Economic Access to Technology

In considering choices for education technology, an instructional designer is wise to mix in the Principles of Univeral Design and Accessibility with other educational considerations.  The concepts of Universal Design are:

- Equitable use
- Flexibility in use
- Simple and intuitive
- Perceptible information
- Tolerance for error
- Low physical effort
- Size and space for approach and use

(NCSU, 1997)

Accessibility focuses on how differently-abled persons experience, in our case, online learning, and what instructional designers/web developers can do to minimize the disconnect these users experience (USGSA, 1998 ).

When I consider the technologies that are commonly used in online education – asynchronous/synchronous, text, audio, video/image – most would fit into many of the ideas put forward by Universal Design. The one that really can’t be supported by online education is equitable use. I’m going to single out one of the guidelines for equitable use to support my position:

1b: Avoid segregating or stigmatizing any users.

I think this guideline includes economic access.

As I read the 2009 Horizons Report (NMC, 2009), it really bothered me that all of the technologies assumed that educational organizations and learners would have the economic means to develop, deploy, and access learning with these technologies.  I appreciate visionaries, but I have to wonder whether they are not just setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, saying that something will be adopted encourages the adoption of it.  Or manufacturers saying that buyers want certain features (and then giving it to them), regardless of whether the feature really is what the buyers ask for.  I know that this is how markets work, but can’t help feeling that it is to our detriment…somehow.

While thinking about how we’ve left economic access out of this question, I took a look at Digital Divide.org, an organization devoted to understanding and, hopefully, closing the gap between those who have this economic access and those who don’t. The web site lists 7 fallacies about the digital divide, and 9 truths that they have learned in the past decade of their research. Among the fallacies was that the key to closing the divide rested in investing in education and literacy. They feel that the emphasis on a ‘sensory’ experience of the web – use of image as symbol and voice, rather than text – reduces the need to remove illiteracy. I noticed that one of their comments about their research was

It took digital-divide researchers a whole decade to figure out that the real issue is not so much about access to digital technology but about the benefits derived from access. (Digital Divide.org, 2008)

So how can online learners, who don’t have economic access to technologies past basic access to a computer in a library that might still use dial-up to access the Internet, derive the benefits from technology in education?  What about those differently-abled learners who are also economically challenged? This quickly becomes a conversation of what is our moral and social obligations to provide equal access… a conversation that I feel wholly inadequate to consider, because I have such conflicting viewpoints. Digital Divide.org does present a reasoned discussion about why we should care, and why we will benefit, from closing the divide. I’ll leave the experts to carry on that conversation.

I just hope that as educational organizations seek to fulfill the visionary’s prophecies that they remember their users, and whether they have the $350 setup costs and $70/month access fees for such wonderful technologies as iPhones.

References:

North Carolina State University Center for Universal Design (1997). The Principles of Universal Design. Retrieved from http://www.ncsu.edu/www/ncsu/design/sod5/cud/about_ud/udprinciplestext.htm

United States General Services Administration (USGSA) (1998). 1998 Amendment to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Retrieved from http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?fuseAction=1998Amend

New Media Consortium & Educause Learning Initiative (2009). 2009 Horizon Report. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5612.pdf

Digital Divide.org (2008). Retrieved from http://www.digitaldivide.org/index.html