Changing
Organizational
Architecture for
Access to Students
with Disabilities
Context: ICT in Knowledge Societies
• Higher Education institutions are working steadily towards increased
participation in the global knowledge society, where knowledge,
expertise and talent produce socio-economic benefits.
• Internationally the drive to promote ICT in education has been
characterised by an alignment with broader social and economic
goals. Adam et al., 2011; Department of Education, 2003.
• “ICTs have become a positive force of transformation and a crucial element of any
personal development, empowerment and institutional framework for inclusive
development”.
Changes in Higher Education (HE) as a result of ICTs
• ODeL – is enabled by technology.
• Pervasive technology has significant implications for higher
education.
• eLearning is on the rise at universities around the world.
• Move toward academic innovation and organisational change
through technology.
The Context
• For students with disabilities (SWD) who have to contend with
attitudinal and environmental barriers to inclusion in education, the
prognosis for self-actualization and social mobility is disheartening.
• The ability to become constructive and active members of society
becomes seriously diminished through the intentional and
unintentional denial of access to education opportunities and the
world of work.
• Students with disabilities (SWD) have a deep-seated
conviction that no one is concerned in their lives
and hardships.
• They are exposed not only to economic deprivation
but also social exclusion or marginality, severe
violation of basic human rights, and public
indifference.
SWD and the Digital Divide
• Digital divide will be exacerbated by failing to address the challenges faced by SWD.
• Access to education technology and digital literacies for SWD is a matter of social
justice.
• Digital elites and Digital strangers – Universities need to understand the
“technological habitus” of students in context of unequal access. (Czerniewicz and
Brown 2013).
• The benefits of ICTs have to be shared benefits. ICTs have to be made accessible to
SWD so it can “constitute an opportunity and not a barrier”.
• There are severe information and knowledge access challenges for SWD.
Inequalities in the networked world for SWD
• Advances in ICTs and education technology reveal new inequity and
inequality concerns.
• SWD: “permanent second–class citizens of the information age”.
• SWD have to contend with collaboration and participatory
inequalities and a lack of digital and media literacies.
– “With Internet and Web–based content now central to education,
employment, entertainment, socialization, and civic engagement, unequal
access to the content and technologies necessary for social participation results
in very significant virtual segregation”.
Retrofitting accessibility: The legal inequality of after the fact online access for PWD in the United States. Brain Wentz, Paul Jaeger and Jonathan
Lazar. 2011.
Inclusive Organizational Architecture
reordering of systems and design for the benefit of all people
Organizational Architecture Change for Inclusive Higher Education
Inclusive
Procurement
management
ICT and Education
Technology
Inclusive PQM
design
Access and Design
Inclusive Talent
Management
Inclusive Student
Management
Quality
Management
ODL leap to create an Inclusive Digital Future
Complicated infrastructure
Retrofitting technology access
Provision for SWD seen as “undue
financial burden”
Provider-centred academic architecture
Optimal advantage of and access to ICTs
Inclusive student-centred academic
architecture
Inclusive education practise
Innovation of new access ICTs
An institutional element needing change: Procurement
• Move towards Inclusive Procurement: University procurement that
ensures accessible purchases and investment in ICT and
infrastructure.
• Institutional governance must support human-centered technology
and in particular, access technology and ICTs which will aid in
increasing the learning autonomy of SWD.
• The most frequently cited reasons for not providing accessible
technologies are that incorporating accessibility into the technology
will:
–
–
–
–
–
increase costs of the technology
lengthen time of development
only serve a small market
necessitate special design requirements
never meet the needs of each different disability
(Maskery in Brain Wentz, Paul Jaeger and Jonathan Lazar. 2011).
How universities can support SWD
Universities can:– authentically respond (no lip service) to the needs of SWD
– explore the limitations, exclusion and undesirable side effects of
current teaching and learning methodologies, knowledge
mobilizing and dissemination strategies, systems and technologies
– reconfigure institutional organizational architecture in order to
explicitly include SWD
How universities can support SWD:
• create access to ICTs and social media that takes into account the pedagogical and
epistemological, psychological, psychosocial aspects of disability thereby enabling
new pathways of hope and admission into new possibilities
• facilitate ICT learning labs to incubate new, innovative knowledge access solutions
• generate open source working models to address knowledge access needs of SWD
• encourage innovation and creativity so SWD can design their own knowledge
creation and dissemination solutions
• Open Education Resources - HE can provide access to digital knowledge resources
for use by SWD using any connected device, anytime and anywhere. There will be
no need to buy proprietary texts.
• Encourage social justice practice in teaching, research and community engagement
plus system such as Procurement and ICT.
Why we must collaborate
o No one government ministry, industry, sector or scientific discipline will
be able to offer complete solutions to the challenges faced by SWDs.
o We need to create a bridge between work done by universities,
government and civil society.
o Technology and learning methodologies can be areas where
partnerships can bring about benefits of scale.
o Sharing the burden of innovation, research activity and breaking down
complex challenges into manageable pieces, can be invaluable.