A Philosophical Basis for Serving Students with Disabilities
Efforts to serve increasing numbers of students with disabilities must be based on a clearly stated philosophy. The UWEX experience shows that the following philosophical tenets can lead to effective practical applications in distance education:
- With appropriate accommodation, distance education modalities may provide disabled students with their best chance for educational opportunity. Students whose disabilities do not allow them to get to campus or to function within the confines of the traditional classroom often have met with failure until encountering a flexible distance education format that allows them to work at their own sites and at their own pace.
- The student is at the center of the accommodation process, acting as both petitioner and primary consultant. Because the students themselves have had the most experience with their disabilities, they often know best which accommodations will work and which will not. Each disability presents a unique set of circumstances that defies a "one size fits all" approach.
- The goal and process of providing reasonable accommodation is holistic, involving case-by-case, situation-specific accommodation for the best personal outcome for each student. Open dialogue is necessary between the distance education program's "disabilities liaison" (see below) and the student or advocates, appropriate experts and agencies, and program staff.
- Accommodation must be practical and cost-effective, emphasizing outcome and appropriateness, but not necessarily dependent on high technology. The goal of the accommodation (e.g., to provide large print) drives the technological applications (e.g., photocopying at increased size on larger paper, rather than resetting type at an increased size).
- Accommodation should occur only in course delivery systems, not in course content. Although the way in which facts, descriptions, questions, and other items are communicated to the student may change as a result of accommodation, the intellectual content must remain intact. Academic rigor and standards must not be diminished by changes in delivery format.
- Planning for assessment and accommodation of disability should occur within a specific context. Information, consultation, and expert advice can be obtained from many outside sources to supplement that provided by the student. Vocational rehabilitation agencies, health-care providers, or other assessment professionals; campus disabilities offices; advocacy groups; and other education programs that have previously accommodated the student in question are all excellent sources of information and, occasionally, equipment and funding.
Practical, Program-related Applications
At UWEX independent Study, we have translated the philosophy just described into practical applications. Our plan of action includes the following eight components:
- informing students with disabilities or their advocates about our program and our ability to meet their needs
- case-by-case planning for accommodation and access
- making instruction accessible
- making course materials accessible
- making testing accessible
- training and supporting faculty and staff
- getting funding to support efforts to serve students with disabilities
- staying abreast of developments, especially technological developments, that will improve future services and access
Informing Students. The UWEX Independent Study course catalog, student handbook, and all course-guide and registration materials carry an explanation of policy regarding the rights and responsibilities of students with disabilities. For example, the following statement appears in each of our course guides:
Reasonable Accommodation for Students with Disabilities
Independent Study is committed to providing reasonable accommodation for students with disabilities. Such accommodation includes making course materials available in accessible delivery formats (for example, large print, cassette tape, scripts, and computer disk) and adapting written-assignment and exam procedures as appropriate. If you are a student with disabilities and would like to discuss accommodation, please contact Independent Study (608-263-2055; toll-free: 800-442-6460; TTY: 608-262-8662). We ask that you request alternate, accessible course delivery formats at least eight weeks before beginning work on the course, and testing and written-assignment accommodation well in advance of need. (Dilemmas of War and Peace, ix).
UWEX Independent Study also sends each Wisconsin DVR field office a catalog and a letter inviting vocational rehabilitation counselors to consider our program for their clients. Future plans call for producing a "fact sheet" advising students about possible types of accommodation, providing descriptions of our program to publications targeting the disabled population, and, possibly, contacting vocational rehabilitation agencies in other states.
Case-by-Case Planning for Accommodation and Access. At UWEX Independent Study, a "disabilities liaison" coordinates case-by-case planning for accommodation after consultation with the student, various experts, and faculty members. This approach is not unique to UWEX. Adrian Bailey of Loughborough University of Technology in Leicestershire, England, reported to the "Disabled Student Services in Higher Education" listserv recently that a "one-on-one approach ensures a 'whole person' view of things, and has been very, very effective. The student feels he/she has a friend, and the staff member can find the work very satisfying" (Bailey 1994).
