Mainstreaming Computer Technology - equitable access for people with special needs.
AASE Conference 1991

Author: Gerry Kennedy, Spectronics

This paper discusses a number of issues related to the provision and dissemination of information and services to people in the community, particularly students in schools, who wish to acquire enabling computer related equipment.

Introduction

"While it is possible to locate thousands of articles outlining the effectiveness of computers, finding articles that go beyond opinion and conjecture is much more difficult." (Fitzgerald, Hattie and Hughes, 1985)

It will be a better world when a person who wishes to gain equitable access to computer related technologies can easily do so, and be properly supported by appropriate services and resources. Too often, people who have a sensory impairment, physical disability or learning difficulty experience frustration when they begin investigating and researching appropriate equipment to meet their specific needs. They encounter barriers, discover a lack of useful and relevant information and are often misguided and inadequately informed as to the availability of enabling technologies to meet their specific needs.

"We believe that the single most enduring effect of personal computers on the lives of individuals with disability will be to change, quite literally, what it means to be disabled. Some disabling conditions will, tomorrow, be gone forever because computer technology will have helped to make possible staggering advances in scientific and medical research and development." (Green and Brightman, 1990)

Microcomputer technology has advanced significantly in the last few years. The synthesis of a number of competing or formerly disparate technologies now provides users with tools that easily integrate and connect, which will then make available more comprehensive and powerful applications. The intended or projected outcomes will be determined by creativity, innovation and purposeful projects. Given that students in schools, students of all abilities, are given these tools to explore their world, society will benefit from their efforts in the short and long term - if we provide those opportunities for them.

The juxtapositioning of this emerging computer technology focussed tools enables users who have a disability the opportunity, possibly for the first time, to experience success. They can access textual or graphical information by themselves, using a variety of software packages, scanners and other input devices. Adaptive technologies provide appropriate and meaningful access to the keyboard, mouse, screen or printer. Voice recognition and human-quality speech output provide a friendlier environment for the user and a more natural and sensible system. Previous systems required high cognition, steep learning curves, hours, and hours of practice, sometimes will minimal success or eventuating in useful skill acquisition. Many 'dedicated' packages provided for short-term gains or helped complete specific tasks, but were often totally unrelated to real world experiences, skills or meaningful outcomes for the learner.

Practically all of today's technology can be accessed by any user, of any ability. Students can train and become accustomed to mainstream application software, work at their own level and can learn and practice skills at their own pace. More specialised or application specific software is also available to cater to the learning and/or leisure needs of young children. It promotes visual attention, the learning and understanding of concepts, as well as the promotion of basic skills in literacy and numeracy. The fact that young learners, or learners of any age for that matter, can become part or fully independent of a parent or carer is a significant and important step in their development. In essence, it is the very basis of true quality of life.

Funding Constraints
Submission and grant writing is usually time consuming. It is often frustrating and it involves a great deal of research. It also expends valuable resources and is often an initiative of a concerned teacher, teacher assistant or parent. The well-meant submission, though, is at times, ill conceived and poorly proposed. Either the submission is dismissed or inappropriate equipment is purchased. The student consequently suffers. In many instances, the process is vitally important because it focuses the carer or parent on the REAL issues at hand. Frequently it is not the technology that is required. A change of curricula, the opportunity to evaluate the client's present skills and the determination of more important goals for the student is often more critical.

Questions regarding the real benefit of the proposed technology rather than the perceived benefits must carefully be considered and documented before proceeding with any submission. Only after research and a significant amount of time investigating computer related solutions, talking with other users, visiting centres such as the Microcomputer Applications Center in South Melbourne for an assessment and evaluation of equipment for the student or attendance at a workshop at the Special Needs Centre in Kew, will reveal the true worth and viability of the proposed equipment. These are necessary requirements and ones that will determine the most useful equipment to support the student in order for him/her to achieve relevant learning outcomes and/or provide appropriate access.

