Accessing Technology, Technological Aids for Accessibility

Accessibly Design

There is an amazing back and forth pull between technological advancements and technology aids for accessibility. The same technology advancements that help connect many people (a telephone, and email, a text, a video call) can leave a noticeable lack of access for others (being unable to hear audio communication clearly, easily, or at all; being unable to read visual messaging; losing body language or verbal tone signals).
Luckily technology is also constantly developed to overcome access challenges like new mobility aids, screen readers, communication pads.

Rather than having these two circumstances constantly playing catch-up with one another, many tech companies might try to word with an anticipate the needs of marginalized communities; working with disability advocates and disabled designers to build features in natively to technology that adapts it to meet the needs of broader populations.

This is especially important in the classroom where students are owed fair access to a quality education. Within a technology-integrated classroom, if some students are not able to take advantage of that digital access because of the shortcomings of the technology, their rights as learners are compromised.

Accessibility tools being available is step one, but the next step is making sure educators, students, and general users know about these tools. Below is an example of some accessibility settings and tools available on a major piece of technology my students use in the classroom, the iPad.

*Disclaimer* I am not deaf/ hard of hearing or a member of the Deaf community. The best information about a community comes from members of that community and there are links to additional content creators and resources below.

Audio Accessibility on the iPad

Image Source: Blog Author via Canva

Why Audio Accessibility?

Tools and settings for the deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) have many potential users. This quick statistics check-in from the Nation Institute of Health points out that 2 to 3 of every 1,00 children born in the US have hearing loss in one of both ears and 1 in 8 people in the US age 12 and older has some measurable amount of hearing loss.
This issue is often simplified to the dichotomy of deaf versus hearing, but the HoH community is vast and varied in age and other demographics as well as the levels and type of hearing loss.

On a personal note, like so many folks, I only started paying attention to the complexities of hearing loss when it struck close to home. Thanks to a tumor, my sister started experiencing profound hear loss in middle school and had the inner bones of her left ear removed during high school, completely removing her ability to hear on that side. Because of this, I've learned a lot from her about the difficulties of living in a world that expects full auditory ability. One of the specific challenges is the loss of her audio "depth perception" as she calls it, or the problems distinguishing between foreground and background noise. This is a common issue for folks with hearing loss (and auditory processing difficulty!) and you can read more about it here. If you've ever existed in a group schooling environment before, it's not a big leap to see why this comes up for students trying to focus or listen to instruction.

A Deeper Dive into the Tools

The first two highlighted features are ones I look for on every device I own, due in large part to the personal experiences described above. Mono audio and balance are both about adjusting how much audio comes out of which channel; which can either be totally inconsequential or extremely important depending on the content of the audio. Even as a person with no substantial hearing loss, I have used these setting to accommodate for broken headphones or confusing track mixing. The fact that this setting's existence helps both hearing and deaf/HoH populations indicates it is a success as far as Universal Design is concerned. Learn more about universal design by clicking on this link!

Captioning and Subtitling are perhaps the most commonly thought of accommodations for deaf/HoH tech users. It is important to note they are not actually the same thing (learn more here) and captioning is the preferred accommodation as it includes sound descriptions, providing more information. Many video streaming sources have some forms of native captioning, so the iPads captioning function is designed to work with compatible applications rather than any video that plays. The live captions are the really lovely feature here, using sound recognition to generate spontaneous captions for video calls or recordings. A student could record a lecture to re-play later and have captions added to increase comprehension and access. Obviously these captions are not created professionally and are prone to error; they are also only available for my students' iPads in English. Another helpful part of these settings is the ability to customize caption style (font, size, color, etc.), making the captioning work better for the individual using it.

Sound recognition is a great feature for allowing the iPad to take some of the concentration burden off of a HoH student or making a learning spaces safer and more inclusive for a deaf student. Turning on this feature has the iPad "listening" for specific sounds like alarms and notifying users when that sound occurs. This could be additional notification for something like a fire alarm. It could also be notification that a teacher's timer is going off, something my class uses to know it is time to start clean up procedures.

Device integration is one of the most exciting features, but not one I personally experienced because I do not use hearing aids. Instead I'll link you to this piece about actual user Klaus Wirtz's experience with this feature and his iPhone. This feature is a case where there are multiple devices being rapidly developed and redesigned, so there is a lot of area for growth and interfacing in this arena.

The final feature is one that might be useful for deaf/HoH users to engage, but is also important for other users to employ when communicating digitally with their deaf/HoH peers. Adding voice isolation cuts back on distracting background noise, allowing the people you are video or audio calling with to focus only on your words and not providing audio interference for live captioning systems.

Looking to Do More in Your Classroom?

For large scale information, check out the National Association of the Deaf.

To learn more about making accessible spaces for the d/Deaf community, check out InclusionHub.

Thinking about how to build a more inclusive classroom? So is this case study from Educating All Learners.

Want to read some nuanced, informed takes from deaf/HoH academics? Look at The Mind Hears blog.

Interested in some video learning? Look for Ahmed Khalifa on YouTube or at his website.

Image Source: Giphy