[Athen] Advice for colleague in Ireland

[Wink Harner]

Enda,

One possibility for open portal access is for your office to to house all
of the AT software, with the exception of Dragon (and there may be others
which have to be individual installs), on your own dpartment's separate server.
Talk to your tech dept. about this as a possibility then get in touch with
the AT dept. at Oklahoma State Univ. who have developped a really neat open
portal access approach. The big answer I always seem to get from our techies
here is that "your server will cost you another person" meaning they cannot
afford to staff & maintain the server. Am still working on that.

The 2-4-6 plan is the replacement cycle for the comptuers on campus. The
2year replacements are those super-high-end users (math, science, engineering)
who must have high processing speed. The 4yr. replacements will go into the
classrooms or libraries for 2 years and the office staffs get the 6yr. computers.
ARGH that means our offices have to run their offices with the slowest of
the slow! On the upside the AT lab computers got included in the 2yr. cycle
of the college's replacement plan instead of my office having to include
the equipement on some regular budget request. Huzzah!

Hope this helps you out in your conversations. Looks like you've gotten some
great and really practical suggestions to work with. What a great group we
have!

Blessings,

Wink
Ms. Wink Harner
Manager
Disability Resources & Services
Mesa Community College
Mesa AZ


>-- Original Message --

>Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 11:52:51 +0100

>From: Enda P Guinan <enda.guinan at nuim.ie>

>To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network <athen at athenpro.org>

>Subject: Re: [Athen] Advice for colleague in Ireland

>Reply-To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network <athen at athenpro.org>

>

>

>Thanks so much for the responses so far. Already I have some very 

>useful information.

>

>Wink, the technical setup at South Mountain Community College sounds 

>familiar. One of the obstacles I'm facing here is that the college's 

>servers can't accommodate AT on a central server. But this is up for 

>review and I'll be giving them reasons to change. This 2-4-6 plan you 

>refer to, what is that?

>

>The partnerships within Mesa sound very practical and could be 

>replicated here too in time.

>

>Terry, thanks for those links. I'm carrying out a similar survey (the 

>first one here!) on how AT is positioned in the various institutes of 

>higher education in Ireland. You can see the wiki at 

>http://atsurvey.wikispaces.com/. I hope you don't mind that I 

>appropriated the categories on how the AT person's work is divided. 

>I'll share the results in here later in the year.

>

>Shawn, there are so many parallels between us and Southern Oregon 

>that I will be in contact with you to chat more. In the meantime, I 

>think I shall get some t-shirts printed with "I don't do network 

>issues!" (perhaps I'll italicise the word 'do').

>

>EA, plenty for me to go on there, thank you. I'll follow up some of 

>those, and I'll be taking advantage of your kind offer to chat later 

>in the summer.

>

>Thanks everyone,

>

>Enda

>

>

>

>Enda P Guinan

>Assistive Technology Advisor

>Access Office

>NUI Maynooth

>

>P: +353 1 708 4654

>F: +353 1 708 3838

>E: enda.guinan at nuim.ie

>W: http://access.nuim.ie  

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>Athen at athenpro.org

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Ms. Wink Harner
Manager
Disability Resources & Services
Mesa Community College
Mesa AZ

480-461-7447