Introduction to Disability and Accessibility_Part 3

This is Part 3 of the "Introduction to Disability and Accessibility" webinar archive.
What is a Disability? How does having a disability impact an individual's life? If you are new to the world of disability and would like to learn more this is the webinar for you. You'll walk an hour in the shoes of someone with a disability and experience some of the frustrations and solutions.
Presenter: Jim Tobias

And there are settings, both in the operating system of the computer and in the browser itself,

That can make the print larger, can increase the contrast on the screen,

And can even provide some magnification, beyond normal screen... things.

And all of those are literally built into the operating system and into the browser.

One of the other webinars that we offer, it's really an excellent one, very well attended, very popular,

And it's about, basically assistive technology that you already own.

And I think the challenge is not going out and buying another product,

It's really the staff training and the staff confidence level to feel like if anyone comes in here with,

Say 90% of the requests that we get for improving accessibility, we can solve right here right now with simple utilities and controls that are built into my computer already.

So it's really that ability to go to... to have a patron make a request and have someone on staff able to make those adjustments right there.

I hope that's responsive I see, if it's not, go ahead and follow up,

In the mean time I'll address the second question here about ASL interpreters.

Okay, so interpreters for webinars, so this is an issue I'm assuming that is about a live webinar and you want,

Oh well I'm not, actually, I'm not sure, I don't know if these two are connected.

I'm going to assume right now that you're talking about how can deaf people participate in webinars, and that can be a challenge, especially if,

As in today's webinar, although there were slides, most of what I said just began at the slides and someone who was deaf would not be able to get that content.

There are services called real time captioning services

That basically attach a stenographer to the webinar so that everything that's on the audio side of the webinar is transcribed into a special window for the deaf participants.

And the service is a commercial service that's available, and there's a fee for it in most situations.

One of the, Karen I think you made the arrangements for that, what was the hourly rate? You have a number that you can...

You know, it's, I've used a couple of different ones, definitely it's, can be over a hundred dollars an hour,

And they also charge if they have to come in ahead of time or stay longer.

The one that I used-

And that's for- sorry-

And it, it can happen two different ways,

In the past I've used a captioning service where the individual who is deaf is given both the site for the webinar and they're also given a site that provides a caption window.

So they launch the webinar classroom, reduce the size of the window a little bit, and then the caption window shows up on the bottom.

And the captioner listens into the webinar and captions.

The one I used very recently who is a little more affordable, Bill Portland, he is doing it through his Illuminate classroom,

So he has a webinar service called Illuminate, and they are fully accessible,

And one of the features of that product is a caption window.

So he listens into the webinar and then we send the individual who is deaf and needs accessibility to his Illuminate classroom

And then they watch the presentation and see a captioning window built right in,

So there's a couple of different ways that it can happen.

Great, and one tip that's a money-saver is if there's anyone from the federal government,

And in some cases the state government, participating in the webinar, that service can be provided for free, by a resource that's paid for by the federal government.

So if you can make it such that the, one of the attendees is a federal employee, you may be able to get subsidy for the real time captioning.

Yeah, video relay is an opportunity, an option for webinars, but this is, can be a little tricky,

On some machines to be using the webinar and the video telephony application and the same time.

But video relay service is provided as part of the subsidized relay service nationally.

So, if you have have a sign language user, that's certainly a good option for them.

Okay, I'm seeing another question here...

Right, and video relay is free.

It's just that, the assumption that everyone who's hearing impaired can do sign language, that can be the problem.

[Reading question] "I work in a school system and funding is always a huge issue..."

Yes, we run into these, these kind of licensing and security,

Jim, would you-

Jim, sorry for interrupting, but you might want to repeat the question.

Oh do I have to read the-?

Yeah

Okay sorry, I didn't know what everyone could see.

So, "funding is a huge issue,

We're also very limited to what is allowed on a school computer and who can download things like shareware, ReadPlease, et cetera.

The accessories for Windows is often limited by the district to keeps students from messing with things they don't need,

Even things like the filters, which the students don't reset to general setting,

And the next person to try to use the computer thinks the computer isn't working correctly."

And we certain see this in libraries as well, the IT people have reduced or completely removed all of the user controls.

You can't get to the control panels, you can't change the browser settings.

And one of the things that we're doing with this, the American Library Association group, as well as elsewhere,

Is to try to swim upstream a little bit and to get into the professional domain of those IT specialists and their security utilities.

So that, whether it's got to be password protected, or some other way,

That a teacher or librarian can make a temporary adjustment so that that particular patron or student can get the accessibility feature they want

And then change it back so that it's set to those general settings again.

Oh, I'm hearing a voice now.

Yeah, everyone is unmuted, so there's somebody...

And I'm trying to get out some of these comments to you, Jim.

And Bobby says thanks.

Right, if you have captioning, that's right,

It is archived, although some real time captioners put up a little bit of resistance about sending you the transcript,

Because the captioning often has a certain amount of errors that they either want to perfect it before they give it to you

Or... But the captioning is great to have it, because it allows people who didn't attend the webinar to find exactly the material that they're looking for,

Instead of having to watch the entire hour, they can go through the captioning and find the content they're looking for,

And then try to guess where in the webinar stream that information showed up.

Yeah, and keeping up with the captions can be a problem as well, and having the archive is useful.

Any other questions or comments?

Margret, it looked like you just joined us,

We're just taking questions or comments about requests or mandates for accessibility

That your organization has had successfully answered or is struggling with.

I think we're...

I'm not getting any more questions at this time, Jim.

Okay, I just want to close in on two areas that have been raised.

One is the budget issue which is always a real issue, and I know from working with my own school district as well as working with others

That all that has to happen is for one piece of assistive technology to get in the budget and then not quite work out for the students the way that is expected

And then your superintendent and your school board looks very skeptical about any further requests for it, so I know how serious that issue is.

And we're, again as I say, one of the things that we're trying to do is

Developing a community of exchanging information about experiences with assistive technology and mainstream technology as well.

So that as you develop questions, "we're thinking of getting this product and I saw it at a conference and it seemed right,

can anyone, answer questions about it from a user, practitioner, or clinician, perspective?"

And that kind of information is really valuable before you go out and purchase it.

And then the other pieces, the staff training requirement,

And there's a certain amount of time that you just have to devote to learning about the technology and about how it's going to work in your program.

And one of the goals of ATC is to help you plan that and help you manage that.

So, however many hours a month you might be able to dedicate to this part of your job, we want to have really good content

That's very practical, very hands-on, gets you the answers that you need,

And at the same time, lets you ask questions and even suggest topics for other webinars.

So I think Karen will be talking to you just a little bit about joining ATC and what our website can do along those lines.