DCCOL Summit

The statistics are indisputable (and a little overwhelming!). Online learning is here to stay. The internet holds enormous potential for new learning opportunities. Some higher education programs and institutions now focus exclusively on distance learners, while many traditional institutions continue their campus-based learning environment but are reaching out in unprecedented ways to make their educational programming available to a new kind of student—those that will never set foot on campus.

Among the populations of students drawn to this new educational delivery mechanism are students with disabilities who may believe that their disability will have less impact on their participation and performance in online classes than in traditional classrooms. They may believe that online classes are un-timed and unhurried. They may believe that access to the internet is all that is needed to have full access to their virtual classroom. They may believe that participating from a distance, never seeing or being seen by classmates, will provide a level of anonymity (in which their disability is a neutral) that they have often wished for in face-to-face classes. They may believe a lot of things that we know to be misguided!

We know, too, that in this case, technology isn't the answer—it's a part of the problem!!! Assuring website access and careful review of disability access issues within your course management system are an important first steps in facilitating participation by students with disabilities. But just as building ramps and elevators got students into the classroom, but didn't assure programmatic accessibility, technology access/match provides a kind of "architectural access" to online learning without speaking to issues of meaningful access to the content, activities, or outcomes of those online educational opportunities.

Now is the time for administrators and disability services professionals to acknowledge that new delivery methods for education create new challenges to our assigned role in assuring access for students with disabilities. It is important for online learning programs to demonstrate that their offerings present credible learning opportunities and a viable alternative to the traditional classroom, as we face a skeptical higher education community that does not easily embrace dramatic change in methodology or pedagogy. Students with disabilities pose a special challenge, as the obligation to support their efforts to access/participate in distance learning is legally mandated under Federal statutes.