• IT sensors for voice and/or presence recognition
• IT cameras and touch interface technologies to detect a person’s presence at a door for door-opening purposes
“It’s all things like that, and the more we learn about how to…give [students] a better experience where they’re safe, we learn more about what these disabilities do and the better we can help everyone,” Luttrell says.
While colleges have a lot to think about with their ADA compliance strategies, Luttrell says the extra effort is worth it.
“I know a lot of people think it’s annoying because they have to adhere to it, but at the end of the day, it helps us make everyone’s life a little bit better and on the same playing field, which is what it’s all about,” he says.
For some colleges, like Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), ADA compliance is a way of life.
Not only does the college fully support its Office of Disability Services, it also utilizes ADA compliant technologies as another limb for its student body.
Kate Beverage, Associate Director of the Technology Center at WPI says that many of the school’s departments and faculty are a massive support system for students with disabilities.
“As far as learning is concerned, we have a partnership that combines the instructional technologies department, disability services, student learning services, [and more],” she says. “Professors [have] technology for all students, or went to make it compliant. It’s the idea that special education is good education, and that that good education is accessible.”
Aside from its union of faculty and departmental support, WPI incorporated ADA compliance strategies in its curriculum.
“The students take advantage of research on campus,” Beverage says. “Physical disabilities – juniors and seniors [are using this] for their capstone projects. They do their projects on classroom…assistive technologies, such as podium height – they find a compromise with tall faculty and people in wheelchairs, the ergonomics.”
Beverage also says all of WPI’s classrooms are technology-enabled. Some of them are equipped with:
• Echo360 – for lecture capture solutions. Students can use this technology to speed up, slow down and live stream a lecture.
• Blackboard – a platform that encourages faculty to post notes. Blackboard is available in over 50 of WPI’s classrooms.
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking– a talk-to-text solution that notates information in class via voice
• Kurzweil – a text-to-speech solution that reads a text out loud
• AccessText Network – an online platform that works with publishers to streamline electronic texts. WPI also has a kiosk in it library that enables students to convert text to Braille, optimize character recognition, convert the files into an MP3, etc.
“It helps the people in the classroom,” says Laura Rosen, Assistant Director of the Office of Disability Services at WPI. “They can use technology to rewind a lecture, or Dragon Speech for talk to text. They even hear programs on the radio saying how Kurt Schilling uses it [Dragon]. It’s reducing the stigma of having a disability. This is what helps us help others.”
How to Give Your College’s ADA Compliance a Comeback
Talk to your students
By having an open communication with your students, colleges will know how to help them, from which technologies to invest in to which support groups they should formulate. Plus, students will be able to give their colleges productive feedback on which solutions are helping them, and which ones are a waste of time and money.
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