Delivering education digitally to PwDs : Challenges in the times of cornoa-virus pandemic
When i see my 4 year old daughter receiving her class videos on internet in these difficult
times of lockdown in view of corona-virus pandemic, i am constantly thinking how the whole ecosystem of education has changed in just a span of one month. We all were talking about shift to online education but none of us knew that it will become mainstream so fast, so seamlessly.
But while all of this is happening, is anybody also thinking about Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) or Children with special needs (CwSNs) !
Not many (except government), i guess !
More so because our digital eco system has largely not been designed to address accessibility needs. And since the present shift is being done on a super fast speed, there is hardly any time for retrofitting the digital mediums with accessibility standards and thus leaving a large chunk of audience with special needs (read PwDs/CwSNs) empty handed.
Let us try to understand the context of disability first.
Disability was for a very long period of time typically thought of as a medical issue or individual's personal problem and the focus was on fixing the impairments. This is known as medical model of disability.
In the recent times, there has been shift to redefining disability as a form of social oppression that is forced on to people who have an impairment of some kind. This is known as social model of disability and is in contrast with the medical model.
People with Disability Australia (PWDA) defines this model as "It is not the inability to walk that keeps a person from entering a building by themselves but the stairs that are inaccessible that keeps a wheelchair-user from entering that building."
It was important to mention social model of disability here because in the same way digital disability is extending the disabling environment of the physical world to the online environment.
It is though safe to say that there are various guidelines about making the digital world accessible but there is a long long road ahead before it can be implemented in letter and spirit, more so from Indian perspective.
Cut to the challenge of corona-virus pandemic which necessitated every possible thing to move online, it is no wonder if the digital disability comes to haunt PwDs in a big big way.
If we talk about delivering education/training , can we have captions and audio descriptions embedded in learning materials so fast.. the two most used application for delivering online classes i.e "zoom" and "Microsoft team" fails considerably on account of accessibility features for all categories of PwDs.
If we talk about other online services, it is almost impossible to reduce the barriers on major websites including but not limited to cluttered layouts, small buttons and links and other important navigability considerations.
However, explaining the problem is not going to help much, so lets try to figure out some Short term solutions which are doable in these times (especially for education/training purposes) :
1. Center for civic design, Maryland has described some of the critical elements of making videos accessible:
Provide alternatives: captions (or at minimum a transcript) for any video, a transcript for any audio, and alternative text to describe visual information. Some platforms have technology built in to generate ALT text and captions automatically, but you’ll need to check their work.
Use an accessible video player: YouTube, Vimeo, and other platforms not only support captions, but their players are accessible. Features change, so check the documentation to be sure.
Caption every new video as you post it: If you have the script for the video (or text of prepared remarks) available, that job is even easier, because many captioning tools will automatically create captions from a transcript.
Use your server logs to identify the most frequently used videos and start with them. Once you have them done, work backwards from the most recent videos in your archive.
Caption videos on demand, responding quickly when asked. You might even put a notice on the page with this information and how long it will take.
Provide support for people who are having difficulty with accessibility of any materials on the site. Include links for contacting you, so you can fix problems that you might not otherwise know about.
If you already have a large collection of videos, don’t panic. Organize the task of making captions and add a note to the Accessibility Statement to let people know the plan and the schedule.
2. Following education related initiatives by Govt. of India may be tapped as per need:
3. Following non government online platforms are offering free education for limited time
Thanks for staying...
Keep pouring in more ideas by way of remarks..
Lets pray for everyone's safety..
Well written. People r working towards making digital learning accessible for cross cutting pwds. Our NIs have started working to develop home based education system for pwds. It is not only issue of making appropriate software solution to meet the requirement of audio description, sub titling, somoustaneous sign language transcript, there is also an issue of making the hardware compatible n affordability of such compatible devices to the users. Digital learning in schools is now mostly applicable in most of the public schools, whose clientele base is far more economically sound. Is it reaching he students of municipal schools n rural n other government schools......Thus there is a need to start on working on a system of universal coverage which will automatically take care of poorest of the poor n weakest of weak ones in terms of physically n cognitive abilities. Such a system must address both digital solutions n devices at both ends i.e.by the educational institutions n individual users.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments sir..
ReplyDeletewhat you have described is indeed required at the earliest...
A brilliant write up
ReplyDeleteThanks....
DeleteBrilliant write up
ReplyDeleteVery nicely written, and thought provoking. Keep it up.
ReplyDelete