Employability skills for disabled students: JISC TechDis Toolbox – digital resources to enhance employability skills for disabled students

o Terry McAndrew (by Simon Ball and Lisa Featherstone)

o JISC TechDiso www.jisctechdis.ac.uko helpdesk@techdis.ac.uk

In this session

o Introduce participants to Toolboxo background and development (10 minutes)o demonstrations of the resources (15 minutes)o an opportunity for participants to try out the

resources (20 minutes)o discussion of how Toolbox might be used in

participants’ own contexts (15 minutes)

What do JISC TechDis do? (In theory)o A leading UK advisory service on

technologies for inclusion. We explore and promote inclusive practices, resources and advice for learning and teaching in UK higher education, and the wider further education & skills sector and independent and specialist colleges.

What do JISC TechDis do? (Actually)o Staff development

o TechDis Tuesdayso Xerte Fridayo Accessible IT Practice

Support Programmeo TechDis Toolbox

o Aimed at learnerso Working smarter with

technology

o TechDis Voiceso Jack & Jesso Text-to-speech

o SBRIo MyDocStoreo Navitexto uKinecto PSLT

TechDis Tuesdays

o Fortnightly updates on Tuesdays, 13.00o Intro dialogue (~10 minutes)oDetailed discussion with delegates (~20-30

mins)o Show notes to highlight further readingo Podcast, transcript, discussion summary and

show notes all posted onlineo www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tdtuesdays

So, why am I here?

o In the creation of the Toolbox (including the Voices), we utilised students heavily to design, develop and disseminate the resources.

o First of all, a brief introduction to the resources….

TechDis Toolboxwww.jisctechdis.ac.uk/tbx

Community-Based Participatory ResearchKushalnagar, Williams and Kushalnagar (2012) “Most accessible technology research approaches include the target population as end-users, not as community partners”

“Community-Based Participatory Approach: Students as Partners in Educational Accessible Technology Research” Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7382, Computers Helping People with Special Needs, ICCHP Proceedings July 2012, Part I

Why the Toolbox came about…o We asked students (via focus groups in special

schools, independent specialist provision for young adults, mainstream colleges and students from Higher Education with diverse needs) ‘what should your tutor have told you but never did’?

What they said…

o Feedback from students showed many had informal support networks outside of education environment.

o It also showed that in the wider skills area, there were a lot of gaps in people’s knowledge, and the informal support networks were the only real way of obtaining ‘training’

So we created mini-videos o Inspired by the Commoncraft videos – parents

and carers told us they were ideal.o Here’s an example:

o http://jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/multlinkres/detail/CC_Wiki

o We commissioned similar videos to ‘fill the gaps’ in basic digital literacy skills. Here’s one example:o http://jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/multlinkres/detail/PDF_

ReadOnScreen

Simultaneously to this….The Voices….We regularly received anecdotal feedback that

free text-to-speech voices were:o Too ‘computerised’ or ‘robotic’o Too oldo Too American

Most institutions only had licenses for the ‘good’ voices for specific students, mitigating against their wider use.

BIS agreed to fund development of two national ‘free’ text-to-speech voiceso CereProc won the tender, and provided us with

voice samples from 7 young British actors.o 400 students provided feedback as to which they

preferred (not only existing TTS users)o Many were still critical: ‘too posh’, ‘too Southern’

Jack and Jess

o Following the feedback on the voice of ‘Jack’ we asked Cereproc to find 7 female actors with ‘not posh’ and ‘not Southern’ voices.

o Eventually ‘Jess’ was selected from feedback from 400 students again – the first ever ‘Northern English’ text-to-speech voice.

o Both voices were taken back to the 400 students again who suggested re-working to better pronounce key words.

Now using students for disseminationo Both Toolbox and the Voices need to be spread

widely, at both institutional level (in which we have some experience) and at user level (where we have much less).

o Students have been absolutely key here. We have worked with a variety of ‘Ambassador’ groups such as the DOTs (Digital Outreach Trainers)

Who are these ‘ambassadors’?o We discovered that several regions have

schemes where young people are used as informal ‘trainers’.

o South Yorkshire DOTs – Digital Outreach Trainers – give an hour a week to train people on IT.o Waqas – used Toolbox to get his autistic sister onlineo Khaled – working with refugees in Rotherham using

Toolbox and Voices to teach English and IT

We decided we could learn a whole lot moreo The Ambassadors so astounded us we started

looking for them elsewhere. We went to ISCs to ask students how they used technology, both formally at college and informally at home - and some of the results were quite impressive:

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEGLlOiLHLU

Future work

o A large Ambassadors project in the South Easto www.clickstart.org – London based communities

for students with learning disabilities – we want to roll this out nationwide, possibly using Inbook

o Bid currently in for creating Northern Ireland voice(s)

o Many more short videos on Freemium services eg Evernote, Skype, Dragon Dictate for iPhone, Twitter, Camstudio, Jing etc

This has been just a small sample of what JISC TechDis has to offer.

Visit our main website for more advice on technologies for inclusion.

www.jisctechdis.ac.uk

Activitieso Demonstrationo Working in small groups, explore toolbox

and identify o Three features you would use to recommend

it to otherso Three suggestions to improve itoWhat skills do your students (with

accessibility needs) seek directly.o Discussion