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Statement of the National Council on Disability September 14, 2000 For further information contact: Jeff Rosen, Martin Gould, Ed.D., The National Council on Disability is most pleased to share with the Web-based Education Commission our vision of equal access to education for individuals with disabilities of all ages. In addressing the policy issue that prevent students' "access" to information technology which includes the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), our statement will lay out our mission and statutory authority; describe some of our recent work in this area; discuss the relevance of access for students with disabilities; define the scope of the access problem for student with disabilities in America; and, present strategies for change to resolve access barriers that students with disabilities currently face. Mission NCD is an independent federal agency with 15 members appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The overall purpose of NCD is to promote policies, programs, practices, and procedures that guarantee equal opportunity for all individuals with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability; and to empower individuals with disabilities to achieve economic self-sufficiency, independent living, and inclusion and integration into all aspects of society. Statutory History NCD was initially established in 1978 as an advisory board within the Department of Education (Public Law 95-602). The Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1984 (Public Law 98-221) transformed NCD into an independent agency. Specific Duties The current statutory mandate of NCD includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Consumers Served and Current Activities While many government agencies deal with issues and programs affecting people with disabilities, NCD is the only federal agency charged with addressing, analyzing, and making recommendations on issues of public policy that affect people with disabilities regardless of age, disability type, perceived employment potential, economic need, specific functional ability, status as a veteran, or other individual circumstance. NCD recognizes its unique opportunity to facilitate independent living, community integration, and employment opportunities for people with disabilities by ensuring an informed and coordinated approach to addressing the concerns of persons with disabilities and eliminating barriers to their active participation in community and family life. NCD plays a major role in developing disability policy in America. In fact, it was NCD that originally proposed what eventually became the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). NCD's present list of key issues includes improving personal assistance services, promoting health care reform, including students with disabilities in high-quality programs in typical neighborhood schools, promoting equal employment and community housing opportunities, monitoring the implementation of ADA, improving IT and telecommunication, improving assistive technology, and ensuring that persons with disabilities who are members of minority groups fully participate in society. As part of its research agenda, the National Council on Disability (NCD) established a community-based, cross-disability consumer task force on technology in January 1995. Known as Technology Watch (Tech Watch), the 11-member task force provides information to NCD on issues relating to emerging legislation on assistive and information technology (IT) and helps monitor compliance with civil rights legislation, such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended. For example, NCD submitted Federal Policy Barriers to Assistive Technology to the U.S. Congress this year, as required by the Assistive Technology Act of 1998 (P.L. 105-394), Title II, Section 202. As the title implies, this report describes the barriers in federal assistive technology (AT) policy to increasing the availability of and access to assistive technology devices and assistive technology services for people with disabilities. The Web-based Education's Policy Issue of Access and its Relevance to People with Disabilities The Importance Of Information Technology ( IT) As we begin the millennium, citizens of all ages have come to rely increasingly on IT, such as the World Wide Web (WWW), in every aspect of life: home, work, play, and community. For most people, IT makes life easier, broadens horizons, or for the young provides an earlier start to learning. However, for people with disabilities, IT changes the most ordinary of daily activities from impossible to possible. In an ideal climate, no person with a disability should be denied the opportunity to obtain meaningful access to IT and transfer its inherent potential into viable, life-fulfilling endeavors. For people with disabilities, access to IT provides all the advantages provided to everyone else, plus some special ones. The special advantages include the following:
In the currency of educational life, what is more becoming more important yet also increasingly more taken for granted than access to IT? But for many students with disabilities, the IT access and exchange that most of us take for granted is difficult or impossible. Looked at from the standpoint of its opportunity costs, or from that of the inequity it fosters in society, systematic denial of access to IT has increasingly come to be understood as a fundamental concern. In America we advertise job openings so the broadest range of qualified people may have the opportunity to compete for them. We attach such importance to timely notice from government regarding its decisions about our lives--denial of a disability claim, demand for additional taxes, granting of a driver's license--that our rights to such information are enshrined in law and even reach the level of constitutional due process. And we recognize that information from and about government is essential to the functioning of our democracy and to the individual's exercise of the responsibilities of citizenship. No one would dispute that students with disabilities have the same right and need for IT everyone else has. Nevertheless for many of these people, the information gap (both a cause and a consequence of various forms of economic