Tag: access

In this article, the author discusses how online students with disabilities could have issues of accessibility even in higher education.  Open University Australia (OUA) is an organization of the seven universities and fifteen institutions teaching higher education to students fully online across undergraduate and postgraduate programs.  Students are given the opportunity upfront to disclose any disabilities to OUA during enrollment. What makes this tricky, however, due to privacy legislation, OUA cannot relay the information on to the institution where the student is studying.  OUA conducted an online survey with students who had registered for support.  The survey examined two areas: how accessible the online platforms used for teaching were, and what motivated the students to disclose their disability or not.  The study found that a little less than half of OUA students responded as to having a mental illness. Then the article then examined the advantages of eLearning and those with a disability.  The author states that the biggest advantage is that online information could be made available in a variety of different formats that best fit the person trying to access it. The information can be formatted visually through images or text, audio as spoken words or sound, or touch through wearable technology.  The author also talks about how that design can make or break student accessibility with eLearning.

Mike, Kent. “Disability, Mental Illness, and ELearning: Invisible Behind the Screen?” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 17 Dec. 2015, jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/disability-mental-illness-and-elearning-invisible-behind-the-screen/.

 

The article I read was “Disability as Insight into Social Justice Pedagogy in Technical Communication. This article focuses on how considering those with disabilities may help provide a broader knowledge of social justice in technical communications research. The article states that social action is a category of technical communications research. Social action takes on various forms such as service learning, community-based research, action/activist research, and civic engagement. Students from Utah University are taught to use social action. These students are given the opportunity to use their skills to benefit people with disabilities. Through this opportunity, technical students are taught to practice social justice even if they are not working for a non-profit organization. By questioning what an effective and ethical technical communicator meant, students began to realize that considering the needs of users with disabilities would help make them better technical writers. Students were taught how exclusionary communication designs could be, and teachers taught them how to revise the designs to be more inclusive. They were even given a project to take something and make it more accessible to those with disabilities. By acknowledging the need for inclusion for those with disabilities in technical communications, students were able to expand their social awareness. The students were even able to discuss technical communication issues relating to minorities as well.

For many years, students with disabilities and mental illnesses have had very few options when it came to getting educations. Most of the time the only choice they had was to attend traditional style classes that did not accommodate the difficulties they had in the classroom. Thanks to the recent eLearning platform, students with disabilities have been able to get better help and accommodations when learning new material. Additionally, the ability to learn online in a comfortable environment is a beneficial aspect because many of the students voiced how they feel very uncomfortable sitting in a classroom with lots of other students. An added bonus with eLearning is also the ability for students to directly receive help from the teacher while they work at their own pace. Even though eLearning is still relatively new, it offer a look into how new technologies are increasingly benefiting students with disabilities.

 

 

 

Kent, Mike. “Disability, Mental Illness, and ELearning: Invisible Behind the Screen?” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 17 Dec. 2015, jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/disability-mental-illness-and-elearning-invisible-behind-the-screen/.

 

 

Kane, Laura. “#OpenAPS, Nightscout, and User-Driven Design for Type 1 Diabetes Technology.” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 17 Dec. 2015, https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/openaps-nightscout-and-user-driven-design-for-type-1-diabetes-technology/.

 

In this article, Krista A. Murchison analyzes and discusses the benefits of 2 innovations, #OpenAPS and the Nightscout, in medical research and education. Murchison addresses the negative perspective of the impaired and disabled in the medical and government field. The medical field and government only focus on limiting impairment and not how the user feels or interacts with their technology.  In this era, more engineers are creating technology that benefits the disabled and impaired in a new way.

These 2 innovations specifically aid in maintaining Type 1 Diabetes. The Open Artificial Pancreas System (#OpenAPS) was created to create an artificial pancreas that incorporates CGMs and insulin pumps. The Nightscout project was derived from #OpenAPS to help those with type 1 diabetes to send their glucose levels on the internet. Within this project, parents and guardians can monitor a dependent’s glucose levels. Murchison concludes that both innovations are more beneficial than the preexisting ones  because it gives a sense of independency while using and is multivalent. Both innovations take in considerations of the user’s needs and interests.

The article “Disability, Mental Illness, and eLearning: Invisible Behind the Screen?” is a report of students who registered for disability support while studying online through Open Universities Australia. The article mainly identifies which disabilities the students studying online have and how it contributes to or affects their studies. It is discovered that online students with disabilities often become “invisible” and this is particularly higher in Australian studies. In order to improve eLearning for students with disabilities in higher education, online information needs to be readily available. Specifically the article states that this information needs to be accessible and flexible for these individuals. Difficulty to lectures or tutorial rooms comes with the disclosure of each individual’s specific impairment. However the article states this avoided. The study conducted by Open Universities Australia discovered that of the 2,925 students who had a documented disability, less than have had registered for disability support with the organization.The study consisted of a survey that discovered the necessary expansion of technology specifically teaching practices. Lastly, it was discovered that those with mental illnesses have problems completing higher education. However, eLearning is said to add this accessibility that these individuals need. 

