2004 Summer Institute : Final Report

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Introductory presentation: Catherine Fichten

Catherine Fichten emphasized the importance of people with disabilities to have access to appropriate technology in order to succeed in post-secondary education: "While folks in post-secondary education are generally a privileged lot, they are a very important privileged lot. I think a lot of the changes are going to come from folks with diplomas and degrees." She described the Adaptech Research Network, an organization she co-directs. Adaptech produces a popular list of free and inexpensive software that can be used as adaptive aids for people with disabilities (http://www.adaptech.org).

Fichten showed the video, "Web Accessibility: Access for All Video." The video, available from California State University, Fresno, provides an introduction to web accessibility with a focus on the user's perspective. http://www.csufresno.edu/webaccess/materials/videoclips.htm

Fichten organized two panel discussions to discuss how information technologies create opportunities and new barriers for people with disabilities. The first panel focused on the post-secondary educational context and discussed personal and institutional experiences. The second panel discussed how information technologies create opportunities and new barriers for people with disabilities from the perspectives of industry, government, and consumer-based organizations.

Panel discussion #1

Topic: "How do information technologies create opportunities and new barriers for people with disabilities?"

Panelists: Rajesh Malik (Dawson College), Daniel Lamb (Adaptech Research Network), Shan Robertson (Mount Royal College), Joan Wolforth (McGill University)

Panelist: Rajesh Malik (Dawson College, Concordia University, Montreal)

Rajesh Malik discussed his experiences with information technology as a professor who is blind, including successes (e.g., Web-CT, Proquest) and obstacles (e.g., First Class, PDF files). He recommended the following initiatives:

• Canada needs powerful legislation like ADA
• Canadian universities and colleges need policies to adopt fully accessible software

Malik suggested that without these initiatives, the stereotype that people with disabilities are not contributing members of society will prevail. These initiatives are needed to change the general public's attitudes and stereotypes about disability that are influenced by a medical model of disability: "I think a lot of change is possible, but change can only come about when people truly believe that persons with disabilities are productive members of society. That they are meaningful, contributing members of our society. It's not going to happen if the old attitudes based on the medical model prevail. It requires a major attitude change and I think legislation can make a difference, and sadly, good legislation has been lacking in this country, and I think that's one way in which we should proceed, and ought to proceed."

Panelist: Daniel Lamb (Adaptech Research Network, Montreal)

Daniel Lamb began by emphasizing the importance of giving students with disabilities the opportunity to succeed in post-secondary education. He addressed the issue of cost by saying that "the accommodations and the resources that we push for pay off. …Students succeed if given the opportunity, if given the resources, if given the tools so that they can succeed. This requires a whole system of support that is more than just a few pieces of technology."

Lamb discussed the way in which information technologies that create new opportunities for students with disabilities can, in fact, create new barriers for students with multiple disabilities. He gave the example of one person with multiple disabilities, including neurological disabilities and hearing loss. This individual, because of motor skill difficulties, would normally benefit from using Dragon Naturally Speaking voice input software, but the program assumes that the user can hear and has vocal capability. These kinds of challenges require ingenuity.

Lamb referred people to the Adaptech Research Network's list of free and inexpensive technologies for exciting new opportunities for students and people with disabilities. He also mentioned the barrier of language, arguing that Canada needs to legislate French language software to be fully accessible.

Panelist: Shan Robertson (Mount Royal College, Calgary)

Shan Robertson spoke from her perspective as a provider of services to college students with disabilities: "There's no question that there are opportunities that information technology can provide for people with disabilities. But from my perspective, particularly the college perspective, the challenge is we've got these great pieces of software for these students to use, but they're coming out of high school into post-secondary not prepared. Some of them have never seen the software before." She identified many key barriers and opportunities related to IT, described successful initiatives, and suggested changes that need to happen. Some of her recommended changes included hiring assistive technologist trainers in disability resource centres, funding training in assistive technology, and decreasing the cost of assistive technology.

