Special needs and accessibility design

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (1994), education for students with special needs is required by law and government policy to allow a student with disabilities to be educated on the same basis as other students. Students with special needs, by definition, is a general term used to describe “a student who has a disability of an

intellectual, physical, sensory, emotional or behavioural nature, has a learning disability or has exceptional gifts or talents”, states British Columbia Ministry of Education (1989, p. 71). Thus, it is necessary for stakeholders in the

education system to understand the characteristics of those students and how those characteristics influence individual learning in order to design and prepare learning materials to meet those needs.

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The history of special needs education can track back to as far as the 16th century, though the final stages of the 20th century has seen many nations across the world move to a more ‘inclusive’ education paradigm (Kode, 2002; Poon, Musti-Ra, & Wettasinghe, 2013; A.F. Rotatori, Obiakor, & Bakken, 2011; Rushbrook, 2012). According to Jenkinson (1997), a form of segregation or exclusion in education is experienced when students with special needs are traditionally educated in specialised instructions set apart from regular schools. Special educators felt that they were able to apply curriculum and teach those students with unique needs more efficiently in a controlled environment and with customised curriculum (A.F. Rotatori et al., 2011; Rushbrook, 2012). There was also the belief that students with special needs could benefit from segregation in such ‘safe’ environments, with students experiencing confidence or self-esteem among classmates having the same disabilities (Jenkinson, 1997). However, researchers and educators are concerned that the segregation of students with disabilities will lead to problems such isolation, accessibility label outside of schools and, slow learning development of disabled students (Dunn, 1968; Jenkinson, 1997). Essentially, if students are segregated in the educational context, the socialisation aspects found within a ‘normal’ learning environment will be largely lost to these students, and the benefits such socialisation may provide for interactions with the wider community. Specialised education of students with disabilities can impact not just the students but also the educators who can also become isolated, leading to their teaching competencies becoming more defined and limiting (C. R. Smith, 1998). The move towards integrated education is known as ‘Mainstreaming’ or ‘Normalisation’, where disabled students are alongside their able bodied peers in the same educational location and context (Hayes, 1989).

According to the findings of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (1988) showed that most teachers were willing to take on the responsibility for students with disabilities in regular classrooms however, they lacked knowledge of special needs for students with disabilities, a finding that perfectly aligns with the results of the university staff surveys presented in chapters five and six of this thesis. Between 1988 and 1993, the process of implementing training, developing materials for special needs students and for teachers was conducted in a number of countries such as Africa (Kenya), Asia (China), and Europe (Romania), the results of which clearly showed that there significant benefits in improving school practice regarding special needs students (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1993). The perceived success of the project

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(which had recently completed) leads to the discussion of inclusive education in the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1994). Inclusion education has been high priority approach in many governments and institutions to reform their policy regarding more inclusive direction (Sayed & Soudien, 2005). However, some educators confuse the terminology describing special and inclusive education (Bunch, 1994), to which the Alliance for Inclusive Education (n.d.) Table 2-4 defines the various types of special education as following:

Table 2-4: Concepts of segregation, integration and inclusion Education

Segregation

Integration

Inclusion

Disabled people of all ages and/or those learners with 'Special Educational Needs' labels being placed in any form of segregated education setting. This tends to force disabled people to lead a separate life.

For example: Separate special school, college or separate unit within school/college or on separate segregated courses within mainstream education settings.

Disabled people of all ages and/or those learners with 'Special Educational Needs' labels being placed in mainstream education settings with some adaptations and resources, but on condition that the disabled person and/or the learner with 'Special Educational Needs' labels can fit in with pre-existing structures, attitudes and an unaltered environment.

For example: The child is required to "fit in" to what already exists in the school.

Disabled people of all ages and/or those learners with 'Special Educational Needs' labels being educated in mainstream education settings alongside their nondisabled peers, where there is a commitment to removing all barriers to the full participation of everyone as equally valued and unique individuals.

For example: Education for ALL

In other word, all students including students with disabilities should be welcome, accepted and the learning experience made comfortable in accordance to the tenets of the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action and the Convention against Discrimination in Education.