Where adaptations and minor modifications/additions to equipment need to be explored and developed, funding should then be provided. Appropriate inservice training and professional development of teachers, teacher assistants, pre-service teachers, parents and other service providers in education and para professional fields is paramount to ensure that this happens more quickly and is properly coordinated. Equipment for equipment's sake has been the downfall of many past funding arrangements. The carer, teacher and/or parent must understand and be competent users of the equipment as well. To ensure maximum benefit to users in the future, additional research in the use and education of adaptive technologies must also take place.

"When talking computers or keyboard emulators are viewed by the public and governments as being just as essential as prostheses or wheelchairs, then this very useful technology will finally come into its own." (Pryce-Davies, 1992)

Such services and information should be made available in all education systems, at post secondary level and in the TAFE sector, as well as in para professional levels. It must also be made available at community service centres, community residential units and adult training courses. The training of students in schools with technology seems wasteful. It is a travesty of justice if those skills are not transferred to work or leisure related activities. Parent advocacy groups, user advocacy groups, mainstream computer user groups, special needs computer interest groups, education support groups and most importantly, individual users and consumers with disabilities, should have knowledge and access and to appropriate mechanisms and services.

Many service providers have been strenuously arguing the case for additional resources. The increased provision of services to people in the community that have a disability or learning difficulty must occur. Current computer technologies present a number of empowering facilities. They provide feasible and cost effective solutions that enable users to become more independent. Users can be more productive people in society and better equipped to acquire new skills on an ongoing basis. They are therefore more appropriately equipped to compete for positions in the workplace. A recent scheme set up by Spastic Society in conjunction with the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind, Workfocus, aims to achieve such outcomes. Young adults, who may have a disability, will be able to train and become skilled in computer, related areas so that they can compete for places in the workforce.

Solutions to the Problems

"A large part of the reason why computers have become so rapidly embraced in the last decade has been the adoption of more comprehensible methods of using them." (Pryce-Davies, 1992)

There are a number of computer solutions that assist people in their search for practical, useful and inexpensive software solutions. Acorn Archimedes computers have recently released a new model, known as the A4000S. It has a number of adaptive software utilities and applications. It contains collections of pictographs and high quality colour images as well having as all of the mainstream applications as standard on their other popular models, all pre-installed on the hard disk drive. This configuration has been thoroughly researched and tested in the United Kingdom and makes sense as a partway solution for users who have a disability or learning difficulty. The Northwest SEMERC has trailed the machine and it is now available in Australia.

Access DOS and Access for Windows for the IBM and compatible range of microcomputers provide functions and facilities for people with disabilities. These programs are public domain and are freely copied. A large amount of commercial and shareware software is available for practically any application required.

Similarly, Apple with its stable of numerous Macintosh models has many third party products as well as its own technologies to support users. The Worldwide Disability Solutions Group exists to research, monitor, inform and educate users around the world. They are a dedicated team of people that disseminates information about Apple products. Macintosh utilities and enhancements to system software appear frequently. Many are distributed freely and they provide specific functionality.

It is often the simplest of software "tricks" that solves a problem for a user. It may provide them with access formerly denied or unobtainable. These facilities must be made available, properly documented and understood for what they can do and correctly put into practice before they can be attributed as worthwhile options.

"Such systems are now available for IBM, Apple II, Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes Computers, thus providing access solutions for virtually all of the computers used by disabled persons throughout the world, and a substantial proportion of the microcomputers used in the workplace." (Pryce-Davies, 1992)

Train the Trainer Issues
"Computer technology will probably be changing forever. The process for designing personalised computer solutions, however, will remain much the same. And when that process is pursued smartly and energetically, the benefits can prove to be enormous." (Green and Brightman, 1990)

Teaching strategies to support these facilities will also need to be carefully considered and documented. Many teachers are poor users of current technologies in their own private as well as teaching use. Others have dismissed or shunned the age of computers. Now, they must not only catch up, but also become proficient exponents and users as models for their children and their students.
Education is usually slow to respond. New technologies are expensive. They involve a great deal of time and money. Computers in the past have been very frustrating and often unreliable, pedantic and unforgiving of errors and mistakes. Not so now. Teachers and trainers must be made aware of the fact that is their responsibility to equip themselves with the basic skills, in order to offer today's learning to tomorrow's leaders and decision-makers.

