Raising the Awareness of Online Accessibility: The Importance of Developing and Investing in Online Course Materials that Enrich the Classroom Experience for Special-Needs Students

IN EARLY 2002, I PARTICIPATED IN A TRAINING INSTITUTE for online methodology that provided several practical techniques for teaching online, including how to select and place content, as well as how to facilitate online discussions and assessment strategies. Since then, I have taught online and hybrid courses every semester, joined forums for online instructors, and attended a handful of conferences and workshops dedicated to online teaching. Interestingly, none of the forums ever included discussions on the development of course materials for special-needs students. And although there has been much dialogue recently about teaching to different learning styles, as I recall, none of these discussions even hinted that teaching to different styles included students with learning disabilities or that students may be using assistive technology, such as a screen reader or voice-recognition software, to access online course materials. I do not mean to imply there is no consideration for special-needs students because, like most institutions, Middlesex Community College (which has two campuses in Massachusetts) has a wonderful department that supports students with documented disabilities. There is a comprehensive faculty handbook that defines and explains disabilities, outlines the college's policies and procedures, and offers teaching strategies. The college also offers ample on-campus professional development workshops. So obviously the information is available, but discussions on teaching students with disabilities are still generally separate, awareness of issues that arise is not mainstream, and conversations about online instructional design for learning are not quite universal. However, the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) has coined the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) concept as "a new paradigm for teaching, learning and assessment, drawing on new brain research and new media technologies to respond to individual learner differences. " So, as schools and colleges continue to adopt course management tools such as Blackboard and WebCT, more educators are offering instruction and posting course materials online. In addition, numerous articles have been written on how to create HTML pages that comply with Section 508 and the World Wide Web Consortium's accessibility standards. But as Web-based course management tools become more accessible, training for these platforms needs to include discussions about how to make materials and curricula accessible to all potential users. With this in mind, I set out to collect observations and anecdotal information to gain insight into the experiences of specialneeds students who take online courses, because "the future is in the margins" as the folks at CAST like to say. That is, "by helping those who are marginalized in traditional classrooms (e.g., those with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and other challenges), we discover educational methods and materials that are flexible and powerful enough to help all students, regardless of their ability, maximize their progress" (CAST 2004). Student Accounts Those with learning disabilities account for the largest proportion of special-needs students, so I was particularly interested in their experiences with the online course format. Fortunately, this past semester, two students enrolled in online classes were eager to share their observations on how the online format impacted their learning. The first student, Beth, is diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. And although ADHD is technically not a learning disability, students with the disorder do have difficulty concentrating and processing speech amid ambient noise. Beth initially thought that an online course required too much reading and would make her feel unsupported. However, because Beth has difficulty absorbing information in a traditional lecture-format class, an online course seemed like a good option to consider. …