Colleges Discriminate Against the Blind With Google Apps, Advocates Say

According to the article, the meeting with Google sounds like it was productive and positive. Personally I think Google will address this issue sooner than later as they’ve been giving GMail a lot of attention lately. They’re also in competition with Microsoft for this market which may spur their progress.

Does anybody else find it ironic that an advocacy group for the blind lays out its message in ” . . . a series of online videos?” Let’s put their reasoning in context of an older technology: should we burn all books that are not available in Braille? Ensuring that institutions do every thing within their power to accomodate the handicapped is one thing. Denying the majority of students is quite another: ” . . . or to reject Google apps entirely.”

I have argued long (and unsuccessfully) at my institution in behalf of blind students, for what I thought were reasonable accomodations. But, having failed, I didn’t deduce that I should therefore slit my other students’ throats in the meanwhile.

Their argument is with Google-not the universities. Google could probably buy and sell most of higher education, and it’s their web service. I sincerely hope Google acts, responsibly.

The dumbing down of America continues apace.

Here, a major technological advance is attempted to be put on hold, because one group alleges it does not enjoy the benefits as much as the rest of us do. They want the universities to “.. suspend … adoption of Google Apps for Education until it is accessible to all students and faculty, not just the sighted, or to reject Google Apps entirely.”

In other words, instead of attempting to work with Google now (and with the schools) in this major breakthrough — while the technology and its adaptations evolve — they want to take the entire process hostage, in order to give themselves “leverage” in the inevitable bargaining about to take place.

Shame on them. Why don’t they participate in the improvement of the product instead of trying to shut it down?

Ugh, people are so annoying. If you don’t like it, use something else. It’s that simple. Everyone has to complain about something.

I have a close friend who is blind and I advocate for accessibility where possible, but I don’t see how the university is at fault for using an “add on” service. Google Docs are not required – you can always use a word processing program that works with a screen reader. As for Gmail, the NFB has only created a video about the problems with the signup process-they don’t outline the use of Gmail. This is problematic, yes, but not impossible to work around. I would hope that the student could get assistance from someone in order to set up this step.

I think the issue would be with the student information system and a course management system. Any professor who has a blind student should be prepared to accommodate that student with the assignments. Just don’t require the use of Google Docs until THEY have addressed the issues.

If I’m wrong, maybe I’m just missing the whole point here?

Perhaps if there are other “accessible tools,” multiple tools should be selected, including Google (for the sighted), and another tool that is more apppropriate for blind students.

Still, nobody else has addressed the idea of the tyranny of the minority over the majority. That is, the ” . . . reject Google apps entirely” part of this litigation. And nobody has addressed the analogy of why we indeed do NOT burn all books that are not also made available in Braille.

The greater good is not served by restricting access to something a majority of people can do because a minority cannot also enjoy those benefits. If this were valid, none of us would be able to drive automobiles, because there are blind people who cannot.

The litigation essentially says “if you, as institutions cannot force Google to make their services accessible to the blind, then you shouldn’t allow sighted students access to something of value.”

Obviously, assignments must be made with accomodations to blind students. There might be a number of solutions that don’t include shutting off benefits to others rather arbitrariily.

When you sue someone, there should be a reasonable expectation that they can actually provide remedy. Is this the case with these institutions?

Why should the blind be privileged here. I am not joking: All of us suffer with their, and other crappy software. We are all test animals. While they reap fortunes we stress, fret, have strokes, yell at our loved ones and make an incomprehensible puzzle out of our patchwork strategies to communicate. You would appreciate this more if you lived in the Bay Area and had to contend daily with the arrogance of the recently enriched digito-chauvinists. i say this now with zero confidence that pressing the “post” button will work here, or whether Disqus will reject it on my ipad yet again. Well, I see it did not. Now, I will have to log on a conventional device, retrieve mail, log in to Chron, patch and paste this note, and retire, exhausted for the night. Class action suit against all software makers implied.