 

For my summary from the list of articles, I chose “The Embodied Classroom: Deaf Gain in Multimodal Composition and Digital Studies”. This article challenges the thought that being deaf in school is a hindrance, but rather he thinks it is advantageous in ways. Through the lack of hearing, deaf people are better able at reading body language and other nonverbal cues that hearing people don’t focus on because they are relying on the audible factors to comprehend. An example used in the article of hearing getting in the way of learning is when teachers have students read aloud, because the focus is on listening to how the reader sounds, the students listening don’t fully comprehend and retain what is actually being said. And this issue happens in other aspects of learning that are heavily dependent on listening, like when a teacher gives a lecture. If the students are solely relying on listening to the speech, they can lose focus and lose sight of the important points of the lecture without proper body language. Deaf people use their bodies and faces to express a tone change when telling a story or in everyday conversation. Hearing people rely on their voices to portray their tones, which weakens their ability to fully convey a message in the in-depth way a deaf person can. In her own teaching style, Leeann, the author, uses nonverbal skits to aid her audible teaching as she sees it as a way to keep the students focused on how the information is being shared along with the information itself. And having both senses, sight and hearing, working together to encode the material being taught to them leads to better learning than just relying on hearing. 

I chose the article titled “#OpenAPS, Nightscout, and User-Driven Design for Type 1 Diabetes Technology”

Designers try to help those who are disabled by designing assistive technology to help the disabled better function in everyday life. These designers fail to consider a major aspect of creating their designs which are the end-user. They try to correct the impairment making it seem as if the disabled are wrong and not normal. Designers need to be asking for feedback from the end-user to better make a product that fits their specific disability needs.

One main design process involves input from disabled individuals at every stage in the process. It does have flaws in the fact that not all users will get to contribute as much as others. One project that allows a wider range of individual influence is the Nightscout project for type 1 diabetes. People who know language programming have a larger influence on this assistive technology but anyone with web access can make suggestions for the devices. It allows the technology to develop in direct response to those actually living with the disease. It widens the communication to take into account the multiple roles of those assistive devices. It makes sense to involve the end-user as much as possible as they will be the ones buying and using the product. This is very much easier said than done but the Nightscout project provides a basis to get more people involved and invested in the process and create an open environment that encourages all ideas. This is applicable to all new creations but there is never going to be a perfect process of getting user feedback. It takes time, patience, and focus to meet the needs of those wanting something specific from a project.

“#OpenAPS, Nightscout, and User-Driven Design for Type 1 Diabetes Technology.” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/openaps-nightscout-and-user-driven-design-for-type-1-diabetes-technology/.

I chose the article “Disability, Mental Illness, and eLearning: Invisible Behind the Screen?”. In this article they talk about students with mental illnesses and how eLearning can help and hinder their learning experience. They conducted a study with eLearning students from OUA, Open Universities Australia, where 352 participated in a survey. These questions focused on what type of disability they had, how the university handled these disabilities, and how effective they were.

After the initial survey they found that the highest noted disability was mental illness. They then did personal interviews with 11 of these students to dig a little deeper in their disability and how their experience with eLearning has been. Overall, students liked that eLearning gave them the chance to avoid face to face conversation, having to travel to a physical campus, and be a little more flexible with their work and disabilities. Not only that, but they felt they had more control over the disclosure of their disability. However, this became something that hinders their accessibility to learning. Many felt invisible to the university, or felt as if the stigma associated with mental illness was too strong that majority did not feel comfortable disclosing their disability. By not disclosing their disability they were not able to get the necessary additional help they needed. Even those who did disclose it felt like the universities made them jump through too many hoops, making it too difficult of a process for them to get the help they needed.

Overall, the study showed that eLearning needs to improve in the ways that they are inclusive to all students, however there is always the problem that making it inclusive to one disability can actually make it more inaccessible to a different disability. The article explains that a big issue here is that when people with mental illnesses study online they often become invisible. Their issues are out of sight, therefore out of mind to the university. Society does not view mental illness as a disability like they do with other impairments, therefore they handle it differently, they believe that it is more about making the person better rather than making the environment more accessible. In fact, the article believes that the real disability with any impairment comes from the construction of society rather than the individual.

Kent, Mike. “Disability, Mental Illness, and ELearning: Invisible Behind the Screen?” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 17 Dec. 2015, jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/disability-mental-illness-and-elearning-invisible-behind-the-screen/.