Enabling Technology - Introduction

Any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially or off the shelf, modified or cutomized, that increases, maintains or improves functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities

Assistive Technology (AT) refers to any device or system that helps to improve the functional capacity of people with disabilities. AT can now make it possible for people with disabilities to do more for themselves, to erform some of the functions that were previously difficult or impossible because of impairment.

AT has been with us from the time early man used a branch of a tree as a makeshift crutch. The last century saw the beginning of what we would have called "high tech" applications such as spectacles, hearing aids, Braille printers. There seems to be no limit to the possibilities and devices that can control computers by thought processes or send messages from the eye.

Assistive technology (AT) is a very broad field and may range from the very simple to the very complex. For the sake of description, it may be divided into high, medium and low-tech categories:

Assistive technology is sometimes referred to as "work-around" technology. The "fit" of technology solutions with the individual's circumstances must be carefully judged - low technology solutions are often more effective and easily integrated into a person's lifestyle.

The label "handicapped" tended to define the person as a whole and such people were viewed as a different element of society, often being excluded and separately educated. The emerging model for disability sees it as a specific attribute and not defining the person as a whole. The term "impairment" is often preferred, as it suggests the individual being impaired from normal functioning because of factors outside of the person, rather than within.

There is a plethora of terms and acronyms employed by experts in the fields of Technology and Special Needs. It is useful to become acquainted with some of the most commonly used.

OCR: Optical Character Recognition - a type of software used in scanners. Printed material, when scanned, is converted into text in a word processing programme.

The Centre for Research in IT and Education (CRITE) conducted a detailed study on "Best Practice in Innovation in Learning" for the Information Society Commission (ISC).A small part of the study investigated the area of "Accessibility".

This is a devision of Rehabilitation Engineering Research, Department of Design at Lund University, Sweden. It provides research and courses to contribute to improve opportunities for people with disabilities by developing more usable technical devices, new design consepts and new individual metods of learning and searching. A rich resource of case studies, research papers, publications and strong theories and methods behind the research.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 requires equal access on the WWW for people with a disability in employment, education, provision of services, banking, entertainment, public transport, activities of voluntary associations.

This web site links people with disabilities to a world of resources both on a national and international scale. The site also has a search engine for over 5,000 Organisations in Canada that deal with disabilities.

The EDF's activities are mainly run to policy actions based on the EU agenda, to establish contacts with EU Institutions, International and European Organisations. It campaigns to dismantle the barriers that deny disabled people equal opportunities. It tackles universal access in the following ares:

* Standardisation - New technology needs to be appropriately designed for disabled people. It reduces the need for human support and empowers disabled people by reducing dependency on others.

Assistive teachnology can enable a disabled person to be active in the labour market. Disabled people who can be economically active and participate in the workforce are the most obvious benefit from ensuring accessible product standards.

This body aims to collect and process information and knowledge that is available in individual countries and make them available to other countries that may need them. The information is about special needs in 18 participating countries as well as innovative measures, research and development at the national and European levels.

Information service for shopping, news items on people woth disabilities, forums and discussions.

The Inclusion and Special Needs Section of this web site investigates a series of issues on SEN and ICT in schools, research projects, information sheets on different areas of SEN and impairments. The site also has an extensive directory of organisations that can provide information to teachers, parents and students on the implementation of AT.

Ireland

"Special Needs was one of my immediate priorities when I became Minister for Education and Science. I believe that all pupils with identified special educational needs should have entitlement to quality educational services appropriate to their needs and abilities."

23 School Integration Projects (SIPs) have been set up for special needs. These Projects were set up in Special Schools around the country as well as Learning Support in mainstream schools. Details of these Projects are on the NCTE website under the SIP under current projects. These projects are intended to help determine models of good practice for the use of ICT across the Irish education system.

The Special Needs section provides information for teachers, parents and students on categories of SEN, ICT advise for students with specific impairments e.g. autism, dyspraxia, Emotional/Behavioural Disorders, guidelines on how to evaluate software and some case studies of individual children with specific imparments and ICT solutions.

The Act contains a grievance procedure, which provides a mechanism for parents to raise grievances about a lack of support services. The school may be required to "take appropriate remedial action" as a consequence of a substantiated grievance.