and social disadvantage) is not narrowing. Paradoxically, at the very time when many people comfortably assume that technology is steadily bringing people with disabilities more opportunities for access than they have ever known before, this same technology (coupled with the attitudes and expectations of those who use it) may in many cases be reinforcing patterns of exclusion and isolation. Recent initiatives such as the Digital Divide Project have demonstrated the existence and the consequences of major disparities in our society between information haves and have-nots. The harm attributable to the information gap is severe, both for those individuals denied opportunity and participation as a result of it and for society as a whole. While increasingly clear that students with disabilities can all too often be counted on the have-not side of the information and information access equation, the reasons and remedies for this exclusion do not appear as yet to be well or widely understood. Leaving aside broader questions of such as poverty, or even discrimination, reduced to its clearest and simplest formulation, the problem is that much IT the rest of our society takes for granted is not provided or disseminated in ways accessible or usable by students with sensory, motor and cognitive disabilities. This situation is particularly true on the Internet and WWW, and for students in America's public schools. Scope of the Information Technology (IT) Access Problem
As the importance of IT in our lives grows, so too do our sense of the number of students affected by IT inaccessibility and our appreciation of the ways IT inequality harms us. Educational services for students with disabilities have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. In fact, technology for all students and technology for students with disabilities has become more commonplace in schools across the country. For example, federal policy regarding school obligations to deliver assistive technology - which often involves IT and/or telecommunications - has also changed dramatically in the past decade. Special education law has required the provision of assistive technology if needed as part of a "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) for more than 10 years. In 1990, amendments to IDEA included broad definitions of assistive technology devices and services and a specific requirement for schools to provide AT if needed for FAPE as part of special education, related services, or supplementary aids and services. The 1997 reauthorization of IDEA added a requirement that each individualized education program (IEP) team consider AT as one of a number of "special factor considerations." With the new IDEA special factor requirement, every IEP team must consider the assistive technology needs of every student. This new federal mandate has created a policy development and implementation need in every state and local school district. Using IDEA child count information, IEP teams will need to "consider" the assistive technology needs of 5.6 million students each year. This consideration and documentation through the IEP process will be repeated annually for every student, resulting in a minimum of 5.6 million assistive technology considerations per year. Billions of dollars are being expended on technology for schools, with the promise of every school being wired and every student having a computer. Computer usage for instruction and learning is found today in most every type of program, at every grade level, in every school across the country. From 1997 to 1998, the number of instructional classrooms with Internet access increased from 27 percent to 51 percent (Digest of Educational Statistics, 1998). If that rate of growth continues, almost all classrooms will have Internet access in the next few years. Unfortunately, the rapid acquisition of educational technology has not sufficiently addressed the needs of students with disabilities. Access for students with disabilities is just beginning to be identified as an important factor when purchasing educational technology. Barriers to the use of advanced telecommunications for students with disabilities in public schools include special education teachers not sufficiently trained to use equipment; insufficient evaluation and support services to meet special technology needs; too few computers with alternative input-output devices; too few computers available to students with disabilities; and school administrators not seeing telecommunications as relevant for many students with disabilities (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000). There currently are no federal policies or standards regarding accessibility of educational media and materials, and limited resources have been devoted to promoting the concept of universally designed curricula and educational assessment materials. A few states have begun to address the issue. For example, Texas requires textbook publishers who sell to Texas elementary and secondary schools to provide a standardized electronic version of the text for accessibility purposes (e.g., expedient braille production). Missouri recently passed legislation that requires elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools to procure educational materials from publishers who will provide standardized electronic text. New California legislation requires publishers to provide their products in electronic format for students with disabilities attending state and community colleges in California. In support of these efforts, the American Printing House for the Blind is establishing a central repository of electronic textbooks that will make such files available to schools throughout the country. How is it that access to IT for students with disabilities remains a serious problem? How is it that the aspiration of students with disabilities for timely, accurate, and contextually-sensitive access to IT comes as a surprise to some, a fringe special-interest demand to others, and a perceived threat to not a few? These questions are important to address, because without as clear a sense as possible of the nature of barriers to IT accessibility, the formulation and evaluation of strategies by the Commission for resolving the problem will be made that much more difficult and uncertain. What Can the Web-Based