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CAST USES XML TO PROVIDE NEW HOPE FOR
DISABLED STUDENTS By
Robin Levine, Contributing Editor
Data Conversion Laboratory
works with a number of organizations doing very interesting
things with XML to make information more accessible and available
to people with disabilities. One of the more interesting organizations
we’ve come across is the not-for-profit Center for Applied Special
Technology (CAST) and in particular the Universal Learning Center
(ULC). We recently had an opportunity to interview Rick Bowes,
ULC’s Managing Co-Director in order to get his insights on where
things are going and what might be possible in the future.
Focusing on the education arena,
the not-for-profit CAST seeks to use technology to expand educational
opportunities for all students, especially those with disabilities.
According to Rick Bowes, Managing Director of CAST’s Universal
Learning Center, the organization’s overall mission is “to increase
educational opportunities for all children but especially those
with disabilities through applying new technology to the learning
process.” Bowes, a former publisher of the New England Journal
of Medicine and a past president of the Society for Scholarly
Publishing is committed to what CAST calls a Universal Learning
Center (ULC). Bowes has been involved in publishing for
more than 28 years as a president of Macmillan New Media and
Cadmus Digital Solutions. As a strategic consultant with Bowes
& Associates he helped publishers capitalize on electronic
publishing and launched a free directory of publications and
periodicals on the web called PubList.com. His experience with
creating online databases of digital information is what led
him to CAST where he is involved in the development and launch
of the Universal Learning Center, a digitized directory and
database of accessible school curriculum.
CAST Launches Universal
Learning Center
The ULC is a web-based resource
that “will provide immediate access to digital curricular materials
to support a diverse range of K-12 students, including those
with disabilities.” The goal of the ULC is to make digital materials
widely available to educators and students, and to provide instruction
on how they can be used effective to meet student learning needs.
The center will consist of a materials locator, an easy-to-use
search tool to find digital curricula, a digital content library
with centrally-stored downloadable digital materials which will
use digital rights management software expected to be available
in mid-2002, resources and workshops providing customized instruction,
and a Personal Information Manager (PIM) that enables schools
to store acquired digital materials, manage resources, and more.
Recognizing the critical need
to provide digital content to students with disabilities, CAST
will be rolling out a pilot version of its Universal Learning
Center. “We’re initially focusing on 9th and 10th grade reading,
language arts and social studies,” says Bowes.
XML Plays an Important Role
Presently, the ULC is using
in its pilot program, materials kids read in schools that are
available in the public domain. These are books that have already
been digitized and are available on the web. “We’re embedding
in and have developed our own internal DTD that supports education
and accessibility tags and so on,” Bowes said of the production
work being prepared. “We’ll be able to export out to various
different formats using various XSLTs,” he added, although “right
now we’re planning to output straight HTML without frames because
frames are hard for accessibility.” They are adding navigation
tags to public material that is currently untagged. Bowes says
that the ULC has “a good value proposition for publishers who
want to digitize their text especially those that are using
SGML and XML.” Since SGML and XML allow publishers to identify
information needed by ULC, it makes it much easier for the materials
to be incorporated into the program. The ULC will conduct a
campaign to increase awareness in the education community of
using digitized materials in the classroom. Materials will be
available in unformatted, formatted and structured text, enhanced
structured text, and accessible Open eBook. Over time, additional
formats will be added.
“Fix the environment so
the barriers aren’t there”
The ULC is an outgrowth of
CAST’s Universal Design for Learning (UDL) initiative which
“digital media can provide multiple representations of content
(text, audio, video, etc.) and multiple means of expression.”
In addition, “a single enhanced digital document can be configured
by software to meet the needs of a wide range of users, thereby
eliminating the necessity and cost of multiple versions for
multiple constituents.