I agree that “declining resources calls for creative thinking about how to boost funding for—and results from—two-year institutions.”  While attracting middle-class students might help two-year institutions boost funding, I disagree that this is a creative or even intellectually honest way to boost results.  If a better prepared or motivated student is inherently more likely to succeed at higher education, enrolling that student in a 2-year institution instead of a 4-year institution improves the Community College’s results in only the most superficial and unimportant way.  Instead, Community Colleges should examine what they can do better than their competitors and what they can offer a potentially diverse student body, and then invest resources in developing and communicating those offerings. Moving the success stories that already exist from one school to another is not a solution to the problems facing community colleges or higher education in general.  Let’s focus instead on how we might create more success stories.             

I don’t usually comment but I appreciate Mr. Kahlenberg’s idea even if I don’t agree with it. So here goes:

As a California community college president, I welcome any idea to boost funding in an environment when our budgets have been slashed and we are reducing employment for faculty and staff. Today in the Chronicle there is a report that the state of Washington has declared a fiscal emergency for community colleges that will enable layoffs of even tenured faculty and staff. How on earth did we come to this, the total severance between the idea of universal education and economic well being? More importantly, how will we get out of this?

Mr. Kahlenberg has an interesting idea but a wave of middle class students coming to community colleges is already happening, with the effect that many underprepared and lower income students are being squeezed out. I can only laugh ruefully at Mr. Kahlenberg’s citation of funding levels elsewhere at $10,000 per student or above when my college receives under $5,000 per student in public finding and the state caps the number of students we can enroll despite unprecedented overwhelming demand. All this and we are expected to offer modern facilities, technology and top notch faculty and staff.

In the old Soviet Union, the price of bread was cheap and controlled but there was no bread. In California, community college tuition is $36 per unit but enrollment is capped and seats are unavailable. I am NOT advocating increased tuition here. As in NOT. I support universal free public education as a basic human right. Community colleges have suffered much but you cannot also now ask us to suffer the abandonment of lower income and underprepared human beings for the sake of middle class students.

So what do we do? First, we must re-construct the consensus that universal public education is a necessary foundation of a strong economy and nation. That’s a tall order these days but we must continue making this case. Second, we must face up that our funding model for public Higher Ed is completely broken and then try some new ideas.

One idea is to stop funding colleges and instead fund students through a voucher system. The current system encourages state micromanagement through favored programs and “performance based funding” and literally dozens of other decisions that are made in Sacramento rather than by the local community college. Instead, let’s agree on an acceptable level of state funding per student of say $10,000. Every human being would be given an educational voucher of $40,000 for four years of higher education. The student could take the voucher wherever she wishes. In this way low income and underprepared students would have the same funding as others.

Look, I’m an English teacher by trade, so I’m sure the think tank folks can figure out the details of both why this idea could work and why it is silly. My point is, to paraphrase Jobs, it is time to “Think Different”–before it is too late.

Mark Rocha
Pasadena City College

Pick up a couple of general interest magazines that you like, but seldom have time to read. They should not be related to your research or teaching fields. Read them cover to cover during spare moments (airport, hotel room, etc.) Helps you focus on something else, so you don’t psych yourself out, and provides an innocuous conversational topic for those semi-social moments during the interview. I used to read National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discover, or Scientific American on the way to interviews. 

 chai35 said you’ll be having a discussion with potential colleagues, and that fact makes the interview a two-way street. Every interaction is an opportunity for you.  While the search committee and various audiences are observing how you’re doing, you can be observing how they’re doing. You can be deciding, as much as they are, whether you want to spend a lot of work and social time with one another. A job-search advisor I know has said “When you accept an offer, you’ve decided to invite your employer into your life.”

How many hours in the class-room then is a 5/5 load? It can’t be more than 15 a week. A 2/2 load at the R1 university I used to work at was 8 hours a week in the classroom. For someone teaching new courses in technical areas there is a huge amount of prep involved. Oh and we were supposed to do research, apply for grants, advise PhD students etc. So for the first year or two it is a huge workload. After that it got easier.

What rich legacy he leaves not just of writing but, as this author recognizes, of being an important figure in Mexico and the world.  We need more public intellectuals.