Disability-related issues can be easily integrated into many areas of study. The Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies (CHPLDS) website, contains a vast selection of materials and resources to help educators integrate disability studies into social studies, history, literature, and related subjects.
Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) were created to allow people who have difficulty hearing or speaking on the telephone to communicate with voice telephone users. Under Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) [1], each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and all of the U.S. territories must provide free relay services.
My name is Keisha and I am a student at a small Midwestern college. I am blind. My college converted from a telephone registration system to an online registration system. They determined that it was not economically feasible to maintain both systems and discontinued the phone system.
The web-based system my college chose is not accessible to screen readers. Without the phone system I had no way to register for my classes.
Classroom, state accountability, and other math assessments are typically designed for a student who can use a pencil and paper. When the test administration is inaccessible to a student with a disability, reasonable accommodations will need to be provided to afford equal access to the instrument. For example, a person could record answers for a student who cannot do so independently.
My name is Rick and I am legally blind. I use Braille or a screen reader on a computer to access printed or electronic information. This quarter, one of my sociology courses has a number of required articles on electronic library reserve.
When I opened the electronic documents, my screen reader could not read them. The format was incompatible with my screen reading software, and I was therefore unable to access the library reserve articles.
My name is Imke. I am a blind graduate student in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. I use a refreshable Braille display to access text that appears on a computer screen.
Some data I use for my research are available on the web page of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO). The site includes plots of various climate indices that are not accessible to me, since neither refreshable Braille displays nor speech synthesizers are capable of reproducing graphics.
The federal government maintains a web page called IT Accessibility Laws and Policies which summarizes the accessibility-related laws, policies, standards or guidelines, and other resources that states have published on-line in support of website accessibility, application development, and IT procurement. Each initiative is accompanied by a link to its state-based source.
Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, which took effect in 1996, requires that telephone products and services be accessible to people with disabilities to the extent access is "readily achievable." The American Foundation for the Blind has a web page for consumers, Cell Phones, Tablets, and Other Mobile Technology for Users with Visual Impairments.
The Trace Center has prepared a document, A Brief Introduction to Disabilities, that discusses major disability groups and some specific barriers to accessibility they encounter. This online publication describes specific access issues related to visual impairments, hearing impairments, physical impairments, cognitive/language impairments, seizure disorders, and multiple impairments.
In an effort to improve the accessibility of University of Washington (UW) online courses and websites, several campus organizations including DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology), C&C Project Consulting, the UW Access Technology Center, and the UW Educational Outreach program, formed a user support group, AccessibleWeb@U.