At the Pathways to Success for Students with Invisible Disabilities Capacity Building Institute (CBI), held at Landmark College from April 8 – 9, 2013, a panel of Landmark faculty members discussed several different technologies that can be helpful to students with invisible disabilities, including learning disabilities, attention deficits, and autism spectrum disorders. Listed below are some panelist suggestions.
Learning management systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, Canvas, Desire2Learn, and Moodle allow instructors to provide online courses within the context of a consistent standard interface. One accessibility benefit of using an LMS is that many students with disabilities have the greatest success in accessing web content when it is presented using a consistent layout. If an educational institution standardizes on a particular LMS package, students at that institution will likely encounter the same online course interface for many of their classes throughout their academic career.
Founded in 1997, the National Youth Leadership Network (NYLN) "is dedicated to breaking isolation and building community through supporting youth with disabilities to reach their full potential." NYLN organizes people with disabilities, who are 16-28 years old, to create positive change for people with disabilities. Youth involved with NYLN build leadership skills and are active in disability rights issues.
The Career and Technical Education Program (CTE) at Seattle Public Schools serves a wide variety of students with different learning needs.
Postsecondary career counselors and employment recruiters report that many college students and job seekers are not prepared to succinctly describe their skills and abilities to others. The AccessSTEM CAREERS project, which promotes science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields to students and job seekers with disabilities, created an event called the Elevator Pitch Contest to help them build skills in this area.
The first set of formal guidelines for identifying how to develop accessible web content was the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), developed through the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI™). WCAG 1.0 became an official W3C® Recommendation on May 5, 1999. The WCAG 1.0 lists fourteen guidelines and, additionally, provides a list of checkpoints for each guideline. There are a total of sixty-five checkpoints.
To determine whether a software application is accessible, the application should be evaluated according to a set of guidelines or standards that defines software accessibility.
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF makes it possible to distribute documents with original formatting intact. PDF files are created by scanning an original print document or by using a variety of popular software applications.
Describing the information conveyed within complex images such as graphs, charts, and diagrams can be challenging. Images must have text alternatives in order to be accessible to people who are unable to see the images, such as people who are blind and using screen reader software to read a document. Text alternatives are designed to describe the information or function the images are intended to convey. Fortunately, there are a few excellent resources that provide guidelines for describing complex images, supplemented with a variety of examples.
Staff of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) have created an outreach blog designed to explain neuroscience and sensorimotor neural engineering to under-represented youth.