An interdisciplinary partnership within an European Leonardo da Vinci project has developed a new approach aimed at educating secondary school students in the creation of built environments accessible to disabled people and at sensitizing them towards the inclusion of people with disabilities in all realms of social life. The AWARD (Accessible…

Achieve 3000 is an online differentiated reading program for students with disabilities and English Language Learners in grades 6-8. The software delivers differentiated assignments at 12 different reading levels. The software features internal assessments that continuously gauge students' reading levels, provides feedback to teachers, and…

This report discusses access issues related to distance learning for individuals with disabilities and presents design considerations for assuring that a course is accessible to potential instructors and students with a wide range of disabilities. The field of universal design provides a framework for this discussion. It begins by describing…

Describes page structure models for the design of electronic books. Approaches to electronic book design are discussed, including CD-ROM, multimedia, and hypermedia; information delivery techniques in electronic books are discussed; and three case studies are reviewed: screen design for computer-based training, interactive guidebooks, and…

Task analysis can be applied to the design of computer assisted instruction programs for handicapped students through determining the task specification, identifying decisions and steps, classifying the task according to learning skill, identifying the enabling objectives, identifying entry behaviors, and evaluating achievement of the objectives.…

The National Center for Supported eText (NCSeT) has a research agenda designed to investigate the effects of supported electronic text on the ability of students with disabilities to read and learn from text. This article introduces four studies conducted by research teams who have collaborated with NCSeT to implement that agenda. It describes…

The importance of accessibility to digital e-learning resources is widely acknowledged. The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative has played a leading role in promoting the importance of accessibility and developing guidelines that can help when developing accessible web resources. The accessibility of e-learning resources…

Lectures can present barriers to learning for many students and although online multimedia materials have become technically easier to create and offer many benefits for learning and teaching, they can be difficult to access, manage, and exploit. This article considers how research on interacting with multimedia can inform developments in using…

Writing is a recursive and complex set of cognitive processes that can be taught effectively to students with disabilities. Employing an adapted cognitive theory of writing, a broad view of what constitutes evidence, and the support of a variety of assistive and internet-based technologies, we developed a writing instructional program to meet the…

This paper presents the methods and results of a year-long evaluation study, conducted for the purpose of determining disability accessibility barriers and potential solutions for those barriers found in four World Wide Web-based learning environments. The primary questions used to frame the evaluation study were: (1) Are there any features of the…

A study was undertaken to explore program policies and practices related to the accessibility of American distance learning courses to qualified students with disabilities. A literature review was conducted, a draft list of accessibility indicators was created, examples of applications of the indicators in existing distance learning programs were…

The Oklahoma Association of Teacher Educators 2009 Journal includes the following four peer reviewed articles: (1) The Changing Role of Grandparents (Fred D. Hammond, III, Terry E. Spigner, Charolette Myles-Nixon, and Pauline Holloway); (2) Pedagogical Agent Instructional Design Challenges (Jon Martens); (3) Differences in Relatedness across…

As educators' awareness of their responsibilities towards ensuring the accessibility of the learning environment to disabled students increases, significant debate surrounds the implications of accessibility requirements on educational multimedia. There would appear to be widespread concern that the fundamental principles of creating accessible…

This study examined features of software used by 48 preschool special education students. Programs were compared for their effect on engagement, affect, and choice. Findings suggest that children prefer programs with higher interaction requirements, as well as those using animation, sound, and voice features. (Author/PB)

The development of computer-assisted and computer-managed instruction for handicapped students involves a number of instructional design issues requiring research. Discussed are algorithmic and heuristic procedures, individual rate of learning, feedback, and instructional task hierarchies.(Author/DB)