AT generally consists of hardware and software solutions that are installed on the user's computer. But that's only half the story. Two things are necessary for effective communication to take place:
- Tier 1 - Assistive Technology Tools – The student with a disability must have the appropriate technology to access the computer. This may include special AT hardware and/or software. This tier assumes that the information is in an accessible format that may be rendered by the student's AT. This tier is within the control of the student.
- Tier 2 – Accessibly Designed Electronic Materials – The information being presented to the student must be in a format accessible to them. Accessibility means that the needed information is able to transform gracefully to an appropriate format. For example, HTML information generally is transformable to a variety of formats such as text-to-speech, large print, Braille, etc. Printed information is difficult to transform and requires scanning to produce digital information. This tier is not within the control of the student.
This creates a two-tiered access model. If either of the above elements is inaccessible, effective communication cannot take place. Lack of AT access affects students with disabilities. Lack of web access affects ALL students, whether they are disabled or not.
Accessibility requires appropriate AT on the student's side and accessible information on the instructor's side.
Example: Have you ever had the experience of receiving an attachment via email from a colleague only to be frustrated when you were unable to open it? In this example, your computer (tier 1) may be accessible to you. Perhaps you use WordPerfect as your word processor of choice. Documents created in this format are accessible to you. However, your colleague uses Microsoft Word as her word processor. When she sends a Microsoft Word document to you as an attachment, the document format creates an information barrier (tier 2). Although it has nothing to do with disability, this situation prevents access to information.
Assistive Technology Goes Mainstream
AT tools are hardware or software solutions to accommodate people with disabilities. These tools are usually used in conjunction with a personal computer (PC). But a growing number of historically "disability-related" AT tools are finding their way into the mainstream. For example, most PC operating systems (such as Windows and MacOS) have magnification, text-to-speech, and voice recognition utilities built-in.
The line between disability tools and mainstream tools is getting fuzzy.
PCs are only part of the story. More and more frequently, information access is moving away from the traditional PC-centered model towards a wireless, hand-held model. Small hand-held devices sacrifice the power of the PC for the convenience of wireless information access in a time and manner that is convenient to the user. For example, data-enabled cell phones and personal data assistants (PDA) with their multiple information services (email, text-messaging, video) are good examples of these new tools.
The same design techniques that make electronic materials accessible to students with disabilities make them accessible by users of more mainstream information tools.
Example: Do you have a digital phone that allows you to browse the Web? Students use these devices more and more frequently to access educational information.
