Background
The Support Centre for students with disabilities in the Centre for Academic Equality and Inclusion at Ono academic college (OAC), strive to provide universal technological accommodation based on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, while maintaining a strong commitment to providing students with personal accommodations. The generous fund by the “Ian Karten Charitable Trust” in October 2018, enabled OAC to provide an improved learning environment for a large scope of students with disabilities.
The improvements included:
- Acoustic improvements in the support centers’ main office, study rooms and technology room.
- Improved sound systems in 14 lecture halls.
- Hearing loop systems in 6 lecture halls.
- Hearing loop system in 8 service stations.
The devices were installed in two campuses of OAC.
The acoustic adjustments affected the organization at three levels: (i) Direct impact on staff and students; (ii) Increased awareness to students with disabilities and accessibility; (iii) Prioritization of accessibility at management level. Below are two case studies which reflect the impact.
Case studies
“Aisha”
“Aisha”, age 35, is a first-year Management MA student. She has a hearing disability caused by a bacterial infection which erupted at age 31. She uses a hearing aid and, in some cases, needs transcription of lectures.
During the registration process it was important for “Aisha” to understand what supports are available on campus to aid her hearing disability. The fact that OAC had lecturer halls with acoustic improvements and with Hearing loop systems convinced her to register and start studying in our institution.
“Aisha” class was assigned to study in lecture halls with hearing loops and in the acoustic lecture halls. To hear clearly in the acoustic lecture halls, she used a personal FM hearing loop from the technology room. In the courses where she needed transcription, the lecturer used an automatic transcription application. The quality of the sound system and especially the microphones made the transcription more accurate and useful for “Aisha”.
We were glad to discover that “Aisha” finished her first semester with excellent grades. She also reported high levels of satisfaction from her learning experience and participation and especially her ability to take part in class discussions. This year, there are two more students with hearing disabilities that started learning at OAC following on her recommendation.
“Michael”
“Michael”, age 43, is a second-year B.Ed. student. He has a paralyzed hand and PTSD – Post traumatic stress disorder, both due to an accident at work. Until the accident “Michael” worked as a coffee machine installer, the accident led him to stop working and begin a long process of rehabilitation. As part of the rehabilitation he decided to turn to academic studies and fulfill an old dream – gain academic education and become an educator.
“Michael” approached the students support center during the first week of the academic year. He reported that he is very distracted during the classes. Because of the PTSD, he feels more comfortable sitting in the back of the hall, and has trouble hearing and understanding the lecturers. Also, he reported that he has difficulties in using the support center. He felt uncomfortable sharing personal information with the consultants and didn’t use the study rooms and technology room because he couldn’t detach himself from the background noises and focus on the conversation and on learning.
After the installation of the equipment in the second semester of the year, we made sure that “Michael” will study in the acoustic halls. We also updated him about the improvements that were made in the support center and encouraged him to come and study there. “Michael” reported a significant improvement in his learning experience in the lecture halls and in the support center. Before the renovation in the lecture halls, “Michael” almost didn’t attend courses because he felt insufficient while sitting there, and now his attendance has increased. He reports that he can now be in the classroom, sit in the back, hear and understand the lecturers and gain greater understanding of the learning material. Furthermore, “Michael” started studying in the support center. He uses the study rooms and the technology room, where he mostly summarizes study materials using concept-maps applications. His increased presence in the support center enabled a significate professional accompaniment that included personal conversations together with academic mentoring.
A pilot study of automatic transcription in the classroom
Automatic transcription application is a relatively new development that had become more and more common in recent years for free personal use in apps on the smartphones, tablets and computers. Actually, it is known also as voice recognition software. These transcription programs convert speech into text transcripts for use in other applications.
In the field of Assistive Technology, we all know the Dragon Dictation which was one of the first software that had been developed by Nauace more than 20 years ago, however unfortunately until about five years ago it had no Hebrew support.
During the last year in the OAC, we carried out a pilot study trying to use Automatic transcription in the classroom during online lectures for students with hearing disabilities (like Aisha, who is described above) and for students with dysgraphia who can’t take notes during the lecture. The lecturer uses a wireless microphone (which is a part of the sound system) that connect to a computer with Automatic transcription software, and the lecture is transcribed online to a word document. We had tried two types of automatic software – “Koldan” and an internet free software base on google speech to text engine (https://speechnotes.co/).
The pilot study showed us that voice recognition software are not yet performing at the same level as human transcriptionists, it depends on the quality of the microphones, and the accuracy in Hebrew, which is still not good enough, therefore the transcribed output needs editing. We continue with this pilot because we know that the technology is improving by frequency of using and in some cases, it might be cost effective for the students
Summary
In this article we have demonstrate the technological and environmental adjustments for Students with Hearing Disabilities and for Students with Cognitive Disabilities at the Ono Academic College that were implemented thanks to the generous contribution by the “Ian Karten Charitable Trust”. The use of acoustic adjustments were presented in two case studies and in addition a short report of a pilot study about Automatic transcription in the classroom that has been used for students with dysgraphia. In the future we would like to expand implementation of adjustments and automatic transcription to all campuses of OAC and to purchase more technologies, which can improve the studying experience and the accessibility of learning materials to a wider range of students with disabilities.
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- This article was written by the Centre for Deaf Blind People Karten Centre
- Featured in the Karten Spring 2019 Newsletter
- This article is listed in the following subject areas: Case Study, Centre News