Going off from the interview with Deborah Alder, one of the services Bryn Mawr College offers for hearing disabilities, is to share the strategies with the professors, so students will not have a hard time hearing in the classroom. She sends out an e-mail to professors who will be having students with hearing difficulties with the list of strategies they should do. I will introduce the major tips from her e-mail list.
Although it may be hard for professors to follow all the points, it is very important that they know about this strategies and actually do it in class, which will greatly support the student's learning environment.
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The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a US labor laws act that was created to prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability. The ADA requires all employers to provide certain accommodations to employees with disabilities. It also sets forth accessibility requirements in public places (ADA.gov)
The ADA has created a set of standards which consist of design requirements for the building of certain spaces. These spaces include public places, commercial buildings and state and local government facilities (access-board.gov). The United States Access Board creates the ADA Accessibility Guidelines which are design guidelines used by the Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation to set ADA standards (access-board.gov). The most recent ADA Standards for Accessible Design was developed by the Department of Justice in 2010. It includes design regulations for state and local government facilities as well as standards for public areas and commercial facilities. The Department of Transportation has a similar set of guidelines which apply to facilities that provide public transportation services. In our cost analysis blog post, we draw on some of these design standards to think about ways in which Bryn Mawr College can adopt some of these standards and regulations to make the campus more accessible for everyone. To read the most recent ADA Standards for Accessible Design and to learn more about the United States Access Board, click on the buttons below. For this portion of the project, we decided to deconstruct a commonly used classroom in order to test it for accommodations. Circled below are areas in classroom which accommodate students with various physical disabilities and those which could be better suited to accommodate them.
The major points are discussed from left to right in the format of {what it is: it's accessibility rating: discussion and suggestions moving forward}. 1. The fire alarm: GOOD: This fire alarm is equipped with both noise and light functions. This means that when it sounds, bright strobe lights flash as the alarm sounds, alerting people with both sight and hearing disabilities that something is wrong. 2. The exit sign: OKAY: The exit sign, although lit up to assist people with visual impairments, does not come with any sort of cues for those who have major visual disabilities such as blindness. This feature could be improved by providing a map of each classroom and building equipped with braille so all students would know how to navigate all buildings in cases of emergencies. 3. The chalk board: BAD: As shown in the photo below, the chalk board is the exact same color as the wall behind it. For all students who have had classes with teacher who enjoy writing on boards, you know that chalk typically does not show up particularly well on these surfaces, leaving even able bodied students unaware of what has been written. On top of that, students with visual impairments are unable to benefit from the teaching style of many professors who aim to use a visual aid while they instruct. Whether it be Power Points or writing on the board, questions such as "how do professors accommodate students with visual impairments? How does this affect their quality of learning? What impact does this change have on able bodied students?" are raised. The same questions are raised in cases of students with auditory disabilities and language barriers. To fix this, we propose that the walls in which chalk boards hang are to be painted a distinctly different color than that of the chalk board and that the chalk being used is of a prominent color. We also encourage teachers who have students with disabilities in their classes to have individualized meetings with their students regarding what has worked best for them in the past. 4. The microphone and speakers: OKAY: The majority of lecture halls on campus are equipped with microphones and sound systems, however, after testing the abilities of these systems, it is unclear whether or not they are harmful or helpful. Even though these systems increase the volume of lectures and carry the professors voice to the back row of each classroom, they muddle the sound produced. This decrease in quality may cause more harm than good when considering students with auditory disabilities or language barriers. We propose the best way to edit this system is by providing software to transcribe lectures into written word. This will allow all students to reference the things they missed, and for students with visual impairments it will allow them to transfer the words into braille using the online system provided by Bryn Mawr. 5. Lighting: GOOD: this room provides students with plenty of artificial light. Different rows of lights can be dimmed to different levels which can be useful for having less lighting in the front when the projector is on. 6. The stairs: BAD: Not only do these stairs provide obstacles for students with mobility issues, they also do not come with guardrails or lighted pathways. The steps also do not have color contrast, nor do they have raised bumps to help those with visual disabilities. This prevents students from being sure they are on the correct path when walking up the stairs during times of darkness or emergency. Also, since there is no ramp located inside the room, the mobility accessibility aspect is again in question. All in all, we believe that the college has done a good job in increasing the accessibility of its campus. However, that being said, there are many easy fixes that can be made on top of these changes. For reference, the breakdown of the costs to change basic things around campus have been provided in a separate blog post. We have interviewed Deborah Alder, the Coordinator of Access Services at Bryn Mawr College, to further hear about what services Bryn Mawr offers to students specifically with hearing disabilities. She has kindly shared with us the options the college provides for them, listed below.
・Interpreters ・CART (Computer Assisted Real Time Translation) The college hires a company and that person will listen to presentations and in real-time will quickly type those words and sends it to the student’s computer, so the student can read what is being said. ・assistance in note-taking ・assisted listening device The speaker wears the transmitter and the student wears the receiver. With this device, it omits some of the background noise, so the student can hear the speaker’s voice clearer. ・moving classes Students have a better chance of hearing better, if they are in small classrooms and have carpeting floors, which reduces the amount of the echo. So the college tries to provide these kinds of classrooms for them. ・hearing loop This device is built into the walls of the classroom. By having a certain hearing aid, it omits the background noises and directly sends clear sounds to students. By this, students do not need to use Assisted Listening Device during in that room. Currently, there are one or two rooms in Carpenter, one room in Thomas Great Hall, but is broken, with this system. Some classes in Park will have this by the construction going on right now. ・sharing strategies with professors ・captioning There are currently eight students at this college with hearing difficulties. What she repeatedly said is that “there is no ‘one size fits all approach’ and what they need depends on the degree of their hearing loss or if they use hearing aids or not, etc.” She also mentioned that the college is doing a great job in providing different services for each students, but they can do much more to improve. Making captions is one of the biggest thing she emphasized. For example, there are short video clips in the college’s website, but some of them are not captioned. The clip for inviting Michelle Obama to Bryn Mawr is also the case. It should be captioned automatically, and if it’s not, it should not be seen or placed. Not only professors, but the departments, admissions, and everybody should be careful and have this in mind. Being more thoughtful can make greater changes. Through our other blog posts we have documented the current accessibility features of Bryn Mawr College. We have identified both what the college is doing well in terms of access services and areas which need improvement. How can the college make its campus more accessible? What would it cost to make improvements to accessibility? In this post we will be exploring what it would cost the college to make the campus more accessible. Bryn Mawr College started it's construction in 1885 as an institution for able-bodied women. Over the years, the college has begun expanding it's student body to include scholars of all backgrounds and abilities. Based off the information learned through studying the history of disability in the United States, we have decided to put Bryn Mawr's accessibility to the test. Although the institution itself is private, it has served as a pillar for social progress in the academic world for years, leading us and other members of the student body to hold it to the highest standard. After examining the accessibility map of campus, we decided to showcase what it is like to travel from class to class, around student buildings, and campus when a student has a mobility issue. We did this by consulting various students with theses disabilities to gain their own insight on what the campus has to offer, and what it is lacking. By doing this, we hoped to spread awareness on what Bryn Mawr has done to increase their accessibility, what they can do better in the years going forward, and to show able-bodied students, like ourselves, the abilities we take for granted on a daily basis. For an accessibility tour of Bryn Mawr College, watch our video below! |
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