New Concerns - Equity of Access: Adaptive Technology - The Research Center on Computing & Society

Text-only Version

Frances S. Grodzinsky

Click here for a text version of this 7.56 MB video presentation.

New Concerns

During the first two years of the ATL, several new concerns arose. Although an adaptive technology laboratory may be a partial solution to the question of how to effectively serve students with disabilities, more and more universities are demanding laptop computers for all incoming freshmen, and so the issue arises of adaptive technology for the laptops for incoming students with disabilities. Will the university buy site licenses to allow adaptive software to be loaded onto such machines? How will the problem of alternative input devices be resolved when laptop computers configured and supported by the university are mandated for all first-year students? Providing a laptop without adaptive software for students with learning disabilities, or without alternative input devices for students who are physically challenged, would be useless.

For example, a first-year student at Sacred Heart University who had significant learning disabilities rarely used his computer. He had a very difficult time with the keyboard and was distracted by the scrolling screen. Consequently, his papers were poorly written. He failed three of the five courses that required papers during his first semester. When he was evaluated in the ATL, it was observed that because of his lack of keyboard fluency, he used very small words and simple sentences, and he could not cut and paste easily. After experimenting with several software applications, he learned to use an abbreviation-expansion program that allowed him to retrieve words by typing in abbreviations. He was also introduced to word-prediction programs that allowed him to choose words by typing in a letter or a number. He spent many hours learning how these tools worked and how they could interface with his word processor. By the second semester, there were no longer technological barriers to writing papers, and he passed all of his courses.(10)

While this student could successfully complete his work at the ATL, he was still unable to use his laptop. He needed to have the appropriate adaptive software installed on his laptop for it to be useful to him. Barton states that

scholarship provides evidence in support of the leading ideas of the dominant discourse – namely, that the use of technology can expand pedagogy and expand literacy; it also buttresses the major ideas of the antidominant discourse – namely, that the use of technology can contribute to the maintenance of unequal relations of power and authority. (7)

We are currently working with the computer center staff to sensitize them to these issues.

Although the adaptive technology laboratory has been a tremendous resource for individual out-of-class assignments, it did not address the problem of in-class computing. Several of our classes, from English to computer science, are taught in a laboratory setting. Our university has six computer laboratories and several networked classrooms for general university use. Unfortunately, the present platforms are not equipped with adaptive devices, even though these labs have handicapped access. It is ironic that handicapped access means one can get a wheelchair through the door, but it does not mean that one can fit it underneath the worktable! As a result, students who are visually-impaired cannot read the screens for in-class work. There are no screen enlargers, nor is there voice output.

The first-year writing program at Sacred Heart University offers an instructive illustration of the resulting problems. Electron Networks for Interaction (ENFI) is a program developed at Gallaudet University to enable deaf students to interact in classroom discussions. Using ENFI, English composition is taught in a closed laboratory; and students use the computer to collaborate, brainstorm, and critique each other’s work. Although this works very well for our able-bodied students, it creates a technological challenge and frustration for those with certain impairments. One student with cerebral palsy, for example, could not easily respond to his classmates’ queries because his restricted hand movements made it impossible to type anything but short words in real time. Another student, with a severe visual impairment, could not read the screen and was therefore eliminated from any in-class exchanges. Both of these students paid for the course, were allowed to register for it, and were expected to do the work! Networks, which in theory democratize participation by creating a level of equality, were useless because the students in question had physical impediments to their access.

Ellen Barton affirms that the dominant discourse in technology – based upon an unquestioned assumption that technology benefits society – sometimes marginalizes the very people it strives to empower. The way technology is integrated into the classroom often follows “an institutional imperative, in which the making of meaning is subject to the existing lines of authority in a particular context.”(7) Had the needs of incoming students with disabilities been assessed before the semester began, the relevant laboratories could have been equipped with appropriate adaptive devices, thereby saving the students embarrassment and frustration from working with technology that was, for them, inappropriate.(10) Recently, students at Sacred Heart University who have used adaptive devices in the laboratory have begun to advocate, as their right to equal access in the classroom, that such tools be provided by the university in other computer settings.

Back to the top

Go to: Examples of Adaptive Technology

Home > Research Resources > Adaptive Technology > Equity of Access: Adaptive Technology

The Research Center on Computing & Society
at Southern Connecticut State University
501 Crescent Street • New Haven, CT 06515
Director: (203) 392-6790 • e-mail: webmaster@computerethics.org

© 2000 – 2007 – Research Center on Computing & Society