Design of a 10 Credit Masters Level Assistive Technologies and Universal Design Module

The paper reports on the design and evaluation of a 10 credit module that has been designed and taught for the first to 35 full time Computer science and software engineering Masters student

Teaching Accessibility and Design-For-All in the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum: Three Case Studies of Universities in the United States, England, and Austria

Digital technologies allow people with disabilities to participate independently in society in ways they never could before. The full realization of these new opportunities remains elusive, though, because working professionals in the information and communication technology (ICT) field rarely receive adequate training in how to make digital ICT accessible to people with disabilities. Adding accessibility to the university ICT curriculum can help create a critical mass of ICT professionals with accessibility awareness and expertise to finally realize the full accessibility potential of digital technologies. This dissertation provides a rich informational context from which ICT curriculum leaders can decide how to best infuse accessibility into their own curriculum

Teaching DfA core knowledge and skill sets; experience in including inclusive design

The purpose of this document is twofold. Firstly it is to present the teaching pilots that were undertaken by members of the network, and describes the pilot setting and the material taught, as related to the taxonomy of Design for All knowledge and skill sets developed in previous deliverables. Each pilot indicates topics taught and to which categories of the taxonomy they belong. Furthermore, student expectations and reactions to the DfA teaching pilots are described by means of the information gained from questionnaires. In this way the taxonomy is evaluated by the teaching pilot experiences for robustness in completeness and usefulness. The second purpose of this exercise is to highlight best practices in, and possible obstacles and other challenges to implementing and maintaining of Design for All courses and modules in a range of higher education schemes, so that education policies and strategies may be informed accordingly. Both of these objectives help to further the work on recommendations for curriculum work on Design for All, in terms of content and in terms of sustainability

"Dreaming in colour’: disabled higher education students’ perspectives on improving design practices that would enable them to benefit from their use of technologies"

The focus of this paper is the design of technology products and services for disabled students in higher education. It analyses the perspectives of disabled students studying in the US, the UK, Germany, Israel and Canada, regarding their experiences of using technologies to support their learning. The students shared how the functionality of the technologies supported them to study and enabled them to achieve their academic potential. Despite these positive outcomes, the students also reported difficulties associated with: i) the design of the technologies, ii) a lack of technology know-how and iii) a lack of social capital. When identifying potential solutions to these difficulties the disabled students imagined both preferable and possible futures where faculty, higher education institutions, researchers and technology companies are challenged to push the boundaries of their current design practices

Guided Notes in the Pre-Algebra Mathematics Classroom

Students who attend an 8th grade mathematics class in the middle school at my district and who are not placed in an accelerated class, are placed in Book 3 of MathThematics (Billstein & Williamson, 2002, p. 393-466). I have introduced guided notes for the pre-algebra classroom in an effort to increase 8th graders\u27 classroom participation and engagement and to improve content mastery of Pre-Algebra. This study was an effort to understand if the guided notes increase student\u27s level of Pre-Algebra mastery in my classroom. I wanted to find out if guided notes increased participation and engagement compared to those students taking their own notes. Four key themes have emerged from the notes and test data, as well as the student survey and student interviews. They are student success, student focus, notes as a reference, and notes as an organizational tool. Recommendations based on the findings include ways that I should modify the guided notes along with classroom instruction to increase student success in the Pre-Algebra classroom

Report on update of design for all and design for all related higher education and research policies in eu member countries and USA

This deliverable presents state of the art in Design for All education and research strategies and policies in EU member countries. These findings are complemented with considerations on respective strategies in USA. The report identifies key issues to be further discussed and developed to produce recommendations for further development of DfA related strategies and policies in Europe

“That’s where dyslexia doesn’t matter anymore when you’re doing creative stuff”: A case study on the experiences of learning with dyslexia on the Visual Merchandising and Display Degree Programme in DIT.