The new emerging technologies have resolved many of the previous problems and hurdles. They present increased opportunities for learning. Moving images (e.g. QuickTime for Apple and IBM) can be displayed on screen accompanied by digitised human quality speech and realistic sound output. Students can discover new worlds and can participate in simulated experiences. Interaction with three dimensional objects and images that are displayed in full colour opens new facets of learning formerly considered in past years as existing only in science fiction.

Why can't our students SEE and HEAR a fire engine, manipulate it as a scanned image or view it as a movie captured on video? Students should be able to do these things themselves, rather than merely look at blobs of colour represented as an approximated image of the real thing? Why can't children animate COMPIC pictographs and have them placed next to text, or displayed with another graphic or viewed as a video display with an associated sound? These things can all be done NOW. With today's technology. Do our teachers know this and will they enter this type of learning once they are exposed to it and made sufficiently aware?


Children as Learners with Technology
Children often learn best from other children. In a mainstream classroom, an integrated child with special needs can work one-on-one with a teacher, or teacher assistant. The same child can also work with peers in the same class, or from another grade level at another time. Small groups provide dynamic interchange of dialogue, generation of ideas and the formulation and experimentation of opinion as well as interpretation of data. Using a cassette recorder plugged into the computer provides amplification of any sound available in the software, be it speech output, music or sound effects. For example, a student's or a group's word processing can be played back using a talking word processing package and recorded onto cassette for future playback, for listening or just for pure enjoyment. Connecting the Acorn Archimedes or a Macintosh Colour Classic to a TV and displaying the screen contents to cater to a large audience and/or taping the contents on cassette in a video recorder makes sense. The children's work
an be taken home to show proud parents. It can be replayed to the rest of the class or be edited to make an end of year concert presentation. We must be open to displaying, presenting and publishing information with our new media tools, and celebrating in our children's successes in different ways.

Voice recognition software provides access for people with physical disabilities, especially to those who may be vision impaired and are able to articulate their ideas in voice, but have difficulty with keyboards, mice or Braille input devices. Voice output provides a whole host of opportunities to hear textual information. Users can listen to music, be exposed to environmental noises or enjoy the antics of a clown falling down at the circus. This comes complete with laughter and applause from an appreciative audience.

These strategies and resources cater equally as well to teachers in mainstream schools and to those in special settings. Teachers and school communities are presently struggling with many confusing and conflicting issues, and are often hindered and frustrated by lack of information and support. All children and all users of all abilities can be supported and appropriately equipped with suitable enabling technologies. Today is the time to start planning for tomorrow's lessons.

"Computers have been heralded as saviours for schools, the beginning of the information revolution, a replacement for teachers and the students' best friend." (Fitzgerald, Hattie and Hughes 1985)

A poor teacher with a computer is still a poor teacher ... with a computer. A good teacher with a computer may become a better teacher, a better facilitator and therefore better equipped to meet the challenges of the 90's. People are the key to unlocking other people's potential. The computer can assist, help direct and sufficiently motivate people to achieve what was formerly thought impossible or considered too difficult. It is up to the teachers, carers and other service providers to ensure that our children and clients are not disadvantaged. They have been due to inflexible bureaucracies in the past. Dismissed or engulfed in misinformation nor beset with convoluted funding considerations which may inequitably impose restrictions and impediments to their future?

"We must be pro-active, advocate for change for quality use of computer technology and promote our good teaching practices." (Kennedy, 1991)

References:

Fitzgerald, Hattie and Hughes (1985), Computer Applications in Australian Classrooms, Commonwealth Department of Education, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, Australia.

Green and Brightman (1990), Independence Day - Designing Computer Solutions for Individuals with Disability, DLM, Allen, Texas, USA.

Kennedy, G. (1991), From Knowhere to Knoware, pps. 135-144, Proceedings of the 1991 Computers in Education Group of Victoria Conference - Contributing to Chaos or Change, (Ed. McDougall, A.), Richmond, July, 1991.

Pryce-Davies, P. (1992), Joining the Clever Country: access to "real" computers for disabled students, Proceedings of the 1992 Computing in Education Conference, Computing in Education Group of Victoria, Richmond Nth, 1992.

Back to Gerry Kennedy's Corner