Keeping up with the rapid pace of technological change
can be daunting, but on campus it too often comes at the expense of disabled
students. Things don’t have to be that way, according to accessibility experts
who discussed proactive IT solutions with Campus Technology.
“There is a lot of pressure on IT because of budget
cuts and being asked to do more with less, so it is easy to ask what the payoff
is for [making technology accessible],” said Greg Kraus, IT accessibility
coordinator, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. “But what is the cost of
not doing it? It’s like people who don’t buy insurance until something bad
happens, and then say, ‘Oh, I guess I should have bought insurance.’”
First, few schools have accessibility requirements
built into their IT procurement process. NC State is an exception, requiring
every IT product to be evaluated for accessibility. Kraus complies with the
requirement by adding his own research to the information provided on the
voluntary product accessibility template (VPAT) form that most vendors supply
on each product.
“They can be a starting point, but they are
self-disclosing and not independently verified,” he said. “I always get my
hands on the product and do my own testing.”
Second, faculty must be able to develop content that
every student can access. Penn State University is working to help instructors
understand the issues of students with visual and audio impairments and make
developers available to help faculty develop online courses.
“I go to meetings and help developers design for
accessibility,” said Anita Colyer Graham, manager of access for the Penn State
online campus. “Often, it’s not that they are reluctant—they are unaware of
accessibility design issues.”
Finally, a systemwide approach should be put in place
to promote the sharing of problems and solutions. The California State
University system created its Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) to help
set goals and deadlines for improvements, such as its Roadmap for Accessibility
in Postsecondary Institutions, which was created to develop a plan to
institutionalize accessibility and measure the progress across the system’s campuses.
Because of the ATI program, most CSU campuses have
purchased web-evaluation tools that have resulted in cost savings. Cal State
Northridge and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo even worked with the evaluation tool to
develop accessibility checkpoints that check web pages and applications used by
the system. In addition, CSU is working on systemwide services to provide
captioning for course videos.
“We are also piloting RoboBraille, which allows users
to submit text materials and receive them back in a variety of accessible formats,”
said Cheryl Pruitt, director of the ATI program.
