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.

Uncommon Tech Accommodation Requests

As assistive technology (AT) in higher education matures the requests for accommodation tend to become fewer and those we do get are apt to be somewhat sophisticated or complex. A complex accommodation request requires thoughtful consideration.

Focus on Tasks and Not Technology
I recently worked on an issue of making a touch screen accessible for a screen-reader user. The user is faculty and the environment is a new classroom in which all the technology is driven from a touch screen. In the early conversations I was concerned that there was too much focus on the touch screen itself and not enough on the tasks involved. The tasks were pretty routine; things like, play a DVD, run a PowerPoint, play an audio file etc. These sorts of tasks are easily done from a laptop, so I didn’t want to put too much time into retrofitting some commercial interface.

The take away here is that if you encounter a request for an accommodation for which there is no commonly applied adaptation, then stay focused on the tasks involved and not necessarily on the offending technology. As I said in one of the early meetings on this request, “We didn’t reinvent wheelchairs to climb stairs, we provided ramps.” The goal of an accommodation is to get people
doing the same things as their peers, but they may not accomplish it in exactly the same way.

This story actually has a twist ending. This particular touch-screen product has a screen-builder component. IT support can make custom screens. I looked at it very briefly and it does hold out promise that it may make for keyboard accessible touch screens. I will look into this in the weeks to come and report back here. If the touch screen cannot be easily adapted, then I go back to the idea of running the various playback devices from the faculty member’s laptop.

Accommodation vs. Preference
This is a very slippery slope but it must be considered when evaluating accommodation requests. Sometimes a request or an aspect of a request may actually be more of a convenience for the student rather than an accommodation. Several years ago I was involved in deploying AT into general student computing labs. These labs were popular and there was usually a wait to get on a computer. A student with a disability requested an accommodation that would eliminate his having to wait in line. When DS evaluated the request, documentation and the student’s disability they did not see this as an accommodation and did not provide it.

DS offices need an articulated and published definition of an accommodation that they can refer to in instances like this. This is not about strict definitions or splitting-hairs, but it is about understanding the purpose of an accommodation and providing adjustments or adaptations that meet that purpose.

Legacy Accommodations and Expanding Technological Options
When you deployed your campus-wide AT it was built on some sort of prototypical computer system. Whether intentional or not that was the case. And this prototype included one, possibly two, internet browsers. These days there are up to four nearly mainstream options for internet browsers and each of them may interact differently with your AT.

If an AT user tries a new browser, they may very well have some trouble with its interaction with the screen reader. And then they may ask your AT staff for help. This is a bit of a grey area. It is mostly dependent on your staffing resources. I truly know of schools where one person is handling every aspect of DS management and deployment. In that case, the student may need to stay with the supported browser. If, on the other hand, you have AT staff then it may be appropriate for them to look into the issue.

DS should know and post what AT they support and what specific computer applications they support. Then DS is responsible for maintaining the functionality of those combinations on campus computers. And this list needs routine examination to consider either new software products or new versions of older supported software.

An aside to this topic is whether or not you want to work on student computers. My school has decided that the AT Center does not work on student computers. We simply do not have the skills to go into any brand of laptop or desktop and start making changes.

Carefully Consider Your Response
Don’t be hasty in offering your response to a request for a new accommodation. Your response should be thoughtful, clear and unambiguous. If it requires information gathering and testing, then you communicate this to the student. This is particularly true if you are trying something new. If you cannot guarantee meeting academic deadlines like the start of classes or finals, then don’t.

Steps in Evaluating a Request

• determine that it is within your institutional definition of an accommodation
  
• focus on tasks rather than “fixing” technology
  
• if this is new technology you may ask the student to stay with your supported technology, but consider adding the application on your next AT rollout
  
• provide a clear response including any unknowns that may effect the outcome

By now, most of us have fairly robust computer accommodations deployed across our campuses and they are used routinely and successfully by students with disabilities. Technology, however, is not a static field, it changes constantly. Those changes inevitably bring requests for new types of technological accommodations. Careful assessment and response to these requests will help your students and grow your AT program.

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Next Month's Blog
Experimental vs. Applied Accommodations

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Conference Calendar
Accessing Higher Ground
November 10-14, 2009

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Partnerships and Leveraging Existing Services

One thing I emphasize over and over in my workshops is the importance of partnerships and leveraging existing services. Last year I worked with a school that hired their campus print shop to do the bulk of their alt-text work and charged on per-book basis. This is a great example of utilizing existing services rather than going to the expense of duplicating what is already being done on campus.

This past winter I was involved in serving a student that required Braille. The student was in a short-term and time-compressed program and the advance notice and preparation had not been handled very well.

I have student transcribers working for me and they do a very good job Brailling books that have very straight forward formats. In this case, however, the texts were more like work books that presented information in multiple columns and used spatial relationships on the page to convey meaning.

We investigated having the job done start-to-finish with several Braille services. The costs were high, but that is to be expected, they’re worth it. Time, however, was another factor with which we were dealing.

We do have a LOC certified Braillist in our town and while I knew her, we had never worked together. I met with her and proposed a workflow that would get us quality Braille formatting done within our time constraints.

The workflow went like this. We would cut and scan the book. A student worker would do a basic “cleaning” of the formatting. This was to conform to what was in the original book and there was no effort to reformat for Braille. A PDF and the Word file were sent to the Braillist. The PDF was for the Braillist to use to review the original page. The Braillist would then reformat the page so that it made sense in Braille. A Duxbury Braille file was emailed to us which we embossed in our own shop.

This turned out to be the most efficient way to get quality specially-formatted Braille to our student. One leverage aspect of this is that the Braillist was only spending time on her area of expertise, she was not wasting time scanning, embossing etc. I realize larger operations have people to scan and such, but it is always more expensive to hire a job done (in this casing scanning) than to do it yourself. We also leveraged our existing scanning and converting operation to contribute what it knows how to do well. Besides offering timely delivery, it also cost us far less than contracting a service to do the whole job.

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Next Month's Blog

Evaluating Uncommon Accommodation Requests

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Conference Calendar

Accessing Higher Ground
November 10-14, 2009