"Expanding access to higher education is a moral imperative and also a practical necessity. Democratic tenets of excellence, fairness, justice and equal opportunity demand full and equal access for all."--Graham B. Spanier, President, The Pennsylvania State University. Student Access Must Be Paramount, The Pennsylvania State University Op-Ed Program, www.psu.edu/ur/oped/access.html.
With the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, universities and businesses were mandated to provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Now, as a result, individuals are entering educational programs and pursuing careers that may not have been options for them in the past. "By providing reasonable accommodations to our students and employees, we are embracing their potential and capabilities rather than their disabilities," affirms Bill Welsh, Director of the Office for Disability Services at Penn State, University Park.
Since the establishment of the Office for Disability Services (ODS) over twenty years ago, Penn State has been working towards opening doors to the untraditional student and employee. With the growing importance of the role of information technology in education, breaking down the potential barriers to computer resources for users with disabilities is an important step in this direction. Penn State's efforts to bridge the gap between computing resources and students for whom the standard PC setup is inadequate, has been based on a cooperative effort between those students, the ODS, and the Assistive Technology (AT) Committee.
The AT Committee is chaired by Mary Ramsey, Manager of LAN Based Systems (LABS) Group, at the Center for Academic Computing (CAC). The CAC's role in the AT Committee is to purchase and maintain standard and assistive hardware and software for the CAC student labs and the Library Services for People with Disabilities office. The AT Committee's other members include staff from the ODS, the Department for Educational Equity, the College of Health and Human Development, Pattee Library, and the University Learning Resource Center. These members are familiar with the obstacles that students with disabilities may encounter and bring the student perspective to the process of making AT available at Penn State.
The aim of the AT Committee is to make the most commonly used AT applications and equipment available in the CAC labs on campus, and to purchase the more specialized equipment as needed. "This way," says Ms. Ramsey, "technology for which there is not an immediate need, does not sit idle in a lab to become obsolete before it is ever used."
Typically students who contact the ODS will meet with a disabilities counselor to assess and determine reasonable accommodations of their academic needs. If, after an ODS assessment interview, a student and disabilities counselor identify a useful AT tool not currently available in the CAC labs, the disabilities counselor may submit a request to the AT Committee to evaluate the possibility of purchasing the desired AT. Students who have not found the AT tools that they need in the CAC labs are encouraged to contact the ODS.
Sometimes the purchase of an expensive piece of equipment may not be practical for a Penn State location outside of University Park. At times like this, the designated Disability Contact Liaison (DCL) at the campus or college in question may apply to the ODS at University Park to request the loan of the AT. If the CAC has the software or hardware in stock, it will make a short or long-term loan of the AT to the campus for student use in computer labs. Staff or faculty members with temporary disabilities may also apply to the CAC to request a short-term loan of available equipment.
While most of the CAC labs offer standard tools like screen magnification, idea organizer software, raised tables, or large monitors, the Library Services for People with Disabilities office houses most of the more specialized AT tools purchased for student use. In addition to tools like a Braille dictionary and closed caption televisions for enlarging printed text, the office is also home to three assistive computer workstations. The workstations offer AT peripherals like scanner-readers, an alternative input device, and two Braille printers. Harold Woodruff is the full-time library staff member in the Library Services for People with Disabilities office. Mr. Woodruff works to help students using the lab become familiar with the workstation equipment and software. He assists students with research by pulling books from Pattee's shelves. He scans books into text files and edits the resulting files for errors that may be introduced during the scan. He then may print the text documents in Braille, or e-mail them to a student for use with a screen reader.
Specialized AT tools which are not located in the Library Services for People with Disabilities office include the Tactile Image Enhancer which is currently stored in the ODS. The Tactile Image Enhancer is used to turn a picture like a scientific diagram that has been copied onto heat-sensitive paper, into a raised image that a person can touch. The Thermo-Pen, available for use from the CAC, can also be used to produce raised images but the user draws with the heat emitting "pen" directly on the heat sensitive paper.
