Telecommunications, Education and the Handicapped
The North American Perspective

by
Norman Coombs
College of Liberal Arts
Rochester Institute of Technology
One Lomb Memorial Dr.
Rochester, NY 14623
Email NRCGSH@RITVAX.ISC.RIT.EDU

This article is adapted from a paper delivered at the Second International Conference on Computers for Handicapped Persons held in Zurich, Switzerland, Dec. 1990.


Computer telecommunication has been used at the Rochester Institute of Technology, (RIT), to reduce barriers to learning for the physically handicapped. I am a totally blind professor of history, and I have been using electronic mail and computer conferencing to increase my contact with students. Originally, I required students to submit their written work using electronic mail rather than using paper copy. This permitted me to do away with most of my human readers. I use a desktop computer and a speech synthesizer and connect with the school's mainframe with a phone and modem. Not only did this permit me to do my work without assistance, but I could work at times of my own choice. Submitting work through electronic mail held some advantages for the students as well. I now make it a habit to grade and return the work within 24 to 48 hours. Quick feedback through electronic mail helps students evaluate their progress better.

The National Technical Institute for the Deaf, (NTID), is on the RIT campus, and this technology has enabled me to communicate with hearing impaired students without a human intermediary. The first time I used electronic mail for submission of student work, one of the students was a deaf woman. She had a question on my grading and so sent another message to me with her question. After several electronic exchanges, she stated that this was the first time in her life that she had "talked" to a professor without using an interpreter. Both of us felt that this gave us an immediacy that was missing in face-to-face communication.

Five years ago, RIT introduced the use of computer conferencing into its telecourses to provide a more interactive component. The content is delivered through broadcast videos and through print texts. Computer conferencing and electronic mail provided easy and rapid contact between the teacher and students and among the students. Class members who had their own computer would access the school mainframe from home using a modem. Some part-time students were able to use a computer where they worked during lunch hour or after work to do the same thing. Others had to travel to a computer lab on campus to access the mainframe using a terminal. In all cases, students could do so at any time of the day or night as the system was available at any time and the conference system was asynchronous. This created a kind of flex time approach to learning. The school main computing facility is a cluster of Digital Equipment Corporation VAX computers. The computer conference software is VAX Notes also produced by DEC.

I was one of the first teachers to try this system. Faculty from the fields of computer science and engineering seemed to be locked in to thinking of the computer as a computational device and were slow to grasp its use as a communication device. As a Blind history professor, however, I had discovered computer mediated communication as an educational tool. Although the use of this system to include deaf students in class discussions had not yet occurred to me, one of the deaf students saw the potential and begged to be admitted to the class. Although the students were told in the course of our discussions that I am blind, and the woman said that she was deaf, we all quickly lost any awareness of these differences. Computer mediated communications let us all meet on an equal footing. Those persons who became deaf as adults and who have good English skills but weak sign language skills have found this format extremely useful. One young woman said that she was able to participate fully in a college class for the first time.

In the fall of 1991, RIT and NTID are jointly planning a pilot project with Gallaudet University a liberal arts university for the deaf located in Washington DC,which will deliver courses using captioned videos, movies and interactive computer conferencing. The classes will include a blind professor and both hearing and hearing impaired students from campuses more than 400 miles apart in the same class. Separate copies of the video materials will be available on each campus, but the class discussions and the communication with the professor will be done over a long-distance computer network. The pilot will include two courses, one delivered from each site. One course will be on African American history, and the other will be on cinema and the deaf culture.

This project will transcend both physical handicaps and physical distance. The technology will also permit a flex time learning in which each student can work at his or her own pace and time. Simultaneously, it will provide a unique setting for mainstreaming. The advantage of mainstreaming through telecommunications is that the differences between the able-bodied and the disabled disappear.

Telecommunication technologies have the potential to open educational access to other disability groups besides the visually and hearing impaired. A wide variety of single switch devices permit persons with severe muscular impairments to access electronic data and telecommunications. (See the other articles in this issue.) Not only do such devices open work opportunities for the mobility impaired, but they also reduce barriers to accessing education. Tzipporah Benavraham has been teaching courses on computers and the handicapped at Brooklyn College. She is both blind and wheelchair bound. Telecommunications has permitted her to interact with her students while also reducing the necessity for her travelling to campus. The New School for Social Research in New York City offers an online course on adaptive computer technology for the handicapped with her as its teacher. Computer mediated communication allows her to work from home, and students with a computer and modem may connect from anywhere. The course is handled by Connected Education, headed by Paul Levinson, which operates several online courses for the New School.

Several computer bulletin boards scattered across the continent are devoted to providing materials and assistance for teachers. Some of these include items related to special education. These systems are of special value in thinly populated rural districts. In some cases these focus on gifted special education concerns, and in other cases they aim at serving the needs of underprivileged and handicapped persons. Both the state of Montana in the western United States and the province of Saskatchuan in Western Canada are examples of rural areas with computer networks which give special attention to the teachers of the handicapped.

Big Sky Telegraph is an online cooperative computer conferencing system affiliated with Western Montana College and serving rural schools and communities in that state. It strives to fill the needs of a diverse set of interests including rural health networking, disabled interests, women's groups, rural economic development, global ecology and agriculture. Big Sky Telegraph provides circuit riders who will travel across Montana to train persons at rural schools, libraries, chambers of commerce, and various other organizations to both receive and provide online information. It reaches out to help the physically disabled in at least three ways. It gives online access to services which might not otherwise be available to such persons. Secondly, it provides conferencing and electronic mail facilities permitting handicapped persons who are isolated to meet and share. Thirdly, it includes an online resource center for special education teachers. They can exchange materials and experiences. In Canada, the province of Saskatchuan is developing a rural network with many of these same facilities and aimed to fill similar needs. Such systems bring together communities and persons who are otherwise remote. The Saskatchuan system is presently networking some two hundred hearing impaired persons through its electronic mail system. Many of these individuals have felt extremely isolated both because of their geographic location and because of their handicap. There are several networks which are intended to connect these regional systems. Kidsnet is located on Bitnet and Internet and links mainly teachers. On a more grass roots level, Fidonet and Fredmail link thousands of bulletin boards together. Fredmail has aimed primarily at linking students and schools. although none of these have had an emphasis on the needs of the handicapped, they obviously can be utilized in that way.

Data telecommunication contains the promise of reducing barriers to information for persons with a variety of handicaps. This could increase their access to education, research and employment in the near future. This new empowerment should also transform their sense of self worth and self reliance. This last feature could become the most important result of all. However, there are at least two pitfalls which could easily undermine many of these benefits. In spite of the ways in which computers have enhanced the lives of some handicapped persons, there is always the danger that new developments in hardware or software might prevent the handicapped from continuing to use these marvelous tools. The increasing shift from text displays to graphics poses a difficulty for the visually impaired, but careful design could include their needs while increasing the use of graphics.

Finally, in the United States, school funding patterns could leave out those who could benefit most from computer use. Funding usually goes to those schools where the most advantaged students are enrolled. Unless a conscious decision is made to
provide the necessary equipment to schools with the greatest need, new technology may increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Instead of reducing barriers to equal education, computers in education might raise the fences even higher. Technology alone will not change the educational situation. It will require a socially responsible use of that technology.