Research Stream: Social Technologies
Author: Matthew McKenna, PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute , Research Funded through the Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT)
Supporting universal and consistent access to Assistive Technology (AT) at third-level education within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Ireland represents a critical milestone to achieving equal opportunities for persons with disabilities.
To this end, overall levels of AT accessibility for students attending HEIs have improved over the past decade, with increasing numbers of people with disabilities now attending university while using some form of AT. However, the rise in HEI attendance figures represent only a partial success, as the persistent systemic barriers to AT accessibility for persons with disabilities in third-level education are complex and nuanced. The increase in the number of students receiving AT supports in HEIs provides only a superficial insight into an ecosystem of convoluted and problematic challenges that surround AT accessibility and access to higher education.
Disability encompasses a vast spectrum of characteristics that are further punctuated by the uniqueness of individual challenges, alongside the idiosyncrasies and exclusive experiences of every person living with the adversity of an often inaccessible and discriminatory society. As such, individual AT and built-environment accessibility requirements for people with disabilities can be completely different from person to person. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that can achieve full accessibility for all persons with disabilities, rather, there is an urgent need for flexible, person-centred and accessible AT platforms that are bolstered by human rights-focused policies whose ethos is firmly rooted in the social-model of disability.
The procedure for accessing AT in HEIs differs from that in primary and secondary level education, as every third-level institution has a Disability Access Office with their own processes for determining the levels of supports required for each applicant. Disability Access Offices in HEIs represent a critically important institutional pillar for the empowerment of persons with disabilities to access higher education and attain third-level qualifications. However, these departments also face the monumental challenge of providing vital personal supports to growing numbers of incoming students with disabilities, whilst contending with limited resources and finite government funding. Furthermore, depending on the nature of a disability a person has, levels of accessibility and AT requirements can vary profoundly for each individual. Disability Access Offices provide expert guidance, learning-accommodations and AT services for students, among other vital resources. They comprise the organisational focal-point for disability supports in HEIs through the facilitation of access to otherwise inaccessible campuses, learning curricula and built-environments.
Disability Access Offices generally assess the types of accommodation and proper learning supports required by a student. If AT is needed, students are referred to an AT Advisor who assesses their specific requirements. They provide expertise in AT supports while working with mass-consumer technologies, despite a tech-market that still views universal design with contention. In most cases, these supports operate from standardised and widely available hardware such as smartphones, tablet computers, laptops, and can also comprise software packages that use these platforms such as computer-based AT applications, speech recognition software, screen readers, recording software, amongst others.
To this end, the AT procurement strategy in HEIs follows a logical process of acquiring standardised technologies that are widely available for the general mass-consumer market. The strategic thinking governing AT procurement strategies arguably comprise a ‘political-economy approach’ of utilising and optimising mass-produced technological goods to achieve a greater degree of broader accessibility for persons with disabilities whose accommodation needs can be reasonably met with this method. Thus, the current strategy could arguably be described as a ‘broad capture’ strategic approach to AT accessibility in HEIs.
However, this broad capture strategy entails some intrinsic vulnerabilities, particularly where resources are strained. Furthermore, it may risk a diminishment of focus and support for individual ‘narrow and deep’ cases of specific disability-support requirements that necessitate the acquisition of more expensive ‘specialist AT’ that can meet the needs of a student on a personal level, rather than a collective basis. As such, the current strategy arguably incorporates certain aspects of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that aims to achieve a broad degree of supportive capture for persons with disabilities in third level education by optimising the use of existing technological instruments. Where resources are stretched thin, individual cases of disability accommodation requiring specialist AT risk deficits of sufficient supports to achieve proper accessibility to participate in HEIs.
In cases where specialist AT is required by a student, the Higher Education Authority (HEA) delivers a ‘Fund for Students with Disabilities’ (FSD). The FSD enables students to access specialist AT devices that are not typically found in the inventories of Disability Access Offices in HEIs. The FSD can also be used to provide AT training for students with disabilities. However, the acquisition of specialist AT is dependent on many variables including, but not limited to, availability of sufficient funding, lengthy timeframes for applications, purchase and delivery of equipment, access to expertise in a specific piece of equipment that differs from mass-consumer devices, and device familiarity, suitability and comfortability from the perspective of the user. In addition, complex challenges arise where a specialist AT device might prove to be the first time a person with a disability has been able to access modern computerised technologies with a suitable interface, meaning that digital literacy rates in such users could be negligible due to high levels of inaccessibility in current mass-consumer apparatuses preventing historic device utility.
As such, the creation of a system of stable and uninterrupted AT provision that supports enduring e-accessibility for persons with disabilities is a critical necessity in 2024 and beyond into the digital era. It is essential for ensuring and safeguarding equal participation in all areas of modern life including, inter alia, education at all levels, employment, social and private life. It is also necessary for the administration of one’s personal life and affairs, and for the protection and enjoyment of individual legal rights and freedoms. Indeed, the European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882), formally adopted by the European Union (EU) in 2019, provides significant legal agency to Articles 19 and 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) 2006, by underscoring respectively the lawful bases for, ‘Living Independently and Being Included in the Community’ and ‘Participation in Public and Political Life’. Moreover, it also provides for the further implementation of CRPD Article 24 on ‘the Right of Persons with Disabilities to Education’. The Directive 2019/882 supplements the European Commission’s Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (SRPD) 2021 – 2030 and it aims to “improve the functioning of the internal market for accessible products and services…”. The Directive must be transposed into Irish legislation by June 28th 2025, when it comes into effect across the EU.
To this end, leading academic experts from Irish third-level universities and the ALL Institute at Maynooth University, alongside partner organisations, advocate a pioneering stratagem of ‘A whole-campus approach to technology and inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education in Ireland’. This progressive avenue promotes a ‘systems-thinking’ approach towards greater inclusion of students with disabilities and reveals the need for novel and inclusive policies and practices to modernise contemporary attitudes to technology and accessibility that are often still entrenched in the medical model of disability. It is clear that a ‘whole-campus’ approach would greatly benefit students with disabilities using AT and would decentralise disability accessibility supports and promote an inclusive ethos underscored by the social model of disability. It would also complement the work of Disability Access Offices to facilitate a more accessible and equal third-level education environment in Ireland in a digital era. In summary, supporting AT accessibility for students with disabilities in HEIs requires a full spectrum rethinking and development of person-centred policies that promote accessibility in technology, the built environment, and in the social conceptualisation of what constitutes true access to third level education for all.