Mobile technology: Will it help people with disabilities access the Internet?

Mobile devices can dramatically change the way people learn. That point was hammered over and over again at the Making the Move to Mobile (M3) conference at the University of Utah earlier this week. (Disclosure: it was sponsored by Apple, and they provided a free lunch.)

The implications of mobile technology may be felt even more among people with disabilities, as it helps close the accessibility/affordability gap.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that people with disabilities are less likely to use the Internet than their peers. Among adults who did not report a disability, 81 percent said they used the Internet, compared to 54 percent of those who did report a disability.

What’s more, some people are unable to meaningfully use a computer without additional, expensive technology. For example, a blind person often relies on screen reading software. Cost and accessibility problems are two barriers that may discourage people with disabilities from even trying to use the Internet.

But new mobile devices (read: iPad, iPod and iPhone) are 100 percent accessible to the blind out of the box. They include a built-in screen reader, and they’re less expensive than many desktop computers.  In December 2010, the accessibility experts at WebAIM conducted a survey of screen reader users, where they discovered that the percentage of respondents who used a screen reader on a mobile device mushroomed 550 percent in less than two years. Interestingly, those respondents reported using a variety of mobile technology brands.

Read the whole story on the CPD website.

CPD Volunteer of the Year honored again

Chalese Buttars

For a twenty-year-old, Chalese Buttars is decorated.

In 2010 she was named the CPD Volunteer of the Year. In 2011 she was the College of Education’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Fellow. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in Communicative Arts and Deaf Education, and will now move on to graduate school in Utah State University’s College of Education. 

Her volunteer work at the CPD included helping out in the Assistive Technology Lab and with Project PEER—experiences that she said taught her a ton.

She also became an undergraduate teaching fellow in the EEJ College of Education and Human Services. The title brought her back to a phonetics class she took last year, but this time around she was there to help students. She did test reviews and held office hours. Once a week, she taught. “Usually I’d try to incorporate some kind of game to make it more interesting,” she said.

That experience gave her a deeper understanding of the material. She also gained experience in the classroom: something she values, since she wants to be a professor someday.

What’s next? She will enter a clinical doctorate program specializing in audiology.

While taking concurrent enrollment classes in high school shaved two years off of her undergraduate studies, the doctorate program will take four years.

“I’m afraid I can’t make that any shorter,” she said.