Perceptions of Students with Disabilities on Reasonable Accommodation at a Tertiary Education: A Case of a Rural University in Limpopo Province, South Africa

The advent of democracy in South Africa has put initiatives to redress social injustice suffered by women and people with disabilities. Enrollment of students with disabilities at universities increases yearly, influencing an increase in buying of assistive technologies to enable a teaching and learning environment. This paper explores the perceptions of students with disabilities on the role of reasonable accommodation in terms of accessibility and facilitation of teaching and learning at the university based on the human rights approach. A pre-corvid 19 pandemic survey used a convergent parallel mixed-method design to evaluate perceptions of reasonable accommodation on the campus. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected roughly simultaneously and integrated into the interpretation of the overall results. A focus group comprised of the representatives of students with disabilities was interviewed. The surveyed population comprised all students with disabilities between the ages of 18 to 25 registered with the Disability Support Unit (DSU) of the University of Venda. The questionnaires collected reasonable accommodation perceptions and satisfaction rates from students about organizational support and training. The distributed questionnaires produced a 90% response rate. The findings highlighted that students with disabilities encountered barriers of inaccessibility to classrooms and residents. Adequate learning material is a barrier for students with visual disabilities. Institutional budget and item costs render buying assistive technologies and building new infrastructures for students with disabilities a constraint. Policy and practice in the institution remain a limitation to interfacing education and disability smoothly

Examining Assistive Technology Use, Self-concept, and Motivation, as Students with Learning Disabilities Transition from a Demonstration School into Inclusive Classrooms

Provincial demonstration schools provide specialized programs for students with learning disabilities and provide a supportive environment where students learn about their learning disabilities and how they learn best. Embedded within subject area instruction, these schools provide intensive training on the use of assistive technology. This mixed methods study followed 12 students (8 males and 4 females between 14 and 16 years of age) and their parents in order understand students’ transition from a demonstration school into high schools, their assistive technology use in both school environments, and how these environments may have impacted their self-concept and school motivation. Participants reported students experienced a positive transition to high because of the independence and self-advocacy skills students acquired at the demonstration school. Teacher-student relationships were more positive at the demonstration school than at high school. There were no significant differences between the degree to which assistive technology impacted students’ competence, adaptability, and self-esteem at the demonstration school and at high school. Students continued to benefit from assistive technology in high school and used the technology to varying degrees. Students’ perceptions of their general intellectual ability, and reading, writing, spelling, and math competencies increased while attending the demonstration school. Students’ perceived reading and writing competences decreased in high school, yet remained higher from when students entered the demonstration school. There were no significant differences between students’ motivation and engagement at the demonstration school and high school. Implications surround supportive school practices for students with learning disabilities and how these practices can be applied in inclusive schools

Online Learning Challenges for Students with Disabilities: Digital Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning Solutions

This study aimed to investigate the challenges faced by students with disabilities in online education and to review scientific solutions, digital access solutions and assistive technology for these challenges in higher education institutions. This study analyzed and compared more than seventy references from recent studies that reviewed the challenges and technological solutions available to students with disabilities in some higher education institutions in the United States of America, Australia and the United Kingdom; The aim is to benefit from these experiences in developing support for students with disabilities in online education at Qatar University. It was found throughout the literatures review that the challenges that students with disabilities face in the online learning process are mostly related to the poor technical skills of students and faculty members, insufficient provision of assistive technology; lack of digital accessibility for course materials, and inadequate access to teaching and assessment methods for groups of students with disabilities. To address these challenges, this research reviewed the universal design for learning as a scientific framework that built on the latest studies in neuroscience, computer science, assistive technology, communications and digital accessibility. The aim of this literatures review is to help educators in designing an inclusive, effective and accessible virtual learning environment for all students, including students with disabilities

Teacher Perspectives on Effectiveness of Assistive Technology in Supporting Children with Dyslexia Learning Disabilities in Ogun State, Nigeria

Assistive Technology for Children with Learning Disabilities (ATCLD) was developed in response to language and math challenges faced by dyslexic students at Adeola Odutola College. This development follows a needs assessment and focuses on upper secondary schools 1–3. As explained above, assistive technologies (ATs) are commercially available, adapted, or modified to improve, maintain, or enhance the functional abilities of children with disabilities. Unlike many schools in Nigeria, Adeola Odutola College enrolls students diagnosed with learning disabilities and trains them in a mainstream teaching and learning environment. Similarly, the Ministry of Education notes that the Nigerian classroom has diverse students with different abilities and students with special educational needs are often enrolled in mainstream schools. In response to the described dilemma, this study developed a tagged ATCLD with text-to-speech skills that enable compensatory learning that emphasizes repetition. The ATCLD effort followed the following methodology. This means that younger children can create new schemas of information. In addition, text-to-speech and text-to-speech assistive technologies widely used for input and output in this research will be expanded in the future

Designing online instruction for postsecondary students with learning disabilities

This case study investigates the methodologies used to deliver online course content to postsecondary students with varying learning disabilities. The research provides a holistic picture of the students in their actual learning environment. Two college students diagnosed as learning disabled were studied with three non-disabled classmates in an online college learning environment. The purpose was to attempt to explain how the design of the course affects the students’ attitudes and performance. The design of the course featured instructional methods that research has shown to be beneficial to students with learning disabilities. Some of these included digitally delivered instructional audio, various textual interactions between the students, and other assistive methodologies. The college level world history course for this study was taught via the World Wide Web through the Blackboard course management system. Interviews, observations, and academic documents were used to provide a complex, holistic picture of the learning experience of the students in this study. The course for this study was a traditional online course taught during the summer 2005 semester. The content and assessments for the students were the same as in previous offerings of the course and were identical for all students. The results provide an insight into the impact that these online instructional methods have on the students’ attitudes and learning strategies. The intention of this study was not to provide definitive answers to the problems that face students with learning disabilities in postsecondary education, but rather contribute to the body of knowledge of this sometimes overlooked element of academia. The results help explain the behavior of the participants of this study and how they reacted to the online environment in which they were place

