Facilitating high quality learning experience for learners with disabilities, in pandemic times

How has the pandemic impacted learners with disabilities? How can tech solutions be effective in bridging this gap?

The pandemic has impeded learning for everyone by disrupting the conventional modes of teaching and learning, which previously happened via in-person exchanges in classrooms using tools like blackboards, printed textbooks, and paper-based examinations. While all learners have had a setback in their educational journeys over the past two years, learners with disabilities have experienced it to a greater degree because the pandemic makes it harder to meet their special needs. For example,

● Those with severe vision impairments need printed material in braille format. Still, it is harder than ever to get these prepared in time.

● Those with learning disabilities need more focused attention from their educator, but they cannot meet their educators.

● Those with motor disabilities need a support person to complete written assessments and the pandemic has made it hard for people to collaborate.

Technologies such as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and assistive tools can help enable teaching and learning to happen digitally. It is possible to teach and learn in ways comparable to the conventional modes but with additional benefits, especially for learners with disabilities. Some such benefits are:

● Learners with disabilities can now learn from the comfort and safety of their homes without the hassle of commuting.

● LMS platforms designed in alignment with global accessibility standards are compatible with screen reader programs that help enable those with vision impairments to perceive, operate, and understand learning and assessment content and activities.

● Inclusively designed LMS platforms can provide consistent and predictable ways that help retain the focus on learning and include tools that assist with reading and writing.

● Using the LMS in conjunction with digital assistive tools such as switch devices can help enable learners with motor disabilities to independently engage with learning and assessment activities.

The bottom line is that while tech solutions can help enable better learning for those with disabilities, they can bridge the pandemic gap only when they are designed and built with accessibility in mind from the start. If not, they will only serve to widen the gap. Therefore, it is crucial for educational institutions that have inclusion as a priority to specify accessibility as a non-negotiable criterion during the procurement process.

The edtech sector has seen a significant growth in India in the last 15 months, however are they sensitive to the needs of learners with disabilities?

● A great question, but this does not have a simple yes or no for an answer. India has been a forerunner in technology innovation. With the onset of the pandemic, brilliant minds have produced alternative ways to learn from home. I do not want to mention names, but most offer solutions to various parts of the problem, not holistically. Moreover, in today’s fast-paced edtech industry, not everyone takes the time to include processes that embed accessibility into their products because that impacts their bottom line. Some of them pause before getting their products into the market to make adjustments for accessibility, but this results in band-aid solutions that are less effective and more expensive for the company.

● Edtech companies that have inclusion in mind, operating with the goal to reach every learner regardless of their abilities, have accessibility considerations embedded into their product process. They follow standards and abide by accessibility regulations. They involve people with disabilities to obtain feedback at every stage, such as design, development, and quality assurance, because they care about the spirit of the law and not merely the letter of the law. I would say that such companies are sensitive to the needs of learners with disabilities.

How are you so uniquely positioned to provide high quality equitable education?

There are several reasons. Let me highlight a few:

● Equitable education, for us, is not just about access but also participation and contribution by learners. We have a people-focused and research-focused approach to accessibility which helps us produce solutions that provide an inclusive user experience where learners with and without disabilities can learn, participate, and contribute. For example, learners can make video posts to discussions using our Video note tool. These get automatically captioned by our system, thus enabling learners who are deaf or hard-of-hearing to understand and respond to audio aspects of visual communication. Learners who use sign language can likewise create video messages using that tool and contribute to discussions. Social-emotional learning is an area of high focus for us.

● Our product process aligns with the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at the highest level. As such, our solution is uniquely positioned and designed to meet the needs of not only learners with disabilities but also instructors with disabilities.

● Our company is focused more on education than on technology. We view technology as a means to serve educational goals. A significant portion of our 1000-strong workforce has qualifications and experience in teaching.

● We are a global company, serving more than 1000 customers in over 40 countries across six continents. We have a global accessibility lead who works on bringing the best of the regulatory and cultural accessibility requirements across these geographical regions into our products to help serve the best solution to every user regardless of whether they come from a developing or developed country

We have an excellent support system for responding to accessibility issues that learners might face due to various reasons. We focus on getting them resolved at the earliest and putting the student back on their track to success.

