Read Seale Chapter 8 Supporting the use of accessible e-learning: the student support service perspective.
- How helpful do you think it is to have 'specialised' rooms or areas in an educational institution, which only disabled learners can use to access technology/online learning material?
I think that having specialized rooms or areas in an educational institution which only disabled students could use is by itself discriminating towards disabled students that really annoys me. From the one hand is the discrimination and from the other hand it might be good. But, it would have been better if these rooms could also be used from non disabled students too so that the discrimination itself could be eliminated.
- Do you think student support services need to employ accessibility or disability experts? If so, how might the role of these 'experts' complement or work against the role of other staff working within student support services?
I believe that having accessibility or disability experts in the student support services is valuable and their role should complement the role of staff working within student support services because I think that each role in a school is interconnected with each other. The student is the center and the rest of the roles in a school is supporting each other in order to offer to the student, disabled or not, the knowledge. Thus, it is important to have these experts in order to satisfy disabled student needs too.
- How are student support services organised or structured in your institution? In what ways do you think this organisation influences the way in which disabled learners are supported to use or access technology?
I am working in a primary school and the student support service is working in the school hours in the morning. For example, when the disabled student has a less important class like Art, Music etc the specialist teacher will take these students in a separate room as mentioned above and work with the disabled children. In that room there is a computer but they rarely use it. As there are no visually impaired students or hard hearing students they do not have screen readers etc. There are children with other disabilities that the specialist teacher does not think that computer will help I think and most of the time what the teacher does is giving printed material full of exercises and the student is expected to solve these exercises at home or with another teacher in the afternoon classes.
- What would you change about the way in which students are supported in your institution and why?
Definitely the separate room should not exist but if there was such a room to be used not only by disabled students but also from non disabled students. The right softwares to be installed on the computers in order to help students who need them so that they will not face extra difficulties in their learning. Also, training of the staff and students should be a must in order to help the first to learn how to use these programs but also to have seminars in order to find out how to make their learning resources accessible. Students themselves should find out how to use these programs to serve their own needs.