by Paul Edwards
I should probably begin this message with an apology. I am very sorry that I am devoting so much space to an issue that does not seem relevant to many of our members. I am doing it because I truly do believe that technology is such a pervasive imperative in our society today. Without it, all blind people will fall further and further behind. With it, our potential for leveling the information playing field becomes much greater.
Last month we took a kind of scatter-shot look at many of the problems we must be concerned with that don’t relate directly to the technologies themselves. One of the questions that we raised but did not discuss concerns what kind of qualifications a person who works as an access technology trainer should have.
Earlier this year, I attended a conference sponsored by Mississippi State University’s Rehabilitation Research Training Center that tried to grapple with this very question. While that conference itself will eventually produce a report, I feel safe in reporting to you now some elements about which I think there was general agreement. Some of the conclusions may surprise you. They did me.
There appeared to be consensus about the fact that trainers need to be more qualified than they are. There also appeared to be a general recognition that our system is discouraging competent access technology trainers by offering relatively low pay to people in these positions, and by failing to develop appropriate expectations for such trainers. It is the intent of the conference to publish a document that will summarize the findings of the diverse group of folks who attended the meeting. I for one look forward to seeing that document, because I hope it will provide us with a starting point to deal with an extremely complex and crucial issue.
Perhaps I can provide many of you with a flavor of the conference by raising some of the questions with which the group grappled. How should an access technology trainer be qualified? Clearly, the only relevant certification that any of us were aware of comes from RESNA (the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America). There was agreement that this standard is not very useful. More important, those of us who had any knowledge of access technology training programs concurred that the needs of blind people are barely considered by most programs that concentrate on the special requirements of other disability groups. Shall we ask universities that now have training programs for rehabilitation teachers or vision teachers to develop specific majors in blindness access technology? Should we look at distance learning as an option? There was a general feeling that we needed to be very careful about going the route of placing too much value on someone’s having a certification in access technology. This was partly due to a feeling among many of us that certification has not always served to identify the most capable or gifted practitioners in other blindness professions. There was a real fear that many of the best trainers would be excluded if a strict certification standard were adopted.
On the other hand, there was equal concern that we must not accept or tolerate inferior trainers, many of whom are out there. Some way must be developed to help administrators who hire trainers to define criteria for what they are looking for in a trainer.
If a person purports to be a trainer in speech/screen-reading technology, is it enough for that person to know only one screen reading program? If a person plans to teach braille displays, is it OK that he or she knows how to train on only one brand of braille displays? What kind of general computer knowledge should a trainer have? Should he or she be able to train in Windows and on such packages as Microsoft Word or Excel? What do these packages have to do with access technology? What are the qualities that are most important in an access technology trainer? Is knowledge as important as the ability to communicate well? How much of a role should the access technology trainer play in assessing a person’s suitability for work in or with technology?
I hope it is clear that the questions surrounding access technology were far easier to raise than they were to answer. The fact that the conference occurred at all is, in itself, a step in the right direction. We cannot stop there, though. Somehow we, the blind people of the world, must demand an active role in assuring that those who train us to use technology are as competent as we can make them. We cannot just concentrate on training for adults who are looking for work either. I ran across a term the other day that describes people who were born into a society where computers are taken for granted. This group is now being called the digital generation. Unless we change things, blind children will remain digitally as well as visually challenged. More than half of the blind people in this country are over the age of 55. Access technology offers solutions that are just as vital to them as is rehabilitation teaching. Very few communities have programs that encourage older blind people to learn to use computers, or that even make certain that older people losing vision understand what they can gain by becoming digital.
We have to be certain that we don’t stop at training just a few people who can work in private agencies or state agencies. Members of the general public who cannot afford computers can go to their local library or adult education center and learn. Somehow we must assure that blind people can do this too. Colleges and universities must also be capable of integrating blind people into their classes. We must not allow access technology to become a part of the disabled student services ghetto. The American Council of the Blind is all about encouraging the fullest possible participation of blind people in programs available to the rest of the community. We must not allow community apathy to keep blind people from learning to use computers. Is the ADA in jeopardy partly because those people who have the most right to benefit from it are not demanding what they have a right to expect?