common error was images without alternative text

Olive 2009 Sample of main pages from University of Delaware website

US W3C HTML Markup Validation Tool and W3C CSS Validation Tool

One third of pages tested failed priority validation. Approximately 50% failed Section 508 validation

Harper & DeWaters 2008

Home pages of 12 institutions

US Webmasters contacted by listserv and invited to use free software (Watchfire Bobby) to evaluate their own websites

Most were non-compliant

Jacobin 2007 Sample of pages from West Virginia University

US Used Parmento & Zang method to calculate WAB (Web Accessibility Barriers) which looks at 25 checkpoints based on WCAG and Section 508. A score of 0 indicates no violations

Main WVU websites had a mean WAB score of 0.7, but departmental websites were severely inaccessible

Floyd & Santiago 2007

Home page of 60 colleges

US Watchfire WebXACT 46.7% were priority 1 compliant; 3.33% priority 2; 3.33% priority 3; 18.33% 508 compliant

Thompson et al. 2007

Key web pages of 127 colleges and universities were

US A team of 5 web accessibility assessors used a set of 14 web

Results range from nearly all measured institutions being fully accessible on


assessed three times in six months

accessibility checkpoints based on priority 1 checkpoints from WCAG 1.0

some checkpoints (avoidance of flickering content) to nearly all measured institutions being fully inaccessible on others (e.g., titles on frames).

Spindler 2004 188 home pages of college and university libraries.

US Bobby 3.2 79/188 found to be ‘accessible’

Flowers et al. 2001

253 community college home pages.

US Bobby Only 23% were determined to be ‘accessible’

Ali et al. 2007 Home pages of 128 UK and 128 US universities

US and UK Bobby WebXACT For US institutions 48% were priority 1, 6% priority 2, 2% priority 3 compliant. For UK institutions 60% were priority 1, 11% priority 2 and 3% priority 3.

Witt & McDermott 2004

80 University sites that claimed Bobby Priority 1 compliance.

UK Bobby Only 58.75% of these sites meet the relevant criteria for WCAG priority 1compliance.

Willison & Bellaby 2003

Home pages of 19 universities

UK Automated using Bobby 4.01

26% of home pages had priority one errors, 100% had both priority two and three errors

Kelly 2002 162 University Home Pages (entry points).

UK Bobby 4 University entry points had no errors at WCAG level 1 or 2. 70 entry points had no priority 1 errors

Kurt 2011 Home pages of 77 universities

Turkey Automated testing using 3 tools: (Web Accessibility Checker; AChecker; SortSite Validation testing (using W3C Validation services). Human testing: Graphical Browser testing and Text only browser testing

All university pages show some accessibility problems

Kuakiatwong 2011

13 selected web pages of the Thailand Cyber University (TCU)

Asia Automated web tools; usability problems reported by blind and sighted users and interviews with blind students

All of the 13 selected web pages failed to meet a minimum requirement of WCAG 2.0

Wijayaratne 2008

Home page and library page of 31 members of Asian

Asia Used WebXAct 6 university home pages and 4 library home pages were free from errors


Association of Open Universities

Wijayaratne & Singh 2010

Home page and library page of 30 members of Asian Association of Open Universities

Asia Used Wave Evaluation Tool

Across all the 30 institutions, just 4 home pages and 2 library pages were free of accessibility errors

Alexander 2004

45 tertiary education websites , focusing on home page, prospective student page, orientation page, student accommodation page

Australia Used a 6 step method, including using WAVE and assessed against WCAG priority 1 standards

98% failed to comply with priority 1153/180 failed on at least one checkpoint- most common error was failure to provide text equivalents for images

Alexander 2003

45 tertiary education sites.

Australia Used a 6 step method, including using WAVE and assessed against WCAG priority 1 standards

98 % failed to meet the most basic (WCAG ‘A’) standards for Web accessibility

Lamshed at al. 2003

65 TAFE websites (vocational and educational training).

Australia Checks against WCAG checkpoints. Unclear whether manual or automatic

80% of the web sites failed to meet WCAG priority leve1. Nearly all sites failed to meet Priority Levels 2 and 3.


Documents

ed-ict.comed-ict.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Seale_Ed_ICT… · Web viewProfessor Jane Seale, Open University, UK. Leader of ED-ICT International Network. [email protected]