Typically, a disabilities liaison is an advocate both for the student to the program staff and faculty and for the staff and faculty to the student. In addition to being knowledgeable about legal ramifications, basic accommodation issues, and the distance education program, he or she must also possess common sense, empathy, creativity, and a thorough knowledge of sources for expert help.
In planning for accommodation, the disabilities liaison also communicates with the program's registration office and academic advisors since it is they who often deal with students directly as they interact with the program. To ensure that ongoing and future service can be provided, maintaining a database of information on disabled students and the types of accommodations that have worked best in the past is essential.
Making Instruction Accessible. Since "instruction" in distance education often involves communication in writing, by telephone, by computer conferencing, or by other means that are not face-to-face, situation specific planning can accommodate students with disabilities. After speaking with the student and with other appropriate experts to determine the best means of accommodation, the UWEX disabilities liaison contacts the instructor and/or academic department to discuss an accommodation plan.
Each plan varies according to course content and student needs. For example, with visually impaired or certain learning disabled students in correspondence courses, instructors tape-record rather than write out their responses to students' work, and students submit their "written" assignments on audiotape or on computer disk. Using audiotape for submitting and responding to "written" assignments has proved to be an improvement for all students in language courses in which pronunciation is especially difficult (e.g., Portuguese). With taped assignments, instructors can comment on students' accents and demonstrate corrections.
Other accommodations include permitting learning disabled students more time to complete assignments, providing expanded verbal explanations of graphic representations for visually impaired students, and communicating via TTY for hearing impaired students. In the future, UWEX hopes to add e-mail and computer conferencing to the range of options for student-instructor interaction. In all cases, however, the content of the exchange of information between student and instructor remain unaltered, and instructors make no allowances for students with disabilities in evaluations of their academic work.
Making Course Materials Accessible. Depending on the type of accommodation required, making course materials accessible requires varying degrees of alteration for which "high-tech" solutions are not always best. For example, simply photocopying print materials at a larger magnification may best accommodate certain low-vision students. Again, accommodation is based on the needs of the specific student relative to the content of the material. Moreover, an accommodation usually associated with one type of disability, such as visual impairment, may also be exactly what a student with another type of disability, such as dyslexia, can use. We can discover these commonalties only by asking students what has and has not worked in the past.
At UWEX we produce print materials (guides, texts, exams, etc.) in a variety of formats on demand. We spiral bind books for easy page-turning by physically impaired students and for use with closed-circuit television (CCTV) readers. We tape record and/or produce large print, Braille, or electronic "print" materials for students who, for various reasons, do not read, and we provide scripts or captioning for hearing impaired students.
Our top priority is to get all print-based materials on computer disk as electronic "e-texts" because this format allows for output in computer-aided formats ranging from speech synthesis to Braille. As with other accommodations, we have found that producing materials as e-texts benefits all of our students by bringing materials up to date and allowing us to publish them on demand. We also use the excellent commercially produced e-texts of classics in literature, basic textbooks, and computer journals that are available. Project Gutenberg, the Oxford Text Archive, and Recording for the Blind are all well-known sources from which almost anyone with access to the Internet and to Gopher searching can download texts via file transfer protocol (ftp). E-texts for mathematics are more problematic since they often involve graphs and equations. However, progress is being made to establish standards that will move us away from the limits of ASCII and toward SGML (standard general markup language) or other technologies that will allow for better graphical representation within e-texts.
For hearing impaired students, UWEX provides scripts of audiotapes and captioning of video materials. It is best—and cheapest—to plan ahead and make the scripts or captions as the tape is being developed. Transcribing these materials or producing captions later is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. The Institute for Academic Technology (IAT), a partnership between IBM and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is now working on a project with Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., to develop captioning tools to bring multimedia to tile deaf; at UWEX, we are monitoring their progress with interest. Although the emergence of high-technology delivery systems can require a parallel development of high-technology accommodation methods, often a common-sense, low-technology approach to accommodation can yield good results: simply printing the scripts or lecture notes from which the instructor has prepared the program can sometimes be as effective as transcribing every word spoken on the tape.