This research focuses on how students with dyslexia experience and manage their situation on the BA Visual Merchandising and Display (VM&D) programme in the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). Dyslexia is an issue of growing importance for higher education with increasing numbers disclosing a specific learning difficulty. Under Irish law, Higher Education Institutes are legally responsible for providing an inclusive and accommodated environment for students learning with disabilities. One in every ten students in higher education is learning with dyslexia. Despite a lot of research on the effects of dyslexia, there is limited research on students’ feelings and experiences in higher education learning and particularly in the art and design field. This research addresses the gap in the literature by putting forth views and perspectives of students with dyslexia on the VM&D programme. This case study investigation is to discover effective strategies which will empower dyslexic students on the VM&D programme in their learning. It examines five dyslexic visual merchandising degree students’ experiences in DIT by using semi-structured interviews. The dyslexic students interviewed all provided different accounts of their learning on the VM&D programme. I set out three questions in my research aims which underpinned my interview questions. These were: What are the academic impacts of dyslexia? What are the emotional impacts of dyslexia? What strategies can the students see as ways to help/improve their learning experience on the VM&D programme? The findings that I present reveal how students experienced school and higher education. The emotional impact of dyslexia was prevalent throughout the interview. The experiences of supports throughout their learning journey in school and higher education factored heavily

Analysis and recommendations on Design for All related higher education and research policies in EU member countries

The report includes recommendations for further development of DfA related strategies and policies in Europe, based on the analysis of the state of the art in Design for All education and research strategies and policies in EU member countries, complemented with considerations on respective strategies in the USA

Effects of Universal Design For Learning on Faculty and Student Outcomes in Postsecondary Online Courses

As diversity of student enrollment increases, postsecondary institutionsmust address the inclusiveness of physical and virtual learning environments.Doing so requires engaging faculty in a conversation about their online pedagogyand course design. This study employs Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as ameans for faculty to reflect on and solve instructional problems in their courses. Itfollows a sequential, exploratory, quasi-experimental, mixed-methods approach.Instructor-focused, in-depth interviews capture the experience of instructors asthey reflect on their personal history that led them to teaching. They identified aportion of one of their online courses to improve and selected modificationsinspired by the UDL framework. They also reflect on the subsequent interactionswith their students with a focus on changes they have observed in relation to themodified portion of their course. The student-focused portion of the studyexamines the effect these modifications have on student outcomes throughquantitative and qualitative analysis of their responses to a survey. The student-provided data were compared across control and treatment sections for eachcourse. This study demonstrates how the UDL framework and guidelines can beused as a tool for qualitative research in addition to its traditional role as aprescriptive model. The synthesis of all data from the study providespostsecondary educators with an empirical account of UDL’s utility and attemptsto address barriers to adoption

A Design Thinking Approach to Sustainable Inclusive Shopping Environments for Grocery Shoppers with Low Vision

The seemingly simple daily life activity of grocery shopping could be an exhausting ordeal for people who are blind or have low vision. The objectives of this inclusive design research study were to ethnographically identify the barriers experienced by shoppers with low vision and to carry out participatory design of an inclusive solution to mitigate the situation. This report documents the four phases of the study – Discover; Define; Develop; and Disseminate. A demo prototype ‘Shopping Buddy,’ with the innovative idea of Universal Product Inclusive Code (UPiC) at its core, was designed to aid shoppers with low vision. The UPiC system will provide necessary product information to the shopper by leveraging existing data from the manufacturers’ databases. Thus, the proposed solution is not just an assistive tool; it also includes ingredients for effecting systemic changes in the retail grocery ecosystem comprising the industry’s Manufacturers, Distributors, Retailers and Consumers (MDRC). To make the benefits, and resulting inclusion, sustainable, recommendations regarding the UPiC are made to the MDRC, also addressing the needs of commercial viability. Such sustainable inclusive design will ultimately result in curb cut advantages for all shoppers, thereby enhancing sales and benefitting the Canadian economy