[Athen] Accessibility discussions at EDUCAUSE

[Ron Stewart]

Afternoon,

ATHEN has been very much involved in trying to get progress in realistic
accessibility efforts with EDUCAUSE for quite some time. The current effort
is being led by long time ATHEN members Greg Krause and Terrill Thompson but
given the recent opposition against the provisions of the TEACH act by ACE
and EDUCAUSE reflects a long standing dilemma. 

For over a decade we have been attempting to get EDUCAUSE to take a firm
policy and practice stand in regards to fully inclusive education but they
have never been willing to do so in any substantive way. Like many similar
organizations that are highly beholden to the commercial producers of
technology and curriculum it is very difficult to get them to take a firm
and forward thinking position when your major corporate donors are
fundamentally opposed to such a concept of only producing fully accessible
and inclusive products.  They pay lip service to the topic but when you take
a careful examination of their actual progress it is minimal at best.

I can point to numerous large scale projects that EDUCAUSE has promoted over
the years that speak to why they talk to the talk but as an organization are
clearly not willing to walk the walk.  After almost two decades working in
this space I am at the conclusion that it will only be through litigation
and legislative action that we will see the changes that are needed. That
approach has actually ben anathema to me since the outcomes usually result
in more bad than good for all the constituent groups involved.  I have tried
for just as long to work in a collaborative and cooperative way with groups
such as this, which has resulted in the disability and access community
giving and giving with little to none reciprocity on the part of the vendors
and the institutions represented by groups such as ACE.  A perfect example
of this is the work around AIM that has been done, but has resulted in
almost no fully accessible curriculum being developed and delivered by the
commercial players. In fact the digital materials currently being sold into
the educational space are much worse from an accessibility perspective than
what has come before.

Ron Stewart

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On
Behalf Of Jennifer Sutton
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 3:56 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Athen] Accessibility discussions at EduCause

Greetings, ATHENites:

If this question is considered off-topic, please direct me to a more
appropriate forum.

I recently happened to see the Educause agenda and program (link below), and
I wondered if anyone on this list who's involved with accessibility-related
activities might provide us with an update, expected highlights, etc.

I'm not particularly asking with respect to the subject of the TEACH Act (as
was being discussed here recently), but rather, I'm asking for a more
general sense of what may take place at the conference related to IT (and
other) accessibility and higher ed.

I know there has been work, and there have been presentations in the past,
so I'm looking for a bit of an update.

Thanks in advance. And I hope those who attend the conference will find it
productive.

Best,
Jennifer

Agenda and Program | <http://EDUCAUSE.edu>EDUCAUSE.edu
http://www.educause.edu/annual-conference/agenda-and-program?utm_source=Info
rmz&utm_medium=Email%20marketing&utm_campaign=EDUCAUSE


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