Education Commission Do to Improve Access? Strategies for achieving change If the agents of change are awareness, knowledge, and motivation, then the strategies for causing change should be based on these agents. There are recommendations specifically for government, for industry, for technical/research groups, and for consumers. All are considered key to bringing about the changes necessary to ensure access for everyone, especially students, to IT. Strategies for increasing awareness The need for increased awareness of access issues and strategies is not limited to industry designers and engineers. The Web-based education Commission has a key role to play in this regard. Researchers in the public (and private) sector must to be included in activities to increase awareness. Likewise, policy makers and people with disabilities must be more aware of the issues and strategies surrounding access to information systems. The Web-based Education Commission can employ strategies such as defining access as a policy goal; ensuring that the topic of access is maintained as a high priority; including at least a section discussing disability access issues in any documentation by the Commission; assuming a leadership role in publicizing the benefits of access; including access in policy initiatives regarding universal service and universal access; and requiring that all grants dealing with IT include a statement describing how recipients will address issues of disability access. The Web-based Education Commission can also support efforts to secure broad input from disability groups, bring the different groups together to identify acceptable cross-disability access strategies, and promote activities that can heighten public and industry awareness of access issues. Technical and research groups affiliated with the Commission can publish professional papers describing research and development efforts regarding disability access issues, publicize access-related research and development efforts, and participate in and disseminate information at disability- and nondisability-related conferences. Consumers and disability constituencies can make access needs known to the Commission and give both positive and negative feedback, provide input to related government and industry regulatory and policy boards, closely consider cross-disability access issues in contrast to those of their own particular constituency, work cooperatively with other disability constituencies, and participate in government- and industry-sponsored activities to promote awareness of access issues. Strategies for Creation and Dissemination of Knowledge The creation and dissemination of knowledge pertaining to access has two major components. First, research must be sponsored to develop answers and solution strategies to the many access issues posed by emerging technologies. Second, the knowledge obtained must to be disseminated to researchers, developers, manufacturers, policymakers, and consumers. The Commission has a role to play in relation to both components. Government can create funding programs that target accessibility research, recognize that much government-funded research is conducted in areas that are complementary to accessibility research and require that accessibility be included in such research, foster university-industry research and development efforts, promote efforts between disability-oriented technology research groups and research groups focused on next-generation information system and human-computer interfaces, work at all levels to disseminate information to education agencies having direct contact with students with disabilities, disseminate information to disability advocacy and consumer groups, publicize new information in appropriate journals and media, encourage consumer and user participation in educating policymakers regarding access issues, and include consumer feedback mechanisms for all IT development activities. Industry can include students with disabilities in human factors and product design research and in alpha and beta testing cycles, provide access to early product betas and developer support for third-party access developers and manufacturers, and provide adequate training to product support staff. Technical and research groups affiliated with the Commission can, in addition to the strategies listed for government and industry, work closely both with groups representing a variety of disabilities and with industry. Consumers and disability communities can educate themselves, the Commission, and others regarding existing and future technologies and related access issues, educate product and service providers as to specific product-and service-related access needs, and work within the framework of government and industry concerns. Strategies for increasing motivation Although legislating change is not the only mechanism for motivating change, a surprisingly large number of company executives have confidentially suggested legislation as the most effective mechanism for causing change within their companies. The Web-based Education Commission has a pivotal role to exercise here. Government can increase motivation by updating regulations to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to better account for IT, adopt performance benchmarking for accessibility, encourage the private sector to work collaboratively with experts designing technological solutions to access barriers, include access and universal design requirements in existing or new legislation, set standards according to legislative mandates, apply standards and requirements to all government efforts, and include requests or requirements for disability access in all federal and state purchase requests. Motivation can be increased when the Commission, speaking as one expert voice of the American government, providing documentation to industry of any increase in market size or market penetration that would result from incorporating access, stimulating students' requests for access features, promoting and achieving the inclusion of disability access features in product reviews, providing recognition or awards for particularly well-designed products or services, and developing cross-disability consensus regarding recommended access features. HOME | FAQs | NEWSROOM | SITE MAP | FEDERAL AGENCIES | RESOURCES |
