Electronic Textbooks | Interactive Educational Software | Considering the Ages and Skill Levels of Students | Preserving Pedagogy During Access Adaptation | Benefits of Multimodal Learning

Benefits of Accessible Software

Properly designed educational software can solve many of the problems discussed above. Both electronic textbooks, which present the kinds of information normally conveyed in print, and interactive educational software can be made accessible to students with disabilities; the modifications needed to achieve this will also bring benefits to the wider student population.

Electronic Textbooks
Accessible electronic textbooks can bridge the gap that often exists for students who require braille textbooks. While there are established braille production facilities that specialize in producing educational materials for blind children, major obstacles exist that force many students to begin class without the braille version of their books. These include last minute decisions on what book will be used in class and the lack of availability of the electronic files needed to produce the braille version of the book. Math and science textbooks are among those most difficult to produce in braille. Too few transcribers are available with a knowledge of Nemeth Code, the braille code for math. And the electronic files that publishers provide for some textbooks are not properly coded to translate mathematics automatically the way other text can be translated. This has led to a serious shortage of math and science books for blind students.

Some students do not use braille and instead use audiotaped books which lack many features of both print and electronic books, such as the ability to quickly locate specific sections and to place bookmarks for future reference. In addition to providing these important features, an electronic textbook ensures that every student in class is using the same book, and everyone gets it on the first day of school. The suggestions specific to math and science in these guidelines make both software and textbooks more accessible and reduce the barriers to studying these subjects that students with disabilities currently face.

Interactive Educational Software
Accessible interactive software can bring the benefits of multimedia and experimental learning to students who may otherwise be left out. Interactive learning experiences will be especially enriching for students who may otherwise have more limited experiences. Because students with disabilities may not be exposed to as wide a range of activities and environments as other students, software can contribute positively toward filling in some of those gaps. Chemistry experiments, for example, may be more easily carried out in a simulation than in a wet lab for some students. Biology lessons learned from dissections may be more meaningful to some students using simulation software with an effective keyboard interface than watching others use a scalpel. The importance of hands-on science learning should not be forgotten, but when electronic alternatives are appropriate they must be accessible if they are to benefit all students. The guidelines in this document, as well as the software accessibility guidelines listed in the section on selected development environments on page 16, make it possible to create accessible interactive software.

It is important to note that not every product can be made accessible. The educational goals of a program are sometimes incompatible with providing non-visual access, especially for students who are blind. For example, many programs for young children teach visual concepts, such as counting and color pattern matching. While blind students do need to learn to count and to make patterns, a program that uses only visual ways of teaching these skills is a poor candidate for adaptation. Low-vision students, however, may still learn from a visual program, provided it is well designed. Software should allow fonts to be adjusted, provide clear contrast for objects that students must locate and manipulate, include keyboard commands to reduce mouse dependence, and provide a system cursor that moves with important screen events so that magnifiers can track them. With these features in place, software with a range of educational goals can benefit students with some vision. More information on these adaptations is provided throughout this document.

Considering the Ages and Skill Levels of Students
Students of different ages and with different amounts of computer experience may need different kinds of accessibility features in educational software. Young children may not have been exposed to any assistive technology. For example, young children with visual impairments will have the most success with software that is designed to provide the œexibility they need directly through options a teacher can set for them, such as enhanced audio, larger fonts and icons, and high contrast backgrounds. Older students may have been taught to use a screen magnifier and can therefore rely less on adjustments available within the program itself.

Just as other computer users vary in the amount of experience and comfort they have in using software, users with disabilities vary greatly. Some students with visual impairments may receive keyboard training fairly early in their school career, while others may not use a computer until later. Some students may be comfortable using their assistive technology for only the most rudimentary tasks, while others will be more adept. Also, not all assistive technologies offer the same features, so some students may be able to use their assistive technology with a certain piece of software, while others will not. This range of skills, comfort levels and technology limitations should be considered when deciding how to provide accessibility in educational software.

Information on types of assistive technology can be found here. Further discussion of providing accessibility with and without the use of assistive technology is found in the section on types of accessibility.

Preserving Pedagogy During Access Adaptation
Some kinds of access adaptations may change the nature of the lesson or may seem to give students with disabilities the "answer" to an assessment question. It is important to consider the intended learning goals of each lesson in order to pick the most appropriate adaptation. For example, if students are shown a photograph of a bird and asked to describe the main features of the bird in a sentence, providing an audio description of that photograph for blind students takes away the need for the students to write a description themselves. However, providing a tactile image of the bird may allow blind students to explore the image and create their own description of the bird's main features. It may be equally appropriate to modify the activity slightly. If the goal of the lesson is to understand how different birds are similar and how they are different, students could listen to (or read) descriptions of two birds and compare their main features in a sentence. Teachers who have tried this kind of modification have often found that it benefits all their students.

These kinds of adaptations are sometimes suggested in teacher's editions of textbooks. In some cases they are created as needed by teachers in inclusive classrooms. Educational software can provide alternative activities automatically or with a teacher's intervention within the lesson or through supplemental materials.

The National Center on Access to the General Curriculum at the Center for Applied Special Technology at www.cast.org provides more information on access adaptations and the educational goals of instructional materials.

Benefits of Multimodal Learning
Making software and electronic textbooks accessible to students with disabilities has benefits for other students as well. These benefits are especially important for students learning English as a second language and those with reading difficulty. Accessible textbooks and software often provide multi-modal access to information, combining text with audio. Research shows that such multimedia materials can improve learning for non-disabled students. For example, Tindall-Ford and colleagues showed in several different experiments that when information is presented in audio and visual form, performance on complex tasks is improved (1997). J.R. Williams reviewed about 100 studies from the literature on use of multimedia in instruction and found that combining visual and verbal information can lead to enhanced comprehension (1998).