Research & Development of a Sensory Exploration System

Learning Disabilities affect individuals in all age groups and affect how one comprehends the information they receive. Individuals with learning disabilities are often distracted by their surroundings and face difficulties to follow paths in surroundings. Learning disabilities can be addressed with proper support, feedback, and assistive technology. Schools provide children a favorable environment to learn and can support overcoming such difficulties with the help of different activities. This paper discusses the design of a sensory exploration system for individuals with Autism Spectrum to help them learn how to follow paths and not get distracted. The sensory exploration system is called “MoonPads and is designed for use in school environments to teach students and overcome their path following difficulties. MoonPads can be operated and controlled by an Android Mobile Application (App) for use in hallways, and classrooms to teach children how to go from one classroom to another. With the help of a pressure sensor, microcontroller, radio module, and colored LED’s, the MoonPads serve as an effective learning tool for individuals with learning disabilities. The sensory exploration system discussed was prototyped on a breakout board and experimented with multiple MoonPads using the App

Inovasi Akses Assistive Technology untuk Mahasiswa Disabilitas Pendengaran dengan Pendekatan Prinsip Universal Design

The culture of hearing disabilities is one of the minority that is still marginalized of rights, including in this case the fulfillment of needs for access of information communication and technology (ICT). Design for individual of students with hearing disability in a campus environment that focuses through barrier-free access. Over the past decade, the universal design movement, which strives to produce of products and environments that suit the individual needs of students with hearing disabilities, has provided product innovation and standard assistive technology. The concept of universal design and application is remain largely limited to the physical and visual domains. Considerations for assistive technology access in campus environments for individual of students with hearing disabilities continue to experience deficiencies. Critical reflection of how innovation design of assistive technology sort of fearing disabilities communicator “speech recognition” can choose speech to text or text to speech allows to block or change the individuals way of active participate in various learning and teaching activities in the lecture space. Based on the result of interview observation through instrument questionnaire wich amounts 56 respondents studenst or alumni with hearing disabilities of in various universities said that they still have difficulty communicate with lecturers hear or other students, because of their inability to use and understand the sign language them use. Use solve the problem, researcher is designing an application that utilizes communication technology of speech recognition so individual of students with hearing disabilities can help communicate with lecturers and students hear or otherwise. This research is successful in producing of technology application “TextHear” (Speech to Text Hearing Aid) and "Kaist" (AppForTheDeaf) or which can help communication between student of hearing disabilities and Lecturer hear

Disability-aware adaptive and personalised learning for students with multiple disabilities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address how virtual learning environments (VLEs) can be designed to include the needs of learners with multiple disabilities. Specifically, it employs AI to show how specific learning materials from a huge repository of learning materials can be recommended to learners with various disabilities. This is made possible through employing semantic web technology to model the learner and their needs. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews personalised learning for students with disabilities, revealing the shortcomings of existing e-learning environments with respect to students with multiple disabilities. It then proceeds to show how the needs of a student with multiple disabilities can be analysed and then simple logical operators and knowledge-based rules used to personalise learning materials in order to meet the needs of such students. Findings It has been acknowledged in literature that designing for cases of multiple disabilities is difficult. This paper shows that existing learning environments do not consider the needs of students with multiple disabilities. As they are not flexibly designed and hence not adaptable, they cannot meet the needs of such students. Nevertheless, it is possible to anticipate that students with multiple disabilities would use learning environments, and then design learning environments to meet their needs. Practical implications This paper, by presenting various combination rules to present specific learning materials to students with multiple disabilities, lays the foundation for the design and development of learning environments that are inclusive of all learners, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This could potentially stimulate designers of such systems to produce such inclusive environments. Hopefully, future learning environments will be adaptive enough to meet the needs of learners with multiple disabilities. Social implications This paper, by proposing a solution towards developing inclusive learning environments, is a step towards inclusion of students with multiple disabilities in VLEs. When these students are able to access these environments with little or no barrier, they will be included in the learning community and also make valuable contributions. Originality/value So far, no study has proposed a solution to the difficulties faced by students with multiple disabilities in existing learning environments. This study is the first to raise this issue and propose a solution to designing for multiple disabilities. This will hopefully encourage other researchers to delve into researching the educational needs of students with multiple disabilities

Adapting e-learning and learning services for people with disabilities

Providing learning materials and support services that are adapted to the needs of individuals has the potential to enable learners to obtain maximal benefit from university level studies. This paper describes EU4ALL project which has been exploring how to present customized learning materials and services for people with disabilities. A number of the technical components of the EU4ALL framework are described. This is followed with a brief description of prototype implementations. This is then followed by a discussion of a number of research directions that may enhance the adaptability, usability and accessibility of information and support systems can be used and consumed by a diverse user population

Inclusion and online learning opportunities: Designing for accessibility

Higher education institutions worldwide are adopting flexible learning methods and online technologies which increase the potential for widening the learning community to include people for whom participation may previously have been difficult or impossible. The development of courseware that is accessible, flexible and informative can benefit not only people with special needs, but such courseware provides a better educational experience for all students