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Introductory Remarks

Regarding

Policy, Property and Permissions: A Discussion of Accessible Curriculum Materials

by Skip Stahl[1]

Throughout the United States, teacher in large and small, urban and suburban, districts are struggling to find curricular materials that are accessible and educationally relevant to students with disabilities.  Because few of these products exist, many teachers are adapting their existing materials by copying or digitizing them so that they can be used with assistive technologies.  On a national scale this results in a redundant and costly situation for schools and taxpayers alike.  Many other teachers continue teaching without accessible materials, consequently failing to meet the learning requirements of students with special needs.  This has considerable social costs for students and communities, particularly considering how many students have identified special needs.

Nationwide there are nearly six million K-12 students with identified special needs who are covered by the 1997 reauthorization of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act  (IDEA ’97).  Over 90% of the students served under IDEA in 1998 were classified in one of four disability categories—learning disabilities (51%), speech or language impairments (20%) mental retardation (11%) and emotional disturbance (9%).  According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, more students with disabilities are being educated in regular classrooms.   In fact over 95% of students with disabilities ages 6-21 attend school with their non-disabled peers. These statistics reflect the very large group of diverse learners who must “access, participate and progress” in the general education curriculum.

The primary goal of IDEA ’97 was to improve outcomes for students with disabilities by including them in the standards, methods, and accountability of the general curriculum.  To that end, IDEA ’97 specifically requires that public schools adapt the content in general education classrooms to meet the specific learning needs of special education students.  Underlying the law itself is the understanding that the format, content, means of presentation, organization, and means of assessment in standard curricular materials can themselves present barriers to many learners.  For example, printed textbooks lack the flexibility that would support access to meaningful learning opportunities for students with disabilities.[3]In addition, students need more than access to content: they must be able to interact with and learn from the curriculum, meaning that the level of challenge and support, the means of self-expression, and the sources of interest and engagement are suitable for their skills and needs.[4]

However, when teachers face the challenge of modifying their existing curricula to meet the needs of students with disabilities, the task can prove to be daunting.  To modify the“one size fits all” materials of most existing curricula requires enormous commitments of time, expertise and resources.  This necessarily limits the available time for actual teaching and preparation. Although curriculum adaptation can be effective in individual instances, and can serve as a necessary stopgap, this approach does not contribute to a systemic solution.

Fortunately, technological innovation has enabled the transformation of print-based educational materials such as textbooks into flexible digital formats.  Unlike print, where one size supposedly fits all, digital media can be adjusted for different learners.  The nature of digital media provides flexibility and versatility that allows for multiple representations and multiple ways to interact with content.  Digital text has the potential to provide greater accessibility to content. 

State and Local Education Agencies, under growing pressure from the public and state legislatures to provide effective curriculum materials and assistance to students with disabilities, have begun to demand that textbooks and other curriculum materials be provided in accessible digital formats.  Major adoption states (CA, TX, GA, KY)  have started requiring publishers to provide these materials, and other states are expected to quickly follow suit.  In an effort to standardize this process, federal legislation (The Instructional Materials Accessibility Act or IMAA) is moving through Congress in a joint effort by advocacy groups for the visually-impaired and the Association of American Publishers.  If enacted in its current form, IMAA will create a national repository for digital textbooks and require publishers to contribute their titles in flexible digital format.

These legal developments have initiated many adjustments for K-12 publishers.  Although a few of the major publishing houses have useable digital versions of their titles, the majority of these editions do not meet accessibility standards.  Similarly, the stripped-down ASCII text required for Braille in more than half the states also does not meet the new federal stipulations.  For supplemental publishers, the creation of these accessible digital versions may well be outside the scope of their available resources.

Understandably, K-12 publishers have restricted budgets and do not wish to incur additional costs to produce and service digital versions of print titles which are well into their multi-year life cycles.  Yet all students today, even those who cannot access standard print materials, must participate in and pass high-stakes tests.  Schools scramble to scan and use publishers’ textbooks as best they can, but this can be a costly effort that inevitably takes teachers away from teaching many of their students while they attend to the needs of a few.  Thus, schools are increasingly interested in seeing publishers provide digital versions of the texts their teachers use.

In addition to meeting the accessibility needs of students with disabilities, the creative potential for accessible digital materials is as limitless as the imagination of the product design team.  In the future, accessible digital products could be used to make learning more exciting, interactive and individually-tailored to the needs, learning style and interests of all students.  Obviously, a major shift toward the more widespread use of accessible digital products in the classroom will take considerable time for a variety of reasons.  However, the aforementioned legal developments at the federal and state level suggest that soon, educators and content providers will need to gear up quickly to prepare truly accessible digital versions of their products. 

It is for these reasons that publishers, lawyers, and technology specialists need to spend time discussing the barriers which exist today in the field of accessible curriculum materials, and creatively envisioning solutions that will meet the needs of students, educators and publishers.