This Act may have more relevance to the provision of AT as it prohibits educational establishments from directly or indirectly discriminating in elation to access and participation.

IATSE is an association of and for teachers and educators of pupils with special educational needs in Ireland. It aims to spread knowledge among all teachers involoved in special education and to promote and encourage research in this area.

The ILSA is a teacher organisation to facilitate the continious improvement to the service provided to children with learning disabilities, so that these children have the access to the professional expertise of Learning Support Teachers and other revelant serv ices.

The DAI is an organisation which promotes awareness of specific learning disability (dyslexia) and to serve the needs of people with this difficulty.

Enable Ireland is the country's largest provider of services to people with physical dissabilities and their families.

The council seeks to encourage the economic, social and intellectual indepedence of members through the provision of a range of services such a mobility, daily living skills, library services, telephony skills and rehabilitation training.

MDI provides support to persons with neuromuscular conditions and their families through the provision of a range of support services.

Certain factors have to be considered when deciding to implement assistive technology. Assessment and decision-making should be as closely linked as possible to the context in which the individual will use the technology.

The Enabletech.ie Assistive Technology website suggests 9 factors that may be taken into consideration. These have been slightly changed

The MPT Model contains a series of instruments designed for technology providers concerned with the match of person and technology. Three components remain the same in all situations:

NCIP (National Center to Improve Practice in Special Education Through Technology, Media and Materials

This research center promotes language and literacy among young students with developmental disabilities in early childhood classrooms.

Epilepsy - Computers can adversely affect a very small proportion of people with photo-sensitive epilepsy.

Spina Bifida - Some individuals may have associated perceptual or other hidden difficulties that are not immediately apparent, but may represent a learning difficulty for the individual.

Use of AT for children in hospital or irregular attendance. Schools in hospitals are now experimenting with the use of AT for children.

An adequate configuration to use the majority of built-in adaptations would be 16 MB of RAM and 1 to 2 GB of hard disk space. 32 MB would be considered substantial and would provide the memory necessary to run the majority of add-on adaptations.

A rule of thumb is to purchase twice as much memory as you need to run 90% of your software. If 90% of the instructional software and add-on adaptations require 16 MB of RAM, purchase computers with at least double that amount.

Antoine Ó Raiftéirí (Anthony Raftery)

Antoine Ó Raiftéirí was born on 30th March 1779, in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo. He was the son of a weaver and had many brothers and sisters. An outbreak of smallbox when he was five years of age resulted in him being left blind and the loss of all of his siblings. Legend says that when he was still a young man, Raftery helped some fairies in distress and was granted a boon, the gift of poetry.

He became a wandering bard, in the Celtic druidic tradition, and is regarded by many as the last, great Irish bard (Bono, notwithstanding ;-). He wandered from Mayo to Sligo to Galway, going from town to town, singing songs and playing the violin, collecting whatever money people could spare in those hard times. He often composed poems or songs as he was singing them and was loved by most for his quick wit and acerbic humour.

Picture of Irish Five Punt Note

Information & Applications

Accessible Web Authoring GuideLines

7.1. Put in a Table of Contents

7.2. Seperate Links

7.3. Avoid unordered Lists

7.4. Include ALT text with images

7.5. Use tables wisely

7.6. Bits and Bobs

7.1. Put in a table of contents

At the top of each page, put in a table of contents that lists the titles of the main sections available in the page, this gives the visually impaired reader an overview of the page, just as sighted reader would scroll up and down the page to get an overview of the contents.

7.2. Seperate Links

Screen readers sometimes use a different voice or a different tone of voice for links, but if the link are one beside another, e.g.

link 1 link 2 link 3

then it will be difficult for the listener to distinguish between different links, a better approach is to either place the links on seperate lines, or seperate them using a vertical bar, i.e.

link 1 | link 2 | link 3

or with square brackets, i.e.

[ link 1 ][ link 2 ][ link 3 ]

7.3. Avoid Unordered Lists

Unordered lists (ones with bulletpoints) can be confusing for a number of reasons for screenreaders, but most importantly, if there are sub-items in a list most readers will be unable to distinguish sub-items from main list items, this is why it is much kinder to use numbered lists.

