Universal Design means Design for All

Last month I wrote a series of posts on online education and efforts to create more accessibility to course material for deaf and hard of hearing students. Before leaving that subject completely, I'd like to share what I've learned about universal design and how it relates to education.

The Universal Design concept started in architecture. The most common example is curb cuts. Intended to increase accessibility for those in wheelchairs, they have become beneficial to many others including skateboarders, parents pushing strollers, and people pulling wheeled luggage. Another example is the use of captions on televisions. Initially intended for the deaf and hard of hearing, they are now routinely used in noisy environments such as gyms and airports. The benefits of universal design extend to many types of people and situations beyond the disabled because UD is good, flexible design.

Of course, Universal Design (UD) principles bring disability awareness to the top of the list of considerations when designing a building or website. But what has captured my interest is how this concept is being applied to education in Universal Design of Instruction (UDI) also known as Universal Design for Learning (UDL). It seems to fit with my interest in making online education accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing.

Karen Janowski an Assistive and Educational Technology Consultant says "My passion is to remove the obstacles to learning for all students... When material is digital or electronic, it is flexible and accessible. It is our responsibility as educators to provide materials that promote success." Her philosophy resonates with me. On her blog EdTech Solutions: Teaching Every Student she has made available a Free UDL Toolkit for teachers.

Another educator Sheryl Burgstahler, Ph.D. of the University of Washington has written and presented extensively on the subject of universal design. She serves as the director of DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) Center. One of the DO-IT Center's programs is The Center for Universal Design in Education. Funded by the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, this program "develops and collects Web-based resources to help educators apply universal design to all aspects of the educational experience." Many helpful resources on UDI/UDL can be found at their website.

In my job little progress has been made on my goal of making our library workshops accessible. I am still waiting to receive the software requested months ago. Sigh...It really inspires me to read of these two women's vision for accessible education and their work in this area. I'd like to find out more about how I could possibly find employment in this specialty and what qualifications are needed.

Making Online Education Accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing - part 3

A third way that online education can be made accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing is through the use of speech recognition software by professors. Using this, lectures are automatically transcribed and displayed for all the students in the class to see. No more need for requesting a captioner. No more need for borrowing a classmate's notes.
The Liberated Learning consortium is a group of universities in North America, Asia, Europe, and Australasia incorporating this assistive technology into their courses. As defined on their website, the Liberated Learning concept is founded on two interrelated applications:

• using speech recognition technology to automatically transcribe spoken language and display it as readable text


• using speech recognition to produce accessible, multimedia notes

The project began 2 decades ago at the Atlantic Centre of Research, Access, and Support for Students with Disabilities at St. Mary's University of Halifax. Three professors worked with voice recognition software for a semester and then introduced it into their classrooms where their students for the first time could see a lecture as it was delivered. [To find out more of the history of the Liberated Learning Project click here.]

Today the 18 international partners of the Liberated Learning Consortium are working with the IBM ViaScribe through a Joint Study Agreement between St. Mary's and IBM.

That's great news for traditional students. But how can this work for distance learners?

The Neil Squire Society of Canada is working with the Liberated Learning Consortium to find a way to make this transcription tool compatible with Wimba. A nonprofit organization, the Neil Squire Society is dedicated to using technology, knowledge, and passion to help Canadians with physical disabilities. I learned about this approach to making online education accessible from Chad Leaman, a reader who left a comment about his work for them. Chad sent me a demo of his Wimba bridge - a connection between the transcription software and Wimba's closed captioning. I enjoyed listening to it and seeing what the transcription looked like. There were some funny results like Wimba being written as "when but" and liberal as "liver". Tee hee. It reminded me of my own hearing mistakes. But truly I was impressed that there are people with the necessary technical skills working on these accessiblity solutions.
I also really liked this motto I found on the Neil Squire Society website - "Social Justice : We facilitate major change by example and by modelling an effective approach."

Next time, I'll wrap up this series of posts with information on universal design of instruction.

Making Online Education Accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing - part 2

In my previous post, I wrote about what I've been working on at my library - transcribing podcasts of library workshops. Now I'd like to introduce a second approach to making online education accessible that is particularly helpful to those whose first language is ASL - using a webcam to show an ASL interpreter.

Early last year I participated in a webinar (click for definition from Merriam-Webster Online) on "Using Wimba to Provide Equal Access of Information to Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in On-line Courses". This workshop was presented by Dr. Sam Slike and Pam Berman of Bloomburg University of Pennsylvania. They are affiliated with Bloomburg's Education of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Program.


For those unfamiliar with Wimba, this software provides a central white space for a professor to show his lecture slides or demonstrate a website. At the bottom of the screen there is a chat box for ongoing text based discussion between participants and the lecturer. Students can even send messages to each other. There is also an area on the screen for students to click if they want to ask a question.


At Bloomburg University, Dr. Slike uses a webcam of a sign language interpreter, a Sorensen videophone, and closed captioning via Colorado Captioning to make his lectures on Wimba as accessible as possible to both deaf and hard of hearing students.

The webinar on "Using Wimba to Provide Equal Access of Information to Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in On-line Courses" was to be a demonstration of how this setup works. Unfortunately as so often happens in life, there were technical difficulties. In this case, the interpreter's signing was unclear due to pixelization effect (click for definition from Wikipedia). Instead of being able to see her hands all we saw were individual pixels. So frustrating. The problem was probably complicated by the fact that interest in the webinar was enormous with hundreds of people logging in from all over the world.

Nevertheless, it was extremely interesting to me to learn about Bloomburg University and what they are working on there. Let me be clear that their approach has been successful for their actual classes (which of course have a much smaller number of people logged in). If you would like to know more, you can view the PowerPoint slides used in the webinar, see a photo of the setup, and read feedback from three of their hard of hearing students at this webpage.

In April 2008, the United States Distance Learning Association awarded Dr. Slike and Professor Berman its Best Practices for Distance Learning Programming – Online Technology in Higher Education. You can read more about the award here.

Next time, I'll write about another approach I learned about from one of the readers of my blog.