Balance

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Brian Douglas

I believe deeply that a core aspect of our mission at UMass is to provide all students with access to education. That is what we were created to do. I also believe that our classrooms (be they physical or virtual) should reflect the composition of our community. Students of different racial or ethnic or economic backgrounds, of different ages, genders and orientations, and those with disabilities all bring unique perspectives to the learning community. When we succeed at attracting diversity to our classrooms, we all benefit.

I also believe that it is our obligation to continue to lead the exploration and adoption of new technology. Emerging technologies offer us a chance to improve on what we are doing, often in ways we don’t anticipate. The challenge, my challenge and one that I welcome your thoughts on, is that it is often the case that new technologies are the least accessible.

In another post I talk about the exciting new developments in virtual world technology (Second Life). This particular new technology is the talk of the instructional technology world right now. But the reality is that currently, to a person with visual disabilities operating on their own, Second Life is just a voice chat tool at best. At worst it is disorienting and extremely frustrating. This is just one example, but the point is how do we balance these goals when they conflict?

Historically we have taken the approach of pressuring the technology provider to improve accessibility, offering special assistance to those for whom the technology poses a challenge, and holding off on broad scale adoption until we are confident we can support the great majority of users. It’s an imperfect solution, but it is the best we have been able to do.