List Item
List Item
- Sub-List Item
- Sub-List Item
List Item

List Item
List Item
1. Sub-List Item
2. Sub-List Item
List Item

7.4. Include ALT Text with images

Images on a screen cannot be read or understood by screen reader, so the best thing you can do is provide a text explaination using the ALT option of the IMG tag. To see an example, place the pointer over the image below.

Rusty : The Wonder Dog

Similarly, for audio and video links, a text description of the they are about and the approximate sizes of the files should be included. e.g.

The Sound of Slience (1.22Mb)

Clip from "Gone with the Wind" (34Mb)

7.5. Use Tables Wisely

Screenreaders have to browse web-pages sequentially, thus when they encounter tables they are required to make decisions as to how they are going to read the tables. In the example below we have a table with two cells, one beside the other, the reader must decide does it read it a line at a time or a cell at a time :

This is the left side

This is the right side

Does it read "This is the This is the left side right side" or "This is the left side This is the right side" ?

if we consider the more complex case of a two-dimensional table, does it read it a line at a time or a row at a time or a column at a time :

This is the top left	This is the top right
This is the bottom left	This is the bottom right

Does it read "This is the This is the top left top right This is the This is the bottom left bottom right" or "This is the top left This is the top right This is the bottom left This is the bottom right " or "This is the top left This is the bottom left This is the top right This is the bottom right "?

Given this sort of conflict and that different readers behave differently, the best thing to do is USE TABLES WISELY and if the table has a header, identify it using the CAPTION option in the TABLE tag.

7.6. Bits and Bobs

7.6.1 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Cascading Style Sheets allow you to separate the appearance of web pages from the content of web pages, so the appearance can be beautiful, and it can still be read easily by a screen reader. Executive summary : God Bless CSS.

7.6.2 Fonts / Style / Size

Since most readers ignore text fonts, styes and sizes, try to avoid using fonts, styles (e.g. italics) or text size to emphasise a particular word or a particular point, do it by rephrasing the sentence.

7.6.3 Colour Combinations

Try to keep colour of text and background colours sufficiently different so that text is clearly readable, also try to avoid red-green mixes to help out colour blind people.

The Sydney Mind Switch

Alpha electroencephalographic activity remains poorly understood. While it has been used in attempts to control devices like computers, to date, success has been limited. Our research has resulted in an advance in this area. We have shown participants can achieve rapid, reliable and remote control of an electrical device using alpha wave activity associated with reduced visual input.

the machine uses two electrodes stuck to the scalp to measure an electrical signal produced in the brain's cortex immediately before a thought or action. These signals are fed into a computer: by manipulating his thoughts to cause shifts in the signals' amplitude the client can move a cursor to select one of halves of the alphabet, which appears successfully in thebottom of the screen. If he sees the letter he wants he moves the cursor down to the lower half of the screen. Each time he chooses, the bank of remaining divides agin. Eventually, he is left just with the letter he wants. The reserach is being done at the University of Tubingen in Germany.

"Salzmann (the client) communicates with others by controlling his brain signals and using them to instruct a computer to spell. For many "locked-in" patients, being able to make contact with people and interact with the outside world makes a vital difference to quality of life, bestowing a sense of autonomy and even sustaining the will to live." 22 February, New Scientist.

Choose a specific impairment or disability that you are interested in and would like to know more about, using the web, search for a definition of it and explain in simple terms how it impacts on the learner.

Research and suggest an appropriate AT that could be utilised to aid an individual (adult or child) in there day-to-day lives. Make a note of all acronyms and synonyms and related terms to the impairment you are investigating.

Yahoo! Reference: American Heritage® Dictionary

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1. What is Assistive Technology (AT)?

2. Terminology

3. Policies and Organisations

4. Frameworks

5. Research Journals

6. Basic System to support add-on adaptations

7. Accessible Web Design

8. Assistive Software/Hardware Technology

Ireland

Eye Tracking

Some techniques ;

Reflected Light

Electric Skin Potential

Contact Lenses

The Sydney Mind Switch

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