• Shan Robertson's presentation notes

Panelist: Joan Wolforth (McGill University, Montreal)

Joan Wolforth discussed how today's universities demand computer competence from admission to graduation. She began by saying that "Personally, I have always been very determined that any service that I run is technology-based because I see it as a way for students to become independent and work independently but also because it's training for the future-so that they go out into the world with the knowledge of technology." She gave examples of how the "electronic university" is a good development for students with disabilities in principle, but listed the barriers that are currently preventing many students with disabilities from benefiting from on-line learning. Wolforth concluded by listing ways these barriers can be overcome at the levels of provincial and federal funding, university policy and investment, and individual students willing to invest the time to become computer literate and learn about available software and hardware.

• Joan Wolforth's presentation notes

Discussion

Delphine Kinvig (Programmer-Analyst Administrative Systems, Information Services and Technology, University of Manitoba) asked if there are granting agencies that provide funding for universities for setting up technology services. Joan Wolforth (McGill University) answered that universities come under provincial human rights codes legislation rather than the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that it is the obligation of the provinces to provide access. The opportunities for funding, therefore, change from province to province. Often it is a matter of demonstrating to the university administration itself that disability services require funding support: "I think this is really a lobbying task, and probably students are a lot more effective than the disability service department." Catherine Fichten (Dawson College) suggested the website of the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) for information about funding for equipment, loans, bursaries and subsidies, as well as a directory of programs, services, and aids: www.neads.ca

Lawrence Euteneier (Industry Canada) asked the panel for suggestions for practices for recycling or dispensing of unused assistive technology. Daniel Lamb suggested Reboot Canada (http://www.rebootcanada.ca/) for disposing of and recycling computers.

Don Shackel (Manitoba First Nations Education Research Centre) asked if e-learning has been linked anywhere in Canada to improving access to post-secondary education, particularly in remote communities. Shan Robertson described a collective of post-secondary institutions in Alberta, where a primary institution hosts a course and e-learning is used for students from secondary institutions and remote areas to participate. Accessibility, however, is not addressed in this collective: "The issues that are arising that are concerning for me are that you are going to get a student from Lac La Biche, Alberta who is taking a course that is hosted at Mount Royal College who requires x, y, and z. We are legally obligated to provide for accommodation to make sure the website is accessible. It is not. So now what are we going to do? The college has to cough up the money."

Panel discussion #2

Topic: "How do information technologies create opportunities and new barriers for people with disabilities?"

Panelists: Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group, Inc.), Mary Frances Laughton (Industry Canada), Deborah Stienstra (University of Manitoba)

Panelist: Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group, Inc)

According to statistics from a recent Harris Poll, industry can determine that people with disabilities generally do not have large discretionary incomes. In order to effect change in industry to make accessible technology, Steve Jacobs suggested the need for educational outreach to industry about people with disabilities: "I think that it would be very helpful, to break down a lot of barriers of technology, to create a course or some type of educational outreach to anyone in the community wishing to effect change in industry. I really think that gaining an understanding of industry is very important."

Jacobs then referred to the IDEAL Group at NCR model as an example of effecting change in a company from the inside-out, through creating a not-for-profit organization within the corporation. Within this model, the corporation financially supports the not-for-profit organization and would, for example, direct all calls to do with accessibility to the not-for-profit organization. When the not-for-profit organization produces positive results, the corporation can take credit, at the same time as the model allows for freedom to make mistakes: "That was our thinking out of the box about technology, which really isn't a problem, as I see it. It's getting industry to care about designing accessible products."

Panelist: Mary Frances Laughton (Assistive Devices Industry Office, Industry Canada)

Mary Frances Laughton offered the government perspective on how new technologies create barriers and new opportunities for people with disabilities in the following areas:

