Experimental or Applied Accommodations?

Many students are fluent and facile AT users and, as such, may want to “push the boundaries” of the technology access afforded by AT. Which means we may encounter requests for what amounts to experimental accommodations. “Experimental” means an adaptation that, for whatever reason, is not widely used. It could deal with new technology such as touch screens (although those aren’t really new). It could also be applying new technology to an old obstacle.

The opposite is an applied accommodation. Applied accommodations are fairly routine deployments of AT. For example, a student who uses a screen reader requests that the university’s supported screen reader be installed in a departmental computing lab. This is a fairly cut-and-dried request for an applied accommodation.

To some this may sound like the idea of an inveterate bureaucrat, but it doesn’t have to be. Allow me a quick side note here: ideas like this are rarely inherently good or bad. The good or bad comes with the implementation. If an idea like this appeals to you, be sure you implement it in such a way that it clarifies and streamlines your workflow.

Since these types of requests are handled differently, the identification initiates either one process or another. With routine and applied AT the process should be a rather quick deployment of supported AT in an area of campus where it is lacking. With a more experimental request, time needs to be spent evaluating the purpose of the accommodation and its technical feasibility.

In the case of an unusual or untested accommodation you must communicate to the student that an applied adaptation does not exist and that your efforts may take additional time and the results are not certain.

It is important to keep the student involved in the process. And not simply by keeping him or her informed, enlist the student to do some research into the idea. Do they have friends or colleagues that are using technology applied in this way? Or, in contrast, is this a hypothetical idea in which the student speculates this combination of technologies might work together?

Various factors effect how you might respond to such a request. You may not have the personnel or other resources to conduct much experimental work. In that case, you might ask the student to fairly thoroughly research the question and narrow down the possibilities. Some DS coordinators may not like the student-research idea, but the alternative – for many schools that I know of – is to have a policy to provide only fairly routine technical accommodations.

The take away here is to consider how you will manage a technological accommodation request for which there is no obvious – and generally accepted – solution. What process will you use to evaluate such a request? Who might you consult about such a request? If you decide to try and provide the accommodation, what will that process look like?

You do not need really detailed answers for these questions. It is important to have considered these points and have some idea about how you might proceed. Students are always more confident in your responses if they are reflective and deliberative rather than appearing to have been made up on the spot.