The traditional view of assistive
technology is to provide add-on hardware or add-in software
that will enable a person with disabilities to read, hear or
access the information needed. The UDL works on the axiom that
says “fix the environment so the barriers aren’t there.” Examples
of barrier-free environments are, Bowes explains, closed-captioning
for the hearing impaired and curb cuts in sidewalks. These accommodations,
initially for those with disabilities, have become part of the
environment and are used by all people. For example, in airport
waiting areas mounted televisions have closed-captioning capability
so that the person watching can “hear” over the din of loudspeakers
amid a cacophony of environmental sounds. A business person
wheeling a briefcase cart can use the curb cuts to cross the
street without having to lift the cart over barriers.
Many barriers to learning can
be reduced by reproducing textbooks with digital versions. Explains
Bowes “if students can’t get the materials to participate in
the classroom they fall behind and don’t test well.” Of the
approximate 5.5 million students with disabilities covered under
the federal guidelines that provide for academic accommodations
through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
of 1975 and its amendment in 1997 Bowes says that “while the
needs of low vision or blind students are currently being addressed
by Braille, audio and other media the remaining students with
disabilities can benefit greatly from new digital resources
like those we are focusing on.” The ULC strives to bring accessible
digital materials to the student population with disabilities,
students with dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, learning
disabilities and neurological impairments. Studies by the Office
of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services of the U.S.
Department of Education show that since the government has allocated
services to children with disabilities more of them have graduated
from high school and successfully completed coursework in colleges
and universities.
Digital versions of textbooks,
reference books, tests, workbooks, worksheets, films and videos
are part of the panoply of possibilities. Bowes clarifies this
by saying that “you can highlight the text like you would in
a word processor, then work with it to change the size, read
it, read it in different voices and in different speeds.”
For publishers the ULC will
provide a delivery system that they can use to respond to new
accessibility requirements that qualify for state adoptions
and that fulfill state and federal mandates. The system will
provide a searchable relational database of metadata about digital
content in the ULC, publishers’ and other repositories; host
a secure XML-based repository containing accessible curriculum
resources; provide a service for translating traditional publishing
formats (e.g. Quark) into accessible XML; and various features
providing security and access control to assure proper use by
ULC users.
Enhancing Accessibility
for Corporate Websites and Schools
CAST has several products that
have been on the market for a while. It developed the popular
and free Bobby for corporate websites, intranets and others.
Bobby is a web cop of sorts that analyzes web pages for accessibility
problems and teaches designers how to correct them. In order
to become “Bobby-approved” a website must meet the following
standards: provide text equivalents for all images and multimedia;
ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available
without it; identify headers for data tables and make line-by-line
reading sensible for layout tables; provide summaries of graphs
and charges; identify document language and any changes to it;
organize content logically and clearly such as with headings,
list elements, links and navigation bars; provide alternative
content for features like applets or plug-ins that may not be
supported.
Together with Scholastic Inc.,
one of the leading children’s book publishers, CAST co-developed
WiggleWorks, one of the very early multimedia products that
was mainstreamed in education. WiggleWorks allows children to
read, write, speak, and record themselves reading. In addition,
they can creatively revise the books, print them, and share
their work with family and friends. WiggleWorks is a tool for
teaching literacy skills to diverse learners. The program enables
teachers to work with children who have varying degrees of learning
abilities within the same classroom. It assists students with
story awareness, word recognition, phonics, writing and comprehension
and oral reading.
In addition, CAST provides
a host of opportunities for all students especially those students
with disabilities to not only assist in the learning process
but to enlighten them on the way technology can transform and
inspire an individual to achieve the highest goals.
For more information on CAST
and its products, the ULC or Bobby go to the CAST websites at:
www.cast.org,
www.ulc.cast.org,
www.cast.org/bobby.
Click
here to read about CAST’s Bobby on CNET’s Digital Dispatch.
More information on Data Conversion
Laboratory (DCL) is available at www.dclab.com
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CIDM Best Practices Conference September 13–15, 2010 Hampton, Virginia
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