• Legislation: Canada should refer to other G8 countries' legislation with respect to disability and new technologies as an opportunity for Canada to emulate the positive examples and avoid the negative examples. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be a positive place to begin.
• Funding: There is a senior level of the federal bureaucracy interested in the disability file. The bureaucrats who are working inside the system and the advocates who are working outside the system can work together for a solid, unified voice to make sure that technology and life-long learning is accessible.
• Persons with Disabilities Online website has been redesigned with a complete usability study and has many excellent links to helpful sites, including Adaptech Research Network, Web-4-All, Neil Squire Foundation, Canadian Centre on Disability Studies, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre
• Council on Access to Information for Print Disabled Canadians of the New Library and Archives of Canada: A resource study is being done by the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) and Learning Disabilities Association of Canada setting up a compendium of best practices. There is also a project to set up a national library service for the print-disabled that is working closely with publishers to address the inaccessibility of textual material.
• Office for Disability Issues (ODI) Government of Canada website: http://www.sdc.gc.ca/en/gateways/nav/top_nav/program/odi.shtml
• Council on Access to Information for Print Disabled Canadians and National Access Council's "Vision and Implementation Plan for a Clearinghouse for Print-Disabled Canadians": Describes a vision for the services the Clearinghouse could provide for publishers and alternate format producers, how the Clearinghouse should evolve, and how it should be governed.
• Western Economic Diversification Office: Recently set up a commercialization office for medical and assistive technology in British Columbia that will make it easier to get assistive technology that is developed in Canada commercialized.
• Canada Foundation for Innovation: This foundation that provides infrastructure funding has been supporting assistive technology.
• Web-4-All: Making the web accessible wherever it can be http://web4all.atrc.utoronto.ca/.
• Life-long learning: When doing lobbying, remember life-long learning is one of the watch words that Government of Canada is committed to.

Panelist: Deborah Stienstra (University of Manitoba)

Deborah Stienstra offered an organizational/structural perspective to the discussion of how new technologies create barriers and new opportunities for people with disabilities. Drawing on her past experiences as Royal Bank Research Chair at the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies, she discussed five key ways that ITs can and have been used by self-representational disability organizations:

1. Websites for sharing information. For example, DAWN Ontario (Disabled Women's Network Ontario) http://dawn.thot.net; Canadian Centre on Disability Studies's "Disability Rights in Canada: A Virtual Museum www.disabilityrightsmuseum.ca.
2. Contact with memberships. For example, Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL) http://www.cacl.ca and Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) http://www.ccdonline.ca/ maintain email consultations about what the organization is doing on a weekly basis, which also motivate members to do action.
3. Advocacy. ITs are used both for advocating to governments and mobilizing members to advocate.
4. E-consultations.
5. Organizational Development. For example, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada (LDAC) has brought technology into their office in response to their members' needs to access technology in a more private place.
6. Policy engagement/Capacity Development

Stienstra identified the following key barriers regarding ITs in disability organizations:

• Lack of knowledge/know-how
• Cost
• Staff for web maintenance
• Organizations are resource-poor, IT is often lowest priority
• IT can increase demands on organization which further depletes existing scarce resources
• Are ITs the best tools for its membership's needs?
• Does it meet the needs of only elite members rather that grassroots members?
• Information missing about computer usage needs or wants, need to know needs by region, aboriginal on and off reserve, urban, rural and remote, French/English, gender, impairment.

Stienstra closed with the following comments:

"Finally, one thing I think that the disability community needs to be convinced of, and it's one of the jobs that I see as my role of doing, is that using information technology is one part of a broader communications/education/advocacy strategy. But it is one part in the world that we live in." She then shared two resources:

1. Connecting People to Policy is an initiative of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and the Canadian Association for Community Living, funded by the national Voluntary Sector Initiative. Its purpose is to build capacity for connecting people with disabilities to participate in policy. This site will be taken up by the E-Democracy theme of the Disability and Information Technologies (Dis-IT) Research Alliance, which will create a broader policy engagement site for the disability community at http://www.disabilitypolicy.ca.
2. Another resource is the "Social and Disability Policy" section of the website of the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres (CAILC) (www.cailc.ca). CAILC addresses issues of resource-poor organizations by identifying voluntary regional content area editors in the independent living centers across Canada who provide content for the national website.

Closing remarks

Catherine Fichten closed the session by describing a study she did of disability service providers in Quebec universities and colleges: "We would call the service providers and asked how, overall, were the IT needs of students being met? Most of the answers were 'not bad, pretty good.' And then we asked, 'what type of adaptive products have you got on campus?' And they said 'we don't have any. We don't have any equipment but we have human volunteers.'" Fichten explained that many smaller postsecondary institutions reported that students' needs are being met, but they use human volunteers rather than adaptive technology to accommodate students with disabilities. She stressed how this situation "denies people autonomy, it denies people access to the technology which they are going to need for the rest of their lives, and is not reasonable accommodation. So I would hope that with universal design, perhaps in the future we don't have much of this. And this is not research from 15 years ago, this is from a year and half ago."