In terms of online material design, content providers in institutions should be aware of the individual needs of learners in order to ensure that online materials can be accessible to all students. For example, Treviranus, Mitchell, Clark, and Roberts (2014) presents Flexible Learning for Open Education (FLOE), designed to serve personalised and embedded accessible learning. The FLOE is based on Open Education Resource (OER) platforms and aims to ensure that the resources are accessible and meet the needs of all learners including learners with disabilities. The World Wide Web Consortium (2012d , para 1) states “How do people who cannot move their arms

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understanding, or have other accessibility needs?”. In general, visually impaired students may not be able to detect

illustrations or read text on websites. Screen readers such as JAWs NVDA can be used by students who are legally blind or who have reduced vision, however those applications can read only text content but cannot identify the content of images or other multimedia formats. Image content with missing alternative text may be ignored by screen readers, which is not a problem for purely decorative items, but is an issue for visual items containing required informational content. Consequently, providing alternative text (ALT) properly is essential for screen readers to interpret images. For example, the ALT can be presented in many ways:

 For a purely decorative image, <img src="/images/blank.gif" alt="">

 For long description attribute, <img src="results.gif" alt="Analysis of experiment results" longdesc="detailedresults.htm">

In the above, the first ALT=”” can be used as an indicator that there is no informational value associated with this image (as in this case it is decorative) whilst in the second ALT example this attribute is paired with a longdesc (long description) attribute that points the user to a file containing a longer description of the image content. There is no set rule regarding the length of ALT but experts suggest that 125 characters or fewer is good for screen readers such as JAWS that read such content to users (The Pennsylvania State University, n.d.). Also, hearing- impaired students may not always hear audio information that is available on the internet, such as podcasts, thus text transcripts of that audio is necessary for them to make use of the audio medium. Similarly, videos without subtitles or full text transcripts are of little use to students with hearing impairments. Physically impaired students who cannot use a mouse must rely on a keyboard or alternative pointing device such as a mouth stick. Munro & McMulin (2009, Table 2-5) noted that students with disabilities may have problems from interacting with e- learning, as outlined in the following table.

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Table 2-5 : Accessibility issues in e-learning

Visual Disability Auditory Disability Motor/Mobility Disability Cognitive/Neurological Disability

Indicate issues with text, hypertext and navigation

 Screen layout or navigator is irregular.

 Visual layout and arrangement used to represent information.

 Disordered structure of information.

 Use of Flash technology.

 Content does not support assistive technology such as voice recognition software.  Navigator requires special pointer.  Lack of logical structure.  Screen layout or navigator is irregular.

 Content does not support assistive technology such as speech software.  Use of Flash technology.  Unclear indication of page language.

Indicate issues with images, pictures, diagrams

 They cannot be adjusted to scale.

 Lack of alternative text.

 Disordered structure of information.

 Disordered structure of information.

Indicate Issues with interaction

 Interaction requires activities on screen.  Interaction is not supported by keyboard.  Interaction requires intensive pointer.  Interaction is not compatible with alternative device such as voice recognition software.

Indicate Issues with animation media

 They cannot be adjusted to scale.

 They are designed with colour alone.

 Lack of synchronised alternative support.

 Audio media cannot be controlled.

 Lack of

synchronised text based support.

 Lack of alternative devices such as voice recognition software support.  Lack of warning support.  Media cannot be controlled.

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In terms of the accessibility of e-learning materials, a majority of these needs can be met by adherence to accessibility guidelines and best practice.

There is a relationship between accessibility quality and complexity depending on the amount of elements present in a web page (Lopes & Gomes, 2010), meaning that the quality of accessible sites can depend on the simplicity of design and the structure of the webpage and its content. A well-designed accessible website can make web content more readable for dyslexic users (Rello, Kanvinde, & Baeza-Yates, 2012) with 63.64% of participants choosing the biggest font size (26 points) available to them. Fryia and colleagues (2009) also support a similar concept that students with cognitive and learning disabilities (CLDs) perform well on tasks with online materials that are designed specifically to meet the needs of students with CLDs, such as participants being easily and quickly able to locate all links without requiring further instructions. Users who are deaf or hard of hearing benefit from the addition of sign language interpreter modules alongside site content such as video, audio, subtitles and media navigation controls on websites (Debevc, Kosec, Rotovnik, & Holzinger, 2009). This research shows that 92% of participant users maintained a high interest and were satisfied with the transparent sign language, and agreed that it was a useful feature, though it does raise an interesting issue of then making that content more regionalised given the wide variety of sign languages currently used across the nations of the world.