Assistive Technology in Higher Education – UK Style

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Photograph of Building 32 at Southampton University – taken at night.

Google map from UK to USA

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A Google map going from London UK with a view of Europe moving across the Atlantic to North America and then to Boulder Colorado.

Numbers of disabled students increased as a proportion of total students, accounting for 6.9pc of students in 2005/06, up from 6.5pc in 2004/05. Splitting the data by level of study shows that 7.9pc of first degree students were registered with a disability at their institution in 2005/06, an increase from 7.5pc on the previous year. The proportion of undergraduate and postgraduate students registered as disabled also rose to 7.3pc and 5.1pc from 6.9pc and 4.8pc respectively. Figures apply to students domiciled in the UK and excluding non-UK domiciled students. Taken from http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php/content/view/153/161/

Different laws, funding and support structures

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Graphic showing the Union Jack made up of the flags of St Patrick (However, Northern Ireland has the Union Jack as its official flag), St Andrew and St George – St David from Wales has a gold cross on black.

UK Laws linked to the use of Assistive Technology

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The DDA definition of a disabled person.

A person with a sensory, physical or mental impairment, progressive condition or severe disfigurement which has a:

substantial,

adverse and

long term (lasting or expecting to last at least 12 months).

Effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day to day activities.

DDA Part 4 Legislation

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This means that responsible bodies need to anticipate the kind of adjustments that disabled students might need and not simply wait for disabled students to apply for a place.

The Disability Equality Duty has been added with annual reports on the institution’s Disability Equality Scheme.

Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR)

Web Accessibility Guidelines

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Possible sources of support

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Disabled students taking full or part-time undergraduate and post-graduate degrees receive the Disabled Students Allowances. Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland all provide this allowance through different administrative bodies.

Universities receive premium funding based on the number of students who receive the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA), thus ignoring those disabled students who have additional support needs but are not eligible for DSA. “Such a system has the potential, in theory, to discourage universities from accepting applications from disabled students who are not eligible for DSA (such as international or part-time students) as they will not attract premium funding but will nevertheless require financial support from the university to meet their disability- related support needs. (Skill Scotland, 2006)

It has speech output, a built in word processor, offers high contrast mode, back up disks and is indestructible!

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This picture of a C64 computer with printer and copyholder was taken by Keith Paterson

This slide is related to the type of items that the Disabled Students’ Allowances covers.

 Disabled Students' Allowances can help with:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/DisabledPeople/EducationAndTraining/HigherEducation/DG_10034898

Assessment for Study Strategies, Support and Technologies

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To date there are around 55 centres that offer assessments to students for their assistive technologies and study skill strategies. The points were marked using Google Maps http://tinyurl.com/29l7dl

UK style - Audit, appraisal and outcomes

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Notes taken from http://www.dsa-qag.org.uk/

DSA-QAG (Disabled Students Allowance Quality Assurance Group) was established to provide an integrated quality assurance service to people accessing the DSA scheme created to help students with disabilities or learning difficulties achieve their potential in education.

Originally set up by the DfES, DSA-QAG is now an independent entity comprised of representatives from local authorities, assessment centres, equipment suppliers, the Open University, higher education institutions, SKILL (as observers) and the NUS.

It has developed a system to measure the quality of the work of organisations conducting DSA needs assessments and supplying the recommended DSA equipment.

DSA-QAG are not involved with quality assuring the contents of assessments reports produced by qualified assessors within registered assessment centres, nor does it have the remit to be involved with funding awarded by a local education authority. These areas are dealt with specifically by the appropriate body.

Possible Technologies for Students
Audio Notetaker

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Audio Notetaker as an example of a technology provided to students – Description from Iansyst

http://www.iansyst.co.uk/articlefiles/Audio-Notetaker-Leaflet.pdf

“Audio Notetaker is a new and unique software package to help with navigating, annotating and organising digital recordings.

Audio voice recordings are a really useful tool to support note taking in lectures, interviews and meetings, but re-listening and deciphering long digital recordings afterwards is a difficult task. With Audio Notetaker you

get a visual representation of what you are listening to! And you have the tools at your fingertips to quickly review, identify and reference key sections of speech to support your research and editorial work.”

Making it work – Try scanning?

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Two pictures of a PDF file showing aircraft parts with labels. The left hand picture shows detailed diagrams with labels. The right hand picture shows what can be achieved when the PDF is scanned into MS Word to be read by a screen reader or text to speech. The labels lose their positions and the diagrams are all over the place.

Screenshot Reader

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TextHelp Screenshot Reader working with an inaccessible diagram of an aircraft with labels.

Internet Usage

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New research suggests that young university hopefuls expect unrestricted access to the Internet

For further information please visit http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/news/fullstory.php?id=99

For the full report please visit http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectations

Free

yEd

Graph

tool

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Screengrab of yEd Graph tool. Andy uses the free yEd graph maker for mind mapping ideas. http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.htm

Quick

Time Management – Tab Groups

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Screen grab of menu bars taken from the tab groups made by Robert to speed searching

Remote Assistance

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Screen grabs illustrate how Robert shows E.A. the way to make Tab groups by using Remote Assistance in

Social

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Screengrab of Theo’s Facebook site. Theo uses Facebook for socialising, timetabling and sharing news.

Blogs & Wikis

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Screen grabs of:

Ravensbourne College blog illustrating how students share their thoughts about projects and computer use. http://blogs.rave.ac.uk/blojsom/blog/

The Student Room Disabled Students' FAQ acts as a wiki for helping students share their concerns and questions.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Disabled_Students'_FAQ

Students are using technologies that are often free, social and portable

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Sarah uses her mobile phone to synchronise with Outlook, download podcasts and lecture notes.

Using CapturaTalk to scan and read when on the move.

Dolphin, TextHelp Read and Write and Thunder USB flash drives for running AT applications on the move.

AT in HE – UK style

Assistive Technologies

Access Technologies

Adaptive Technologies

Adjustable Technologies

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Thinking about the terms we use for the technologies used to support student strategies when studying. Access Technologies, Adaptive Technologies, Adjustable Technologies and Assistive Technologies but what about Agile technologies based on the term used for software development as described by Scott Ambler.

“Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams with "just enough" ceremony that produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner  which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.” Scott W. Ambler http://www.agilemodeling.com

Agile?

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“Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to technology use which is performed in a collaborative manner by people with "just enough" ceremony that produces successful outcomes in a cost effective and timely manner  meeting the changing needs of its stakeholders.” Paraphrased from Scott W. Ambler – software engineer http://www.agilemodeling.com

Thank You

E.A. Draffan

Assistive Technologist & Research Fellow

Learning Societies Lab

University of Southampton

Mobile 07976 289103

E-mail: ead@ecs.soton.ac.uk

LexDis Project website

www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk

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