By putting assistive technology tools like scanner-readers, Braille printers, and the Tactile Image Enhancer in place, the AT Committee helps to make University learning resources accessible to students with disabilities. But ultimately, by putting AT in place, the AT committee helps to ensure that Penn State students with disabilities can fulfill their academic objectives and prepare for the future.
Bill Welsh, Director of ODS, observes that in addition to meeting a student's current needs, "utilizing AT in the academic setting may have a positive impact on a Penn State student's professional life when looking for gainful employment." He notes that a student who is familiar with assistive applications and hardware, "will be able to integrate that knowledge in an employment setting, as well. This allows an individual with a disability to become more independent than may have been previously possible without the use of AT."
Bill Welsh
Director, Office for Disability
Services
Bill Welsh, who sits on the AT committee with ODS colleagues
Marianne Karwacki and Denise Person, recognizes the potential AT offers to
break down barriers to computing resources. "Assistive technology has played a
major role in opening new doors for students," he says. AT is helping students
with disabilities "to attain information much more quickly than in the past,"
Mr. Welsh notes. He views AT as an important factor in why more and more
students with disabilities are entering higher levels of education.
Harold Woodruff
Coordinator, Library Services
for People with Disabilities
Harold Woodruff tries, whenever possible,
to help students achieve academic objectives using the resources he has
available, "I ask people what they need and try to provide them with that." In
addition to helping students become familiar with the CAC AT workstations, he
is often challenged to provide creative solutions to help students when there
is no AT fix. When a student with a mobility impairment needed to refer to the
information in a ten page assignment while sitting in front of the computer,
Mr. Woodruff hung the pages from the clothesline at a comfortable viewing
height. In another instance, he helped a student work around her ink allergy by
scanning materials only available in print and e-mailing them to her.
Michelle Hartman
Masters Program, Counselor
Education
College of Education
Michelle began taking advantage of
the assistive technology available in the Library Services for Users with
Disabilities office within a short time of her arrival at University Park.
Michelle has a mobility impairment that requires significant amounts of her
time and energy to input data with a keyboard and mouse. While completing her
coursework, Michelle came to the lab regularly to use speech recognition
software with applications like MS Word, Eudora, and Netscape that she needed
for her academic program. Speech recognition software recognizes voice commands
allowing users with mobility limitations like Michelle to navigate applications
and write or enter data with minimal use of a mouse or keyboard. Michelle was
able to complete written work on schedule without the physical demands of
entering data with a mouse and keyboard. These benefits, Michelle says, made
the somewhat tedious, six-month training period it took for the system to
correctly recognize her voice and for her to learn the necessary commands worth
the effort.
Nick Petnick
Ph.D. Candidate, College of
Education
Nick, who is blind, works mainly at his home but he has used
assistive technology resources available at the Library Services for Users
with Disabilities office extensively since beginning his Ph.D. course work.
The AT application Nick uses most regularly is a screen reader which works in
conjunction with the computer's sound card to read text which appears on screen
aloud, including that on application menu bars. The screen reader functions
with most applications Nick uses to complete his academic assignments.
Nick has turned his e-mail client, Eudora, into a valuable if not flawless, adaptive tool in combination with the screen reader. Since he receives a large portion of his research materials as scanned text in e-mail messages, Nick can categorize and store the electronic references using Eudora's mailbox options. When he wants to read or review the document, Nick can locate it in Eudora without having to listen to the screen reader read off complicated directory path names.
The CAC has long sought to support individuals with special needs at Penn State. Thus, support for users with disabilities who sign up for CAC training seminars follows the CAC's tradition of making computing resources accessible for the entire Penn State community. When the classroom environment cannot be made to accommodate an attendee's needs, other arrangements can be made. Earlier this year, the CAC worked to make seminar material available to a faculty member who uses voice recognition software not available on the computers in the CAC's instructional classrooms. Arrangements were made for an instructor to cover the material outside the CAC classroom lab on an appropriately equipped computer.
Students, faculty or staff with special needs who wish to attend CAC seminars or other CAC activities are encouraged to contact the CAC at (814) 853- 9522 or by e-mail, seminars@psu.edu.