How are you leveraging the best in class technology to provide world class education to students with disabilities?

There is a lot to say here. I will give a few key points to help you understand what we do in this space and where we are going.

● Our cloud-based platform can help make it easier for learners with disabilities and their educators to engage in teaching and learning at the times they choose and in the manner they choose. This can be more enabling than the conventional classroom where education follows a specified manner at a specified time and location. Such flexibility is important for empowering learners with disabilities. We believe that given the right tools, everyone can be capable of performing their best.

● Our responsive design allows learners to use any device – and multiple devices across a learning session – to seamlessly enjoy their learning experience. We have a mobile-first design approach to ensure that all our features work well on mobile devices. This is especially useful for students who learn using smartphones and tablets. They can get a comparable experience compared to their counterparts who learn using laptops and PCs, thus bridging economic gaps. Our Pulse app provides unique advantages to learners with cognitive challenges. Our Portfolio app allows young learners to use tablets to complete learning activities even if they cannot read or write.

● Our state-of-the-art technologies leverage the latest tech capabilities for inclusion as and when they are offered. For example, we offer automated captioning for videos in multiple languages (with the capability to edit the captions) by leveraging the most advanced cloud system for captioning.

● Our world-class data analytics offer our customers powerful ways to help instructors strategically identify and respond to the evolving needs of learners with disabilities.

Our systems and processes reflect that expertise and culture that enable equitable distribution of the best world-class educational enablement possible using technology.

Who are you partnering with within India and what is your long-term strategy for this market?

● We have partnered with Edutech, an established “learning specialist” providing learning solutions and services across the learning lifecycle. We align well with them because our solution uniquely serves across secondary, higher-ed, and corporate spaces.

● We see learning as a life-long endeavour that enables and empowers people to be their best at every stage of their life. Our strategy is to remain alert to the changing needs with social evolution across time and global eventualities such as this pandemic and continuously improve our offerings to suit those needs. Today, the need is for equitable and connected learning. Inclusive edtech can help there.

Your views regarding what changes need to be brought about in the education system to democratise education and make it accessible to all? What role can technology play to bring about this transformation?

Democratising education means making it available to everyone regardless of their differences in age, gender, abilities, etc. Since there is a great degree of diversity in learners, their needs are different, especially for learners with disabilities. Companies focused on equality offer the same thing to everyone regardless of their needs. But that does not help everyone. While it helps the majority to succeed, those on the edges fail due to their unique needs not being met.

Companies such as ours that focus on equity. This means we specialise in meeting the unique needs of each and every learner regardless of their ability, thereby creating an equitable learning solution that works for all learners. That, to me, is democratising education.

How do we do that? We do that through our practice of accessibility. We achieve accessibility through inclusive design, which is a process of working with people with disabilities at every stage of the product’s building process. That way, we are able to assess the unique needs of learners who use assistive tools to learn – learners who use screen readers, screen magnifiers, switch devices, and voice input – and design our system to meet those needs. For example, for learners who use screen readers (which can read only text), we add text descriptions for all images and icons.

Thus, we achieve inclusion through being mindful of Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility. That’s our IDEA of transforming the way the world learns through our inclusive educational technology offerings.

Inclusive technology is often about bringing about transformation. Whether disadvantaged temporarily or permanently, our solutions were designed for learners to help transform their learning process. It’s also effective in addressing those who have similar constraints due to a situational context, such as not seeing the screen contents due to glare on their screen or not being allowed to hear a video due to being in a quiet library. Designing for learners with disabilities thus has a more significant impact on the usability of our system for everyone.

Any other significant points you’d like to highlight?

India is known for its divides in every sphere. But fortunately, mobile technology and connectivity are ubiquitous in this country. And, these are the only two things a learner needs for successful participation and performance in education in this social tech age we live in. Today, we have access to world-class inclusive education technologies right in our country. Therefore, what’s lacking are policies and practices of the government and educational institutions to popularise the adoption of online learning through adequate financial and workforce support. This will enable solutions such as ours to scale rapidly and serve the large student population in India without breaking down in continuity or quality. That would be our true service to the millions of children and adults with disabilities in our country; the dawn of true democratisation of education and, through that, life opportunities.