Making Testing Accessible. Perhaps the simplest and most effective testing accommodation is to allow the student to take proctored exams at his or her own site. Other accommodations include changing test formats (but not test content): for example, changing from fill-in-the-blank to multiple-choice questions to accommodate certain learning disabilities; allowing more time to complete tests; providing a distraction-free environment; providing for exams and responses on audiotape; allowing for oral rather than written exams; and equipping testing centers with tape recorders, "talking" calculators, computers and printers, and human readers.
Testing accommodation, like other accommodation, involves case-by-case planning according to content and need. As with course work, exam content should not be altered or "watered down"; the accommodation should be made entirely in the delivery method. We have found that testing can present a special challenge for faculty. Eliciting the same level of thinking from multiple-choice questions as from essay questions is possible, but test-makers must challenge themselves to do so. The Association for Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD, P.O. Box 21192, Columbus, Ohio 43221) produces excellent publications on effective testing accommodations.
Training and Supporting Faculty and Staff. Faculty and distance education program staff who must implement accommodation may have had little experience in this area; for this reason, they need in-service training and ongoing support. At UWEX, we have found that involving faculty and staff as early as possible in planning for accommodation is most effective. As soon as a student with a verified disability contacts the disabilities liaison, the liaison contacts the faculty member or academic department involved and alerts the materials-production, registration, and advising staffs, as appropriate. Not everyone is receptive to having to plan and make accommodations; it is important to reach an understanding of what is reasonable and necessary. Any contact with faculty must emphasize that 1) our program staff will help solve student-accommodation problems; and 2) the faculty, like the distance-education program and the rest of the academic institution, have a legal and ethical obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities.
Conducting a workshop for faculty and staff at which typical disabilities and accommodation are described can raise awareness and supply information. Such a workshop is in the planning stage now at UWEX: we will rely on experts from vocational rehabilitation and campus assistance agencies; publications issued by such groups as AHEAD; students; and our own common sense as we decide on the content of our workshop program. We hope to have a panel of experts, including students, discuss topics (e.g., legal issues, and testing and assignment accommodations) that faculty and staff have identified as most difficult for them. We want to address the real needs of those "in the trenches." Perhaps even more important than conducting a one-time workshop, however, is the provision and maintenance of constant Support in day-to-day efforts to provide accommodation in ways that are cost- and time-effective and that do not compromise academic standards. Creativity and common sense are essential.
Getting Funding. Beyond acknowledging that we need funding, commenting on sources for funding without being overly specific is difficult. General points are as follows: 1) in the United States, perhaps due to the passage of ADA, increasing numbers of federal and state grants are available to fund accommodation or investigation into accommodation; 2) the same agencies that provide consultation and expert help with assessment and accommodation often can provide food advice about where to apply for funding; 3) because the search for funding is time consuming and labor intensive, and because campus-based funding is likely to be limited, good organization based on clear goals and intentions must be established before the funding quest is initiated.
Staying Abreast of Developments. Resources are increasingly available for keeping informed about recent developments in accommodation. The Internet has many listservs and bulletin boards devoted to disabilities issues. The World Institute on Disability publishes a comprehensive list (WIDLIST) of these Internet resources; DSSHE (Disabled Student Services in Higher Education) and EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) are two of the most informative. These sources provide up-to-date information on new technologies and offer advice on solving individual problems.
Local and national agencies and experts—state technology loan centers, federal and state rehabilitation agencies, business and industry groups, and disabilities advocacy groups—also are helpful sources of information about demographic trends, available equipment, and Student requests for accommodation. An especially useful publication recently issued by the Instructional Telecommunications Council, Federal Disability Law and Distance Learning, answers specific questions raised by distance educators.
Nothing, however, is more important than attitude and philosophical approach toward serving students with disabilities in distance education programs. If our experiences at the University of Wisconsin-Extension are typical, taking a student-centered, proactive, case-by-case approach that involves distance education program leadership, faculty and staff teamwork, and common sense can result in access and accommodation that will give students with disabilities what may be their first positive encounter with educational opportunity.
References
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. ADA; P. L. 10 1-336.
Bailey, A. 1994. Electronic message to Disabled Student Services in Higher Education Listserv.
Dilemmas of War and Peace. 1994. UWEX Independent Study Guide. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Wall Street Journal. 1994. January 11.
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