From the issue dated October 29, 1999

Colleges Strive to Give Disabled Students Access to On-Line Courses By DAN CARNEVALE As they race to expand their distance-education offerings, colleges and universities are finding that they must include the virtual equivalents of wheelchair ramps when building their on-line classrooms. They must accommodate, for instance, the sophomore who can't see the impressive navigational graphics on a Web page because he's blind, and the graduate student who can't listen to a streamed audio lecture because she's deaf. In fact, many students with disabilities find that Web sites' technological extravaganzas are more of a burden than an aid. Distance-education administrators and advocates for people with disabilities agree that provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Vocational Rehabilitation Act apply generally to on- line education programs. But the courts are still sorting out the specifics of the laws' requirements, and many faculty members find themselves learning about on-line accessibility as they go. Meanwhile, some colleges and universities are preparing their own accessibility guidelines, hoping to make faculty and staff members think carefully about the needs of students who may not be able to see, hear, or move well. And some Web sites are offering helpful advice on accessibility for anyone planning to put information on line. For the most part, distance-education students with disabilities already can get the equipment they need to make up for their impairments. Blind students can use software that reads on-line text aloud or produces a Braille message for the students to follow. Students who cannot move their arms easily can use adaptive equipment to manipulate the computer with other parts of their bodies. But some common features of the Internet make navigation difficult for people with certain disabilities. Text-reading programs, for instance, can't make heads or tails of all those pretty graphics. The problem is easily avoided if the programs can pick up and read aloud alternate texts that are placed behind the graphics, but not every Web site provides those texts. Sites with frames and tables -- two workhorses of Web-page design -- tend to confuse those programs, which often read from left to right, ignoring the layout. Problems can also arise from deficiencies of the software students use to overcome their disabilities. Some programs have trouble reading certain symbols and graphs -- which can make taking a mathematics or science class on line extremely difficult. It's not that Web-site creators are ignoring the accessibility issue, says Jane E. Jarrow; it's that they don't always realize how important accessibility is. Ms. Jarrow is president of Disability Access and Information Support, an organization that offers advice about accessibility to both individuals and institutions. "There's a whole art to the issue of making things accessible on line," she says. "But people don't think to do it." An important issue for universities is trying to determine exactly what the law requires. While the details are being fleshed out in the courts, "it's hard to know what the law means," says NormanCoombs, a history professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and chairman of Equal Access to Software and Information, which provides guidance on how people with disabilities can use technology as an aid. Many students' accessibility difficulties will probably be resolved on a case-by-case basis, Mr. Coombs says. For example, the law probably won't require universities to provide disabled students with special equipment to take on-line courses. But he adds that if an institution is providing equipment -- such as laptop computers -- to all of its students, it will most likely have to offer adaptive equipment to those with impairments. Current laws are adequate to guarantee the disabled access to the Internet, Ms. Jarrow says. But such access may be slow to arrive, because every type of disability must be considered in light of the law and the current state of technology. "The institutions know they're obligated," Ms. Jarrow says. "The issues are more practical than legal." The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has specific guidelines for compliance with the disabilities law on traditional campuses. But the agency has not yet issued such rules for on-line education. In general terms, the civil-rights office advises that students with and without disabilities should be assured of the same access to on-line courses. And it measures compliance not by access alone, but by the effectiveness of the access. The office also says that disabled students should receive course information -- in a timely and accurate manner -- that is equivalent to what non-disabled students get. The office often refers people to a comprehensive set of on-line-accessibility guidelines published by the California Community Colleges System. Among its tips: Provide clear, prominent navigation mechanisms (for those who can't click on small links). And don't rely on color alone to distinguish characteristics of a page (for students who are colorblind). The goal is that virtual classrooms should be held to the same accessibility standards as conventional classrooms, says Carl Brown, director of the High-Tech Center Training Unit for the California Community Colleges System. "The notion here is that everyone should have equal access to information." Many colleges that put courses on line are trying to educate their faculty and staff members about how to make the material accessible to the disabled. "Sometimes you're not aware of what you're doing and what impact it has," says Janet D. Scott, director of Chemeketa Online, the distance-learning arm of Chemeketa Community College, in Salem, Ore. "We learned a lot from experience." So the college compiled a handbook and other guidelines to help faculty members who want to make their on-line offerings as accessible as possible. The guidelines include tips that might not occur to non-disabled users. Keeping individual Web pages relatively short, for example, means that students using text readers don't have to listen to a long, drawn-out page before clicking on to something else. Much of what colleges can do to make Web pages accessible is fairly simple. But making sure that the education disabled students get is equivalent to that received by other students requires more effort -- and maybe more cash. "If you're going to try to meet that standard of equivalence -- not compliance, but equivalence -- that raises the cost," says William H. Berdine, chairman of special education and rehabilitation counseling at the University of Kentucky. "Absolute equivalence is a higher standard." Creating on-line courses has cost the University of Kentucky about $15,000 for each low-tech offering and about $30,000 for each that is more advanced. A large part of that expense stems from making the entire course accessible to disabled students. But other institutions say observing the disabilities law doesn't have to be costly for on-line courses, especially if compliance is part of the plan from the start. "A ramp into a building doesn't cost much if you put it in when you build the building," says Rochester's Mr. Coombs. But paying someone to revamp a Web site's coding, page by page and line by line, can cost a college a lot. California's Mr. Brown encourages colleges to offer technical support and to educate their faculty and staff members so accessibility can be built into courses while they are being created. "It doesn't cost anything at all," he says. "It's just a matter of taking the time to do it." Several on-line services also help Web-site designers build accessible pages. A program called Bobby checks pages and points out potential problems of access (http://www.cast.org/bobby/). The program was created by the Center for Applied Special Technology, an organization devoted to using technology to expand opportunities for everyone, including people with disabilities. Named after the slang term for a British police officer, Bobby reviews a site to make sure there is alternate text under each graphic. It also notes, in detail, ways in which the site's accessibility could be improved. Michael Cooper, the design and technical leader for Bobby, says the program benefits all people who use the Web, disabled and unimpaired. "We believe a Web page that's accessible is easier for a non-disabled person to use," Mr. Cooper says. Mr. Coombs, for his part, stresses that most inaccessibility stems from Web-site creators' failure to think things through. "Poor design, or thoughtless design, or whatever we want to call it, puts up needless barriers," Mr. Coombs says. "With a little bit of effort, everything could